What If

I have some non-writer friends who always ask how I get my ideas. Mostly, my friends see me as a friendly, unassuming person and don't understand why I write such dark stories. I know most writers cringe when they get asked this question or just say the ideas come to them. For me, story ideas occur to me in two ways: dreams and "what if" scenarios. I have really vivid, sometimes scary and sometimes weird dreams. I've kept a dream journal and some dreams have morphed into stories. The second "what if" scenario comes out of boredom or just strikes me at any given time. I could be in the bowling alley and wonder: What if a head rolled up from the return ball shute? What if a body was set up at the end of the lane instead of pins? What if the world disappeared outside leaving behind those in the bowling alley? How would they react? What kind of characters would I have?

What if you were channelling actual people when you were writing? And somehow you controlled their lives with every click of the keyboard? That's the premise behind Stranger Than Fiction starring Will Farrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, and Queen Latifah. Harold keeps hearing a female voice describing his actions and thoughts, then dictating what is going to happen next with an ominous prediction of his "imminent" death. Hoffman tries to help Farrell by deciphering whether he's in a comedy or a tragedy because that will determine whether he will, in fact, die. It is a unique premise and one that is pulled off with no need for explaining why this had happened to Harold and having the other characters come to accept it without much convincing. In one scene, Karen (Thompson), who is notorious for killing all her heroes and heroines in the end, bemoans "how many real people have I killed?" One of my favorite scenes, as a writer, is Karen sitting with her frustrated assistant Penny (Latifah) near a bridge in the pouring rain. Penny asked why Karen is not inside writing, but Karen replies that is working on her story. She's visualizing her next scene wondering how to kill her hero and if the bridge would work. So she sits there and stares at the bridge, playing out scenarios in her mind and wondering what if ...

Go rent Stranger than Fiction. Maybe it'll start your mind wondering "what if."

So there you have it. Where my ideas come from. The only problem is that usually I come up with the scene first then work the characters in later. That's what happened with my latest superheroes story. My husband trashed the first few pages as being irrelevant and not sucking him in. So back to the drawing board to flush out my characters before I rewrite the scene. I need to get back to basics.