If you attempt to create & build a wholly imaginary incident, adventure or situation, you will go astray, & the artificiality of the thing will be detectable. But if you found on a fact in your personal experience, it is an acorn, a root, & every created adornment that grows up out of it & spreads its foliage & blossoms to the sun will seem realities, not inventions. You will not be likely to go astray; your compass of fact is there to keep you on the right course. — Mark Twain (N&J3, 343)
The most asked question of any comic book writer is: "Will you read my story and then get it published for me, but don't let anybody see it or they'll take it, because it has ideas that are so new; ideas that are so original; ideas that will set this stodgy old industry on its ear; ideas that will make my fortune, that everyone will want it — Okay?"
The second most asked question is: "Where do you get your ideas?" Sometimes the question is phrased: "Where do you GET those ideas?" which isn't as complimentary, but will do in a pinch.
My usual answer is: "I get them in the mail. Kids like you send me brilliant, original ideas and I steal them, disguise them as my own, and use them to make my fortune... Bwaaa-haa-HA-haha!" After which the prospective scribe thrusts a manila envelope filled with handwritten scripts into my hand and runs off, already headed for the next pro down the line. Irony is wasted on the young.
However, since the second question is easier to answer than the first, I am going to try and explain the idea-process in fiction somewhat. I do so with the fear that my gentle readers will see my product as being compromised; much as the magician's tricks seem chintzy and cheap once you now how they are done. For all those who would rather not know, there is an excellent column going on right down the hall called the answer man, and it's brim-full of bright, shiny gorgeousnesses. You can just catch it, if you hurry; no hard feelings.
Fiction is lying; fiction is telling the truth. Fiction is lying about the truth in the most ruthless way possible; the more ruthlessly you lie, the more truth is revealed — if you are lying properly. Everyone confused and appalled? Good. Now for the hard part...
The beginning writer (which, by the way, includes all of us.) can do far worse than study the paragraph by Mark Twain above. Every writer has been told: "Write What You Know." This has led many a hopeful writer to assume that if you are going to write about, say, an expedition to the polar ice cap, or millionaires in Brazil, or heroin addicts hijacking a tramp steamer, you should be a polar explorer, or a millionaire or — God help us — a heroin addict. No, no, my little fictive crafters. Experience is good, but research is also good. The hacks who write the liner notes on book covers (And I have written my share) promote this belief, by inventing or expanding the experience of the author until it seems that all fiction is really autobiography; this is meant to be taken with a bit of salt. Most authors write most of the time; it's what we do. It is good to have outside experiences to draw on, and it's even better to think deeply about those experiences so you can say something unique about them ,The better notion, as Twain points out, is: "START with what you know." Most of us have been addicted to something, traveled somewhere, been hot, been cold, had money, lost it, got it again. Use that! Don't just take the same phrases and ideas other writers have used. Do the research and then strain it through the grid of your own experiences. To me, that is what Twain is saying.
In much the same way, drama is not journalism; fiction is not life. Fiction is life honed to a sharp point. Characters are not people. It is very often handy to start with real people for your characters; but characters have vastly simpler motives and life experiences than real people do. This is what makes them satisfying. So often I will be editing a friend's manuscript and suggest a change in this or that, only to be told, "Oh, but this character's a real person, and he didn't say that; he didn't do that." There is often a sense of obligation to the absent model. Drop that obligation; once you write him, he's yours! The kindest thing you can do for him is make him an interesting character.
Let's think about an example — go to the vast archives of this site and read: The Death of Molly the Cat — I'll wait here.
Bum bee bumm be... All set? Good. Although it seems that I am simply recording spoken dialogue in this essay, that is not exactly the case. Anyone who has been married any length of time, — and my wife and I got married sometime during the second ice age, as a way of staying warm, — will confirm that most of the talk married partners have are a part of one long conversation, which began when you both first met and will end either with death or gibbering insanity, depending on the couple. After several years, much of these conversations is implied, and must be supplemented, if a sympathetic outside audience is to comprehend what is really being said.
I also telescoped several cat-incidents into one narrative, since Molly stubbornly refused to perform them all during the course of one afternoon. They all happened, including the moment when Molly put a claw into the side of my nose and I learned just how much excess blood is stored in my face; it seemed a shame to waste any of them. That I might have condensed a tad severely was confirmed to me, when my beloved wife, Deen, first read that essay.
"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhgggghhhh!!" she remarked. "I never said any of that! I never did any of that! That never happened!" I reminded her about various incidents, at the same time expressing my theory about implied statements in the life-long marriage conversation; this was tricky since I had to do it while hiding behind a chair.
"Well," said Deen, finally. "I guess most of that was fair, and we have said and done a lot of those things at some point, if you believe your cockamamie implication idea. But..." And here her eyes flashed like summer lightning behind twilight clouds. "How is anyone going to know that this Character Wife you've created isn't really me?" I was ready for this.
"I'm going to call you Deen."
"Deen? But that's not my name."
"Right. So whenever people read something that I've written about Deen, they will know it's not really you, it's my Character Wife, and they'll make allowances. It's a well-known convention of the writer's art. Pat McManus, the famous outdoor writer, calls his wife 'Bun', even though that's not her name; Rumpole of the Bailey calls his 'She-who-Must-be-Obeyed'; Phyllis Diller refers to her husband as 'Fang'." This lightened the crease on my beloved Deen's brow.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be named 'Fang' or after some old H. Rider Haggard villainess," said Deen. "Let me think about 'Deen' for a couple of weeks. If I decide it's not too terrible, then you can go ahead and use it." Deen shot me a suspicious glance. "You haven't already started calling me 'Deen', have you?" "No, Dear," I said, and kissed Deen on the forehead. Which is the other reason authors occasionally have to lie.
