How Does Your Story Begin?—D.M.K. Ruby
At a recent DeadLies meeting (we meet every other Tuesday on Zoom, sometimes in person during the summer), we were talking about where our ideas come from and what is the impetus for our stories. During the discussion, I realized most of my stories are inspired by a setting. I blame all the Agatha Christies I inhaled as an impressionable pre-teen holed up in the library. I will be in a new place and immediately think about where a body would be stashed if this were one of her stories Like Evil Under the Sun or Passenger to Frankfurt. Several of my NaNoWriMo first drafts have been inspired by my travels to places like the west of Ireland, Paris and Hawaii. I see a golf course or a beach and immediately start wondering how a story could be set there and why someone would be murdered there.
For example, on a recent family vacation to a resort in Mexico, our rooms were in a part of the hotel where you walked down a corridor that overlooked some of the inner workings of the place. There was a huge metal cylinder and judging by the number of carts overflowing with clouds of white, likely part of the laundry complex for the resort. The first thought I had was that of a dramatic image of a bloody corpse in a sea of white fabric tumbling out and how that would make such a great start to a story. The whys and what ifs could be sorted out later, but the setting instantly created a story in my mind.
However, others in the group are inspired by people they encounter or by a plot point. The overheard snippet of a conversation or an unusual story on the news is enough to start a story idea. Others are inspired by their research into the past or by current events. Suddenly, they are down a YouTube rabbit hole and gathering information about Northern Alberta weather patterns or mining lore from the 1800’s.
One of us (ok, me), is inspired by names, like the story I have floating around in my mind inspired by a woman I worked with decades ago named Pansy. We have all met a Rose and most of us know a Daisy, but Pansy? That’s a name that makes me think of a prim woman in pearls, secretly meting out justice to those who do wrong in the name of love. The story would have to have a scene in it where she neatly avoids getting blood on her cream Chanel suit. In real life, Pansy was a perfectly ordinary person in a perfectly ordinary job in a perfectly ordinary North American city, and it’s hard to imagine a person less likely to murder someone. But something about her name captures my imagination.
Speaking of, sometimes I worry about my imagination, but then it’s Tuesday at 6:30pm, I log on for our writers group Zoom and am reassured I’m not alone in working through my demons this way. By writing stories where justice is served, for example at a music festival in a small coastal city where a 6’4” person wearing a t-shirt that proclaims, “I’M TALL, GET OVER IT,” unabashedly obstructs a 5’2” person’s view and is suitably punished, I feel a sense of resolution and peace settle over me.
Where do your stories start?