Simple: write from life.
Anything that you have experienced in life can be used for a story. Even if it's boring to you, your life may be interesting to the guy sitting across from you. For example, how did I meet Hushicho? How did I meet Hawkye and Blue? What about Dave Hopkins, the creator of Jack? I'm sure that last one is a popular question. ;) All of them are circumstance and chance and some are more interesting and involved than others. For example, my father was diagnosed with Altimeters and I watched it not only crush a man who valued money and had an active social life, it literally made his personality disappear and on some days Dad's mind couldn't function enough for him to leave his bed and take his medicine. Yet, I applied this fact of my life to a short story assignment I had in high school. It was very hard to be the only person at the time to notice a change in my father, and the nameless daughter character was kind and helpful, even though she couldn't begin to understand what was wrong with her father, who to her looked as if he was loosing his sanity and didn't remember her. I still had high school to deal with as well as applying for college. I also live in public housing, and they had just instituted rules that forced every adult in the house hold to work full time or be in school full time. It was very stressful, because at the time, I had no work experience at all. I didn't have to work, because my father and mother both took care of me. Instead of working, I opted for going to college, while my father's condition worsened before his death on November 28, 2009. My father didn't know me when I'd call him and he couldn't even remember my birthday anymore. While bittersweet, I could still apply all of this to a character in a story. I could even craft a story's entire plot around somone having Altimeters and how family and friends cope and help, if they even help. Since the story would be very heavy and sad, I would try very hard to end on as much of a positive note as I could. Other things you could create a story from are birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries of some kind, field trips, vacations...a week where everything and it's cousin amounts to jack all and how your character needs to recover from that. Maybe by taking a vacation up into the mountains and meets a hot guy and starts a romantic relationship with your character. Or maybe he's a police officer knocking on her door at 2 am because the protagonist is staying at a motel and there's been a murder in the next room over--later to be discovered by your character sleuthing all over the novel to be a crime committed over a gambling debt. Or by an local gang. Or even full time mobsters. That was easy for me to quickly type, as I love detective stories and I live in the Knoxville, Tennessee area and all I have to do to get to a casino is drive through the Smokies to Cherokee. While I myself do not gamble, I went with my brother once. Cherokee has several cheap motels. You can even stay at the casino's hotel built right into it if you'd rather, but it's often times much, MUCH more expensive than staying at any of the numerous motels. On top of that, you can even get discounts on motel rooms if you go often enough, such as was the condition when my brother and I went there for two days. I'm very sorry if it seems like I'm rambling during this post. I wanted to type something up for now and post it. I'll try to come back and make it more consistent. |
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April 2023
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