Drill Down Into Story Ideas

[marycatelli]

Many people ask authors where they get their idea . This panel asks: "How do you develop your ideas into stories?" We will take an idea or two and work on how we would turn it into a story."

A reprise of a panel from last bittercon for this one as well.

Based on what sparked the most interest last time, I shall provide some images, and we shall see what sparks. (I may post again on the topic, later in the weekend.)

Some images, of course, are more sparky than others. Take, for instance, one like this:

Very pretty, but suggests neither character nor plot nor setting beyond the observation of spring in a temperate climate. At least to me.

If you held a gun to my head, I might come with something about its being a magical bough that opens doors or something, or its being the answer to a challenge: in a city known for its artificiers of delicate metal work, especially of flowers, bring them a flower that their master metalworkers can't duplicate.

Do any of you have more notions?

Or take this one:


Ah, a figure! And in action! Always useful for inspiration, as long as it doesn't make you feel locked in. . . .

A nymph come out of the sea to comb her hair, make lilies blossom with her passing, and dazzle the geese with her beauty? A goosegirl who found a comb among the flotsam and put it to good use, without even guessing that it was not a merely human comb? Or someone else entirely?

Or this:

Is the child ill? Is she working on some magical thread that has to be spun by night, and taking a break to contemplate her child?

Comments

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea! Here are my mine, told in snippets:

1. (Probably influenced by the fact that I'm reading A Stitch in Time, a Deep Space Nine tie-in novel about Garak)

Every time she comes outside she has to avert her eyes from the charred remains of the orchid bushes, ghastly sentinels standing guard over her garden of ashes. She thinks, as she does every time, that she should have someone cut them down, maybe Franz with his axe. Not today, though. It can wait.



Instead she heads to a corner where patches of green survive, and the unburned branch from the orchid bush she planted there. More leaves have sprouted along the length of the bough. She waters the roots that she imagines grasping the soil under her feet, deeper and stronger every day. When she closes her eyes she can see the buds unfurling, the petals the color of babies' cheeks, in a garden that will bloom somehow from this destruction.

2. (I ran a reverse image search on the pic because I was pretty sure there was a story attached to it and didn't want mine to overlap. The character is Marziella from the fairy tale The Two Cakes.)

"Are you sure this is what you want, Lightwing?" There was concern in Sharpbeak's eyes as he looked up at his nestmate, though little enough resemblance she bore to the downy gosling she had been.


"It will be fine." Lightwing ran a comb through the long mane of hair that flew in the sea wind. "The illusion will hold so long as the chain does, and mark how it fades in the sun just as the Lady said."

Indeed, the links of gold that snaked from the band at her ankle across the sand grew fainter and fainter as the sun rose above the sea.

Sharpbeak flapped his wings in agitation. "I hope you know what you're doing. I'm not sure I trust her intentions."

"Oh, egg-brother, you worry overmuch." She reached out to stroke his feathered head. "She gets her bauble back and we'll never want for food again. Everyone wins."

"Except the Prince who loses the Sea-Orb from under his nose."

"I'm sure he won't miss it too much, with all the other sparkly things in the palace." The egg-shape of her human head tilted as she strained to listen. "Hark! The Prince and his party. Now, try to look natural." She draped herself as though in a swoon over the rock she sat upon, the waving strands of her tresses covering her form.


"Natural. Right." Sharpbeak dipped his head to root around in the vegetation with his fellows. The hoofbeats of the royal retinue grew louder and louder on the sand.

3. (I riffed off your idea of the magic thread and the sick child. The original subject is Penelope unwinding her web, FYI.)

She knew it to be unwise, but on nights like these when her thoughts were unbearable she would take the ball of skein from its place in the chest to cradle it and watch her son sleep. The spool felt just like any other in her hands, though always she waited for some spark or sign of its awful quality.


Her child's sleep was peaceful, no longer tossed on the waves of fever and suffering. We did the right thing, she told herself, clutching the skein to her breast as she would not her son for fear of breaking his precious repose; as she could not the one who was not here, across the distance that separated them.

She watched her son's face, wondering if he could feel the thread of his life being handled, even in the depths of his dreams. Did he know on some level that his thread had been snatched from the very spindle of Fate, saved from the inexorable shears by his father's bravery?

Out there somewhere she knew her husband wandered, fleeing the wrath of the gods and older things. On nights like this she imagined she saw his shadow outside the drapes, summoned by the depth of her longing. To your side I come, love, the wind seemed to whisper, to the place where my heart resides no matter where in the world I go.

It was worth it. Closing her eyes, she leaned her cheek against the ball of skein and listened to the sound of her son's breathing.

[marycatelli]

Cool ideas!

I left out the sources because for some of us, they attract like enormous magnets overwhelming all the iron in the environs. 0:)

Though a disguised goose and a skein from the Fates are certainly not showing such attraction.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Haha yeah, after I found out the sources I had to work to get away from the originals, though traces show up (the "Lady" who has a connection to the sea and is holding the heroine on a leash, the husband who is wandering far away).

[marycatelli]

The gentle art of filing off the serial numbers.

hmmm -- then there's development

[marycatelli]

And then you set off my imagination to poke at the skein because while a sufficient evocative vignette can stand on its own, the muse often doesn't like it. 0:)

Several possibilities pop to mind:
A flashback to the story of the husband, making this the frame.
A strange slave, bought by her steward -- she would have not bought someone so uncanny -- makes her fear for the skein, until she realizes it is indeed a servant of the Fates and given the means to make her fear in hopes she will betray its hiding place. Hmm. Perhaps she can lead the slave astray by making it look like she's going to check.

Re: hmmm -- then there's development

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

The framed story is a good idea, in that case some of the information would be eliminated from this beginning frame scene to be revealed in the story proper.

I also like the idea of an intertwined story of the home (with the wife and kid) and wilderness (with the husband), with the wife matching wits with the servant of the Fates while the husband is battling physical danger and trying to get home.

It would be a nice inversion of the trope that the big man has to save the women and children if the husband hits a brick wall and everything looks doomed--and then turns out all right because the wife solves things on her end.

It could even be the child who resolves everything, in a bittersweet ending: The son, who has grown attached to the slave and gotten to know him, volunteers to take his place as a servant of the Moirai so the servant will get his long-desired freedom and his father can come home. The son doesn't want his life to be at the expense of his parents' happiness anymore, and besides, he'll experience wonders and gain knowledge beyond the dreams of most mortals. This way the situation is resolved semi-happily by the son's compassion for others and acceptance of the unknown, while the father's bravery and the mother's wits do little good in a subversion of the fantasy/mythology trope where the key is usually violence or trickery.

Re: hmmm -- then there's development

[marycatelli]

Perhaps that would need a three-part story -- how it looks to the father, to the mother, and to the child.

Re: hmmm -- then there's development

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

A three-parter, or an interwoven story where the dips and rises in one protagonist's story melds into the next. I like the latter better, though it would be harder. Since the central focus is a skein of thread, making spinning and weaving predominant images, a "woven" structure seems thematically appropriate.

Re: hmmm -- then there's development

[marycatelli]

Three parts whether interwoven or sequential. 0:)

To be sure, the father's perhaps are in flashback, at least partially, to dramatize the theft.

Re: hmmm -- then there's development

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Good idea. So the past interweaves with the present, as well as the characters' stories with each other.

Re: hmmm -- then there's development

[marycatelli]

As is only fitting in a tale about thread.

[marycatelli]

I like how you worked in the chain. I managed to miss that.

Then, the muse often dismisses such details. . . .

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

This was a case where reading the original story helped. I had totally missed the chain until I read (or rather, skimmed through) The Two Cakes, too. It's a pretty subtle detail.

[marycatelli]

It could still be a goose girl, even with the chain. For a witch with enchanted gold. To be sure, that might mean she ought to suspect a comb in the flotsam and jetsam, but then, she might be more desperate, or more blase about magic.

A witch with a beautiful captive sets her to herding geese. She chains her every morning to her weariness. It's not like she's going to run away, she's an orphan or something -- perhaps the witch's own child, that's a grand tradition -- and has nowhere to go.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Heh, it could be a commentary on the shortage of affordable daycare in the U.S. and she chains her child up all day as a last resort. :D It's something lower-income mothers resorted to during the Industrial Revolution because there was no one to care for their children while they worked. This officially puts it in the Not Funny category, but it's where my brain went when you mentioned motherhood and a chain.

Or it could be motherhood as a chain, taking that plot element from The Two Cakes and running with it full-on into a story of control, freedom, and loss. As in: The witch is the girl's mother, and she keeps her on the chain to keep her "safe." The girl wants to leave, but is also terrified of doing so. When the local prince inevitably falls in love with her they try to break the chain, but nothing works--because, as the witch reveals in a climactic scene, the girl was holding on from her end all this time. The girl finally lets go and walks away from both the witch and the prince; she loves them both, but has to learn to walk on her own first.

[marycatelli]

Chaining up a daughter that age has its ugly side.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it, I've been there. D:

[marycatelli]

I'd have a hard time pulling it away from Tangled, which seems to me hard to top.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that--is it good?

[marycatelli]

Oh yes. The best Disney fairy tale. Even with the moment when I am ready to scream at the beginning -- and what I would scream is "This is not Rapunzel!"

Well, it isn't. but it's still great.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

LOL, definitely going on the "to watch" list.

[marycatelli]

Hope you enjoy it!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, the top picture suggests something ominous: spring content in fall treatment. Brown background, leaves with dry edges, some leaves dry wrinkled and dangling; the yellowish color of the leaves is that of late summer wasting, not spring chartreuse. It looks like upholstery fabric for a stuffy decadent old noble's townhouse, where he is somehow imprisoning a fresh young niece who will grow up never knowing healthy environment, old before her time.

Brown leather sofas, dark drapes matching the upholstery. One wants a spring lightning strike to blow the windows open.

[marycatelli]

I suffer from the knowledge that apple leaves tend to look drab and undistinguished and lacking in freshness all year. 0:)

But it's an impressive print, detailed, perhaps magical. After all, in the days of decadence, one can't impress with a mere print.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Doubtless why the niece chose to paint apple blossoms to satisfy her tutor's requirement of botanical accuracy, while also sending her emotional plea. And chose the brown background to match the leather couch where she knew the Painter Laureate would be kept waiting.

[marycatelli]

While still within the bounds of propriety for paintings.

It's the little old ladies that think botany unsuitable for young ladies, owing to feminine delicacy, that get to her. If only she could get visitors who were neither decadents nor fossilized.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the real Laureate, indisposed, sends his decadent nephew to keep the appointment. Who quite sees the irony in the picture and contracts with the noble to give the niece, sight unseen, a job coloring in the stage sets that Beardsley is drawing for an off-Paris's-Broadway production of Salome.

[marycatelli]

And because it would be ungenteel to haggle over wages -- for far too little.