Today, I'm starting something new. Looking at writing your story from the Idea forward. What happens once that idea forms a seed in your thoughts. The idea can be anything that triggers you to want to write a story. You could read something and decide to form your own take on what you've read. How many stories are the fairy tales we've grown up with. Take Cinderella, Snow White,and a lot of other stories you've read or had read to you.
The idea could be something you see. A couple embracing. A man and a woman quarreling. A child making mischief or being sad. What you see could be something like a milling mob, a merry-go-round, a speeding car.What you see can trigger the idea.
What you smell. Think of how you react to cookies baking or the aroma of spicy food. You could find the scent of a place can trigger an idea. For me this can happen when I enter a hospital. The scents bring memories of my past as a nurse.
The idea could spring from something you've touched. A soft fur coat, the rough fabric of jeans. A rock, a bench, a brick. Any of these things could bring an idea to the fore.
Taste can also trigger ideas. We've all tasted something we think of as ambrosia or something that makes you ill. So let the ideas form.
Sometimes something you hear can trigger a story. The wail of a train at night. The sound of footsteps on the street behind you at night. The cries, screams of someone or even their laughter can form a seed for a story.
But we all have these events in out life and ideas may form but once the idea is there, what comes next. In the next few weeks, I'll be looking at the elements needed to make the idea into a story. Who, What, When, Where,Why and How. Some people think only of the five Ws but for me, there's the How. After all, it does have a w in the word.
I'll be sharing what I've learned and am still learning in the fifty years I've been a published writer.
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