by Gayle Bartos-Pool
The very desire to write stimulates the imagination.
Your imagination gives you an idea.
The idea engages the brain to put those thoughts on paper…or on your computer.
Then comes the hard part…
Wait a minute. Does that mean getting an idea isn’t work?
It’s only work if you force yourself to search for an idea in an underappreciated imagination. You see, the imagination is always working. You just have to realize it’s there. You see things around you all the time. People. Places. Objects. Maybe even a phrase that causes you to think about who would be saying those words and why. Those things are all part of a million stories. You only need to find one that grabs you.
What if you see a face in the crowd that, for a second, looks like a character in a book. What book? How about the next book you write. There’s something about him. He’s a funny old guy who could be your protagonist’s grandfather, but he has a very dark past. Or maybe you see a beautiful young woman who could be a lost princess. Or you see a stray dog who just might rescue, say, that lost princess, but her old grandfather with the mysterious past…the king, doesn’t want her to live her life without her true love like he did when he was forced to marry a woman he didn’t love but who would unite his kingdom with another. Looks like you have the bones of a story.
If you happen to write mysteries, maybe the face you see looks like somebody who should be behind bars. You heard him growl at the young clerk at the fast food place where you were picking up dinner. You were waiting for the bum to reach across the counter and punch the poor kid in the mouth for not giving him extra ketchup. Or maybe to pull a gun and ask for a lot more than just something for his fries.
Or how about you see a couple of local gardeners early one morning digging in a secluded spot next to the golf course behind your house, but to you the pair look like they were burying a body, and you find out later that somebody is missing in your area. I actually wrote a short story based on that idea after I saw two “gardeners” digging in an area behind my house. I didn’t go running to the cops to check out the mysterious goings-on, because as far as I know, no one was missing in the area. But I got a short story out of the chance encounter.
So, if you truly want to be a writer, that imagination of yours will keep you up at night searching for more avenues to take those characters down before they get to the end of your story.
And something else, once you actually start putting those words down from whatever triggered your imagination, think about what some of your characters might be saying to each other. Then describe what those characters look like. Let the reader know a little more about where they came from and what brought them to the same place as everybody else in your story.
Then wonder where that main character wants to go with the knowledge she’s learning. If she’s the character in the book about the gardeners, how can she get their attention so they know she saw them and she might know what they have been doing. You’ll probably need to have that lead character be a little more than some random housewife with only a rolling pin as a weapon when they confront her. That only happens in a Hallmark mystery, and I doubt if a real killer would be intimidated by Betty Crocker in the kitchen with a clever line and that rolling pin to protect herself.
So set your imagination free. Let it know there are stories in that brain of yours waiting to find themselves on pages to be read by folks who might not be a writer, but who love a good story. Write On!
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