I like to write short stories from time to time. I’m not proclaiming that I’m very good at it. But as a hobby, like this blog, it’s fun. However, two things I noticed from time to time I want to share with you:
This isn’t me being an high and mighty ‘author’ or anything. This is just silly old me with a hobby telling a story or two about the things I noticed.
Knowing yourself.
If you like to write and get somewhat good at it you have to do it a lot. Like Stephen King wrote in his marvellous on writing: that doesn’t automatically mean that you are going to win the next nobel prize for literature. But a bad writer can become an average writer and an average writer a good writer –with practice.
But the craft of putting words in order is nothing with a creative idea at its basis!
I’ve read numerous books written by talented but utterly uninspired authors. Whereas, at the same time, I’ve read great stories written in the worst lingo imaginable.
Now, like the tricks you learn by putting words in order; I honestly believe that you can also spark your creativity by doing it a lot.
Step out of your comfort zone every once in a while and write down a terrible person and let him/her get away with the terrible things.
Imagine what an event would do to a person. Don’t just write: pregnant! But have fun with it. Use her pregnancy later on in the story. Create scenarios (her missing the bus because she can’t run, she afraid to fight the villain because of her child…you name it).
Stepping out of your comfort zone is a great way to spark your creativity. That is why, a few years back I wanted to write a story about a serial rapist...
I’ll tell you how I came up with it. I’ve always been a fan of the TV-show Columbo. And one of the defining characteristics of this show is that it shows the ‘how’ the murder was committed right up front. So the show wasn’t about ‘whodunit’ but about how the lieutenant was going to catch the crook.
Framing a story like that gives a lot of screen time to the criminal. No longer is it Hercule Poirot pinpointing the villain in the last five pages. No the whole set-up of the crime and the motivation is crucial to the story.
This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to have a criminal commit his crime and get caught (or get away with it, I hadn’t planned that far ahead yet).
Now, at that time there was a serial rapist on the loose in my hometown. Young women were advised never to travel alone.
And it took quite a long time before this criminal got caught.
And that fascinated me. It inspired me. I wanted to write this story about the vilest sort of criminal I could come up with and now real life was handing me inspiration on a platter.
So I started writing. From the perspective of the villain I wrote a lengthy page in which he prepared himself for his nightly ‘hunt’ –as he called it.
And then I had to stop. This because I noticed quite the flaw in my own person: I simply couldn’t imagine why a person would do such a thing!
I think I speak for the majority of men folk when I say that a woman screaming ‘no don’t’ isn’t the best motivation (maybe I’m naïve, but I'm happy to be). So this whole concept of a guy actually enjoying the resistance is strange to me. I simply cannot imagine what the fun part is for someone about non-consensual force in intercourse.
So there I had a problem. I had a whole police investigation planned out. The crook staying one step ahead all the time. But I simply couldn’t write the crook or the actual crime because I couldn’t see why he did it. Try as I might.
So I learned a lot about myself during this writing exercise. I have to stick with villains whose motivation and drives I might actually understand. A good old-fashioned murder or something.
Creativity is fun. Stepping out of you comfort zone is fun. But it isn’t a key to an unlimited magazine of pick-ready notions.
The structure
Quick: name two Agatha Christie novels! Chances are that you named Murder on the Orient Express and And then there were none (I’ll forgo on the original two racist titles).
What is the similarity between those two novels. They are both, when you get down to it, locked room thrillers. Ten or more people in an isolated location. One of them is the killer.
One of the reasons why these two novels are the best known of her repertoire is because this ‘trick’ of an isolated location takes away the common trope of the detective novel.
In any standard detective novel the detective gets a case and starts investigating. In chapter three he questions suspect A. In chapter four suspect B. And so on. In chapter twelve he then points out the culprit.
It’s this structure that made me stop reading the Cormoran Strike novels by Robert Galbraith.
Christie in her two most famous novels takes away the travel time between suspect A and B. They are all in a room together. You can mix things up and question two suspects in one chapter. You can have fun without having to write lengthy parts of the story about how the detective got up in the morning and caught the tube to Whitechapel.
I’m currently writing a story about a serial murderer (murder is something I can comprehend. Rape still a no-no.) and I found myself caught with the detective hopping from place to place investigating suspects.
So I took a leaf out of Christie’s greatest hits and set it all in a small village. Easy. Problem solved. Now I don’t have to take the tube, bus, airplane or helicopter for all that matter. My detective can interview suspects on the fly.
That’s two things I want to share here: Be creative but keep it manageable for yourself. And, second, when you write stay wary of the structural deadfalls.
I liked writing this. I don’t, really, know why. I guess I’m a sucker for handing out free advice through the anonymity of the Internet (that way it doesn’t feel forced). Maybe I’ll continue this in later chapters with other things I noticed.
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