Starting from scratch

This post was in response to a question on Writer’s Talkback forum about how to get started with a story, but I thought it might be useful for other people to read it here if they wanted to:

If you’ve already started to play with ideas for your story then you should have some basic information down somewhere, even if its just in your head. Little flashes and snippets like character details, ideas about setting and scenes which you want to take place. You might have a rough outline for the plot or at least an idea of where you want it to start and finish. No matter how limited these details they can always be built upon.

Stretch out the information you have down by asking yourself questions about each tiny detail.

It might not seem significant at the time but it can help.

For instance you might have “Jeff, mechanic who wants to be a flower arranger”

Streeeeetch it out…

• How old is Jeff?
• Does he hate his mechanic job or does he just fancy a change?
• Where about does he live?
• Is he in a relationship?
• Why flower arranging? Is it a new idea or a life long dream?

Each of these ideas can be stretched out even further and eventually they may cross to form better ideas.

For instance:

How old is Jeff? Maybe, he’s fifty-two and deciding he took the wrong path by becoming a mechanic.

Is he in a relationship? No, but he hopes to meet a certain lady in the flower arranging business?

Ohhh, so there’s a special lady is there Jeff? Well why not ask her out? Because you think she won’t be impressed by a mechanic?

Little details begin to emerge that turn an idea into a story. Before it was just an idea about a man who wanted to change careers, maybe because he really wanted to be a flower arranger. Now we have an aging man worried he took the wrong path in life, desperate to make a good impression on a woman he has loved from a distance, no matter the ridicule he will suffer at the hand of his mechanic friends and the obvious difficulty of learning a new craft for a job he doesn’t really want to do!

An idea grows from itself, and there hasn’t been MUCH more information added to the original idea, it’s just been explored in a little more depth.

Get your notes out, or get some written down, and start expanding and stretching, prodding and exploring until you start to find the story hidden within the details.