2010. december 22., szerda

the act of creation

ask any writer about the question which most frequently asked from them, and they will invariably answer: "where do you get your stories from?"

really, where do stories come from? rushdie imagines a vast "ocean of stories" in which stories come from an endless stream and mix freely (haroun and the sea of stories), stephen king maintains that his talees just come out of nowhere, usually based on a character, and always end up totally different from what he intended (on writing), while vonnegut always traces back everything to some (usually) childhood memory or other.

poems are easy. poems nearly always come from an excess of an emotion. but stories... stories can arise from anywhere. if you've got a certain knack for it, you might think of an entire story just by seeing an interesting person (such has happened to me, though that story is yet to be written down), or perhaps your imagination stretches the boundaries of an experience, making the ordinary extraordinary (or, oftentimes in fantasy and postmodern writing, the extraordinary ordinary).

some authors swear by dreams, others by drugs. if you can manage to sort out all those jumbled, crazy pieces and make it into one semi-coherent narrative, well, that's something. some say you need serious research and stay close to the truth, others will bend things to suit their stories.

do you go by an idea, and create the story around it? do you just start jotting things down, hoping it will finish up somehow? is there a "right" way to writing?

where do your stories come from?

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