I am often asked where I come up with story ideas. Yes, even the wife (read: genius) seems to wonder just where I come up with some of the ideas for various stories. I mean, I write science fiction and fantasy. It's a lot of mythical creatures, totally made-up aliens, technological gadgets that (so far as we know) have not yet been invented, and far off places that either don't exist or we do not currently know of their existence.
So where do the stories come from?
For the typical mainstream writer, they can often draw from their own real life experiences; a sort of fictionalizing of their real life, so to speak. Others, through vicarious observation, draft stories of things that happen in everyday life, but to other people.
But us writers of scifi/fantasy? Where do the ideas come from without having to re-shape an old episode of Star Trek that we watched in 1992?
And no, I am not a frequent user of peyote or any other psychedelic drugs, natural or synthetic. I was, however, once accused of "smoking something" by one of my fellow critique group friends for coming up with a particularly bizarre fantasy that everyone in the group loved (despite the bizarre backdrop and details of the story), but no, drug free except for the multi-vitamins in the morning. The genius has me taking about three thousand different supplements every morning, sheesh -- wait a tick, maybe she's behind the whole ... naah, couldn't be her doing, I've been this way long before she came along and brightened my days.
No, I have always been this way, coming up with neat little ideas that spring into my mind at the most inconvenient and surprising moments. Inconvenient in the sense that they often happen while I am in the midst of a business-related deadline. Surprising in the sense that they come out of nothing, really. I am not even thinking about doing a story on anything, and then like Emeril "Bam!", there it is.
So there must be only one conclusion I can draw: I am the victim of a rather overactive imagination, I .... uh, imagine.
I really don't know how it was that I became a victim of my imagination. It just happened. Perhaps it was all those years growing up in a small town without much in the way of actual replicas of toy guns or swords (my brother and I oftened fashioned these things from sticks and stones), and many of our school friends lived in another town several miles away, so we had to come up things to amuse us other than mindlessly sitting in the front of the television (although there was plenty of that, too).
So, there it is, a victim of imagination, and so now everytime I turn the corner something sometimes inconvenient and frequently surprising hits me up along the head. Shortly thereafter, I am no longer paying attention to what is going on around me, but rather immersed in a story line to go along with what just happened to me when my imagination once again victimized me.
Here's a perfect example of what I mean by all of this. Last weekend, after much discussion and debate, the genius and I decided to take a short trip to El Paso, Texas. I know what you are saying ... "El Paso? Why would you want to go there?" I will tell you. We had some good friends recently move there and being the tightwads that we are, we decided a vacation where we could crash on their sofa-bed was a lot cheaper than one requiring a reservation. Just teasing about the latter part. Actually, our good friends had moved out there, a younger couple with some wild notion of taming the world by starting out with El Paso. I "imagine" they figured if they could make it there they could make it anywhere (I thought that place was New York?). But anyway, I digress. So, we head off to El Paso for a visit. They're a nice couple and fairly active and adventurous ... and then we come along. From the moment we are off the plane we hit the ground running, and we're off to the Franklin Mountains. My understanding is that these mountains are some sort of southern cousins of the Rockies and they're right there on the edge of El Paso.
And then up we go hiking 1700 meters toward the top of this ridge where, of all things, is this rock formation that looks like a gigantic elephant sprawled out on its belly overlooking the arroyo below. And the whole time we are hiking, we are chatting and carrying on like the fools that we are, toiling in the heat that is July in west Texas, just having a great time.
Now from far away, it looked like any other uplift of granite or basalt or whatever mountains are made of, but as we journeyed upward and closer, it did look very much like an elephant was up there; a gigantic, gray elephant with a trunk that was partially resting on the ridge, but the last bit of the trunk was curved upwards and pointing to the sky.
And that's where my imagination chose to strike at me. Caught me in its clutches at my most vulnerable ... sweating, tired, bum left knee wobbling. Definitely a predatory creature my imagination is as it always seems to sense weak prey and cull it from the herd at just the right moment.
We made it to the top, stood upon the elephant's trunk, and even found a cool spot in a small cave to rest and admire the view around us. But on the way back my brain was already working overtime. I remember even being asked on the way down why I was so suddenly quiet, and I simply replied that I was "contemplating". But my companions were surely thinking that I was quiet due to exhaustion (after all, we were working on our third hour of hiking at that point). And perhaps I was exhausted, physically, but my mind had been consumed by my imagination.
By the time we were done, it was clear to me that the elephant on the ridge was merely sleeping, and that if someone were to go up there and climb on top, the elephant might just wake up, take a look around, and perhaps then cause a little mayhem. Later, as we all continue down to the bottom of the mountains, and then returned to El Paso to enjoy dinner and conversation, the story line further developed in which fictional characters became involved in waking the elephant and this led to a "rocky" adventure (sorry, I had to do it) involving magical gems, daring thieves, and an avalanche that wiped out an entirely made-up city.
Will the story turn out to be published? Will it turn out to be an award winner? Who knows? Who may even care? For me, it is more the journey than the destination when it comes to writing. I enjoy the process, and somewhere along the way something surprising just might happen ... like it did in the west Texas town of El Paso.
So, now you ask me, how is it that I come upon story ideas. They are everywhere. They are all around you and me. The key is in letting yourself be vulnerable enough to become a victim of your imagination.
