Starting A Character-Inspired Story 5 Steps

Ahh, that blank screen. Enticing, isn’t it? But it’s also threatening. What do you write when you can’t think of what to write?
You can pick an anecdote from your life and use it as a seed for planting a new story. We all have catalogs of rich experience, and we don’t have to be rich to have them. Even so, how do you go from anecdote to short story or even a novel? Here’s a practical approach to creativity:
1. Sift through recent or past events. Let’s say that one of your neighbors or colleagues stands out in some way.
2. Write down an incident that happened around this individual as if you were talking to a good friend. It doesn’t have to be fancy writing-just the facts, as you remember them. Describe an event or simply an interaction between this character and someone else. Feel free to change things around.
3. Assign a new name to the real-life person in the vignette. Let’s say her name is Anastasia, and you rename her Stacy.
4. Invent a physical description for this new character, different from his or her appearance in real life.
5. Now read what you’ve written so far. The magic of fiction is already at play, and you’ve only just begun! This new character is truly your own. Go on from there to build your story.
Here’s an example of an interesting person in a real-life situation that I might use for a story one of these days:
A few months after the 9/11 attacks, a new colleague joined our group. I’ll call her Shanti. On her desk was a photo of her two adorable toddlers. Her mother-in-law looked after them every day so she could work. “Lucky you,” I told her. “A live-in nanny.”
“Not always so lucky,” she answered.
Shanti noticed that I sometimes ate Indian takeout food at my desk. One day, she offered me her own brown bag at noon. Her mother-in-law got up early and packed her lunch every day, and Shanti was getting tired of it. I refused. She insisted.
The food was delectable-vegetarian curry, basmati rice, home-made roti. It was better than dishes at expensive Indian restaurants. Day after day I tried to refuse Shanti’s lunch gift. Day after day she demanded that I take it, explaining that she couldn’t hurt her mother-in-law’s feelings.
After a few weeks, I dared to dig deeper, and learned the reason for her generosity. On September 11, her in-laws were visiting from India. Shanti left for work and didn’t wake up her husband, who was supposed to attend an early meeting that day-on the 95th floor of World Trade Center #1. He had come home so late the night before, so tired. No meeting was worth his health, Shanti decided, and closed their bedroom door. He was sure to miss his train.
By the time Shanti got to her office in midtown Manhattan, her husband had rushed onto his commuter train and called her. Unaware of the catastrophe underway, he scolded her for not waking him up. Just then, he witnessed the second plane flying into the towers from his seat on the train. “Go home,” she told him.
Shanti’s in-laws, overcome with relief when they learned their son and daughter-in-law were safe, then and there made a decision: to move in with their only son, permanently!
Residential in-laws have their benefits, Shanti agreed. But the taste of her mother-in-law’s delicious cooking reminded her every day that her home was no longer 100% her own. She was only too happy to go out to lunch, leaving her American colleague to devour every last long grain of curry-drenched basmati rice.
When I get around to writing a story based on this real-life character, I’ll call it “Shanti’s Gift.” But any anecdote involving real-life interesting people is a gift for a fiction writer. Take a mental photo of this person, and then sketch him or her in your own way with your writer’s tools. The character will have a new incarnation in your story or novel, and your screen will fill up with savory, evocative words.
What happens when an ordinary person becomes extraordinary?
Tobias starts out in life much the same as any of us–not rich, not poor, with imperfect parents and unlimited ambition. When he’s twenty years old, his future is altered in irreparable ways after a tragic car accident pushes him down a new path. The once-promising anthropology major is forced to abandon his dreams in order to care for his orphaned, brain-damaged younger brother.
In his late thirties, Tobias works in a bookstore, trying desperately to make ends meet to support his family. His daily grind only reinforces the sadness that broken dreams and bad luck bring in their wake.
How many times have you heard someone say, “If only I won the lottery?”
When Tobias finds he has won the Mega Millions lottery, his unimaginable bad luck seems to have changed into unimaginable good luck… or has it?
Over peaks and valleys, this uplifting journey will challenge the limits of luck, life, and what we value most.
Find out more about the complications of Tobias’s friendship and rivalry with his best friend, Martin; the effects of all this bad luck and good luck on his marriage; and the struggles of his brother, Simeon, once a talented cartoonist, in… You Never Know.