the magic of story

1) Start with the idea words: love, shame, guilt, fear. Now brainstorm a bunch of actions that correspond to those ideas. Put down everything you think of. Then turn those actions around. What opposite, unexpected actions might also be symptoms of the same ideas or feelings? In other words, push past your initial, possibly well-worn actions and see what other, surprising actions might also result from that feeling. For example: a person who is shy might hide in the corner at a party or stay out in the hall or lower her head or mumble and run away. Those are the first images that pop into my head for the word, “shy.” But a lot of people I know feel shy inside and have all kinds of coping mechanisms. One might stick close to someone well-known and appear exclusive, laughing at in-jokes and sharing reminisces. Another might fight the shyness, forcing himself to stand up and give toasts or try public speaking. In fact, the latter is the premise for Lorrie Moore’s amazing story, “Those Kind of People are the Only People We Know.” [CHECK TITLE] Starting with an idea of a flaw and searching for unexpected actions that embody that flaw will lead you to original material.

2) Find the conflict inherent in the idea, and then give each facet of the idea a character who embodies that facet. So for example, if you are interested in the role of faith in human life, force together some very different characters with very different histories and ideas about faith. Do exercise # 1 to discover how they each might enact those ideas in unexpected ways. Now create a high-stakes situation where they must agree or take action or provide succor for each other. Now you are in the cauldron–or lab–or human experience, seeing what will happen. And that is a lot of what fiction can do: enquire through the actions of human lives about what shapes humanity and what are its consequences.

3) Let your characters argue about the abstract idea–politics, philosophy, love–but give the argument a concrete subtext. For example, if you have two characters who are married and one is about to leave the other, who is cheating but also increbily supportive, emotionally and financially, and the character who is about to leave will break his or her own heart if s/he does: let those characters argue politics. Ethics. Something about the election or a foreign policy snafu. You get to play with all the big ideas you want–in the authentic voices of your characters–but at root is the human drama that matters to all of us most of all.

Do you tend to think in terms of characters and situations or in terms of ideas? How do you integrate the two?