How Stories Come to Be For Me

Today's Earworm: The Damaged Ones by 9ELECTRIC
Today's Date: February 27, 2017

So I was reading Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams story collection and before each story is a note about that story.

Well, in the note before the story, A Death, which is story 6, he talks about how sometimes stories come to him. He also talks about how a story comes to him in parts, a cup and a handle in the note before story 3, Batman and Robin Had an Alteration.

This...this sparked a thought in my head because he talked about how he often had visions of a kind of a character gathering. He talked about The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams which offered a metaphor, or a parable if you want to think about it, where there is a fire with a single character sitting there. And more characters would come with more fuel for the fire until they're all shown by the fire.

Well, apparently for A Death, he saw a man with a man trying to read a newspaper by a kerosene lantern.

And then of course, I'm going "How do I come up with my stories?"

Thus, this blog came to be. Because I have talked about my Plot Hike (which is how I build a story up instead of the Plot Moutain) and somewhat on how I get my stories, I wanted to actually talk with you guys on how I come up with stories.

Note: I am publishing this blog post on my livejournal fanfiction update page, so if you somehow found it there, no, I'm not stealing my own post from myself. Don't worry.

So...how do I come up with my stories?

Actually, any kind of way.

I've been known to just randomly think up an idea. Take Black Veiled Saviour for example. It's a murder mystery with undertones of homosexual romance, and it's one of my favorite stories in work. And the idea was sparked by Black Veil Brides song Saviour. It gave me Bo, who is one of my main characters as he thought about his future lover, Alexx.

It was a very interesting prospect, so I went back and relistened to the song. This time, I got an image of Alexx, in his original form since he's since changed a few times, of him sitting down and writing a letter to a fan of his musical group.

I wrote that story and if you go to my livejournal, here, you can read it.

For a few other stories, they actually started out as a role play that I was doing with friends. Take Follow Me Down. It's what I call a modern day dark fantasy kind of story. It started out as a role play with a few friends that kind of bombed because some things went down and I don't speak with one or two of the people any more.

It was based off a darker version of the Alice in Wonderland world, but has since changed to a point where it's not based off of anything but itself and history for a few of the character types. I'm still world building and figuring out characters, but I have a good base for the story itself, which is nice.

I also just...daydream them into existence. I'll be listening to music and playing solitaire or I'll be watching something mindless (or anime, one of the two), and suddenly I'll get a scene in my head that I'll play out. It gives me a jump point to create a story from since it's usually the first chapter and/or scene in the story.

From there, I build the world accordingly and figure out the characters by writing small bits and pieces here and there.

It's all about what I'm doing at the time. Stories do tend to just pop up in my head and then disappear if I don't write them down. But if I'm meant to write or I write it down, I'll poke at it and figure out what I want to do it.

After all, I'm not Stephen King. I can't wait for the cup to my handle when it comes to my stories and novels guys. It just doesn't work well for me to just wait.

To note: Next monday I'll be starting my Camp Nano prepping for April! Yay! Fun times to come. I hope you take a few minutes and check out that blog post and join me in the fun of writing.

My question for you guys is: how does your stories come to you?