The germination of story—where does it begin?
How does your story come to you? Does it gallop in out of nowhere?
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| Hangaku Gozen by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi |
Does it begin with an image, a flash of insight, a half-remembered dream?
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| Viking Woman Warrior by Hans Splinter. Licensed under CC by 2.0. Cropped from original. |
Does it begin when you are passionate, relaxed, ecstatic, miserable?
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| Does this describe your mood when you've thought of a new story idea? |
These are most common ways that the magic of story germination happens for me:
- A storyline stays in my conscious mind from a dream or a half-dream
- A complex idea pops into my relaxed, contented mind, seemingly from nowhere
- A striking image will inspire a character or a situation
A perfect example of this phenomenon is the story J.K. Rowling tells of how Harry Potter popped, fully formed, into her mind. That's the magic of inspiration at work, one which built a real-world story empire.
All of these flashes or situations need narration built upon them, which becomes the conscious mind's work. After I've received these inspirations, I love to let them germinate in my mind for a few days before I even write them down. While they're still thoughts in my head, I feel like the story has infinite possibilities. Writing the words down seem like they take on a permanence that concretizes them into a certain shape.
I can explain how I get inspiration. Yet, these flashes of inspiration themselves are the magic—the ephemera, if you will—that is inexplicable. It's the unconscious mind at work in ways that we can never predict or control.
I'd love to hear about how your story germinations take place.
