05 January 2021

Birthplace of a Story


Most anyone who's had their fiction published has likely been asked this question: Where do you get your ideas? It's a common enough question that it's spawned a standard joke answer: The Plot Store. My real answer most of the time is, I have no idea. Ideas just pop into my head. I expect that's true with many (perhaps most, maybe all) writers. But sometimes I can point to a story's inspiration.

That's the case with one of the stories I had published in December, "A Family Matter." While driving a few years ago, I passed a house with a clothesline. They certainly aren't uncommon, but for whatever reason it made me remember a story my mom once told about moving into the neighborhood where I grew up. This was in 1962, years before I was born. One day shortly after my parents and siblings moved in, my mom was in the backyard hanging up the laundry on a clothesline when one of the next-door neighbors hurried over to tell my mom that drying laundry on a clothesline just wasn't done there. My mom needed to get a dryer to fit in. I don't know if this story is true or not (my mom sometimes told tales), but seeing that clothesline evoked that memory, from which grew "A Family Matter," a story set in 1962 suburbia about what happens when new neighbors violate the unwritten social code. The story is published in the January/February 2021 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

That story isn't the first one to spring from me mining my memories. An elementary-school teacher who humiliated me in an attempt to get me to be a better public speaker was the impetus for my story "The Wrong Girl." (If you've read that story, you'll know never to tell me I speak too quickly--even if I do.) "Stepmonster" sprung from anger over my father's perhaps preventable death. "Whose Wine is it Anyway" was the result of my incredulous comment to a work colleague: "I have to plan my own goodbye party?!" An elementary school librarian calling me "an evil little girl" resulted in the story named, no surprise, "Evil Little Girl." And my first published story, "Murder at Sleuthfest," is about a mystery writer who has a ring stolen at a mystery conference, which is just what happened to me. I vowed to make something good come from that bad event, and I did.

The other main source of my story ideas (when I can figure out the source) is the news. It feels bad to say that I hear about someone else's misfortune and think: I can use that! But I'm sure I'm not the only author who does it. "Compulsive Bubba" grew out of a terrible accidental death in which someone waited in a car while it warmed up, not knowing the car's exhaust pipe was covered with snow and the carbon monoxide was backing up into the car. I got the idea for "Ulterior Motives" after reading about an Oregon county whose residents voted down a bond referendum to fund the police department, which resulted in them having police only part time. "Have Gun, Won't Travel" came about after reading about an Ansel Adams print worth a lot of money that sold at a garage sale for practically nothing because the seller didn't realize who created it. (The story was later debunked, but it gave me my idea nonetheless.) "Alex's Choice" was prompted by the horrific death of a family after one of them went into the ocean to save their dog, and when that person didn't come out, the next person went in to save him, and it went from there.

I have other published stories I could add to the sparked-by-the-news list, but since those events figure into story twists, I'm not going to mention them lest someone out there hasn't read those stories yet.

A side effect of admitting you used a real-life event as a story springboard is having people ask if everything in the story really happened. That's a big no. That's why it's called fiction. But just in case you're wondering:

I never tried to kill my fifth-grade teacher.

I never tried to get revenge on the person who found and kept the ring I lost at Sleuthfest (the fact that I don't know who it was is irrelevant, I assure you).

I never tried to kill the woman who was dating my father when he died.

I never tried to kill my boss (none of them, really).

Nothing in "A Family Matter" is based on real life except that clothesline incident (in case anyone has read the story and is wondering).

And I really was not an evil little girl, despite what that school librarian thought. But if you think otherwise, well, it might be best not to tell me. It's always better to be safe than sorry. After all, you wouldn't want to end up on the news, giving someone else a good story idea, would you?

****

If you want to read any of the stories I mentioned above, you can find them listed on my website, along with where they were published. Just click here. And in case you missed my last post, I had three stories published recently: "A Family Matter," discussed above, in the January/February AHMM; "That Poor Woman," a flash story in the January/February Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; and "Second Chance" in Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir.

Happy reading!

13 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your recent stories. And how nice it is to turn a bad experience into a good story!

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  2. Congratulations on your publications, Barb! I've been mining my family stories and other memories for years. Classic example: I had a great-aunt who used to entomb her dead dogs in roasting pans and put them in the basement, and I used that in "The Four Roasters", published in AHMM.

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  3. Thanks, Janice and Eve. And Eve, I've never read that roasters story. That sounds weird and intriguing and maybe a little bit gross. I'd love to read it if you have it in a Word file you could send to me.

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  4. Barb, congratulations! I do have a clothesline, but it's inside the house, in the laundry room. I have a dryer but it isn't hooked up & I don't know if it even works.

    One of my stories was inspired by an article in the old National Lampoon, pointing out that a person can get in trouble for making crank calls, but there's no law against crank answering!

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    1. No law against crank answering, I love that! And thank you, Elizabeth. :)

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  5. This is a great post to remind us of what we already have--ideas for the perfect story with that touch of truth that makes the whole thing seem real. Looking forward to your new story in AHMM.

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    1. Thanks, Susan. I'm so glad you found the post helpful, and I hope you enjoy the story.

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  6. Local Florida governments have Code Enforcement departments, nasty little bureaucrats who fine homeowners hundreds of dollars a day for choosing the wrong shade of paint or repairing your own car or hosting a religious studies group in your home or, yes, hanging out laundry. The BTK killer worked for Code Enforcement. I rest my case.

    Deaths of serial rescuers sometimes happen on-shore. A couple of weeks ago, a boy who tapped into a power line grabbed the wrong wire. His scream brought his mother who grabbed him. Her scream brought her daughter who grabbed her. All three were electrocuted.

    Barb, it's a shame your lousy librarian didn't know the difference between an evil girl and a baaaad girl. (head thrown back in wicked chortle) Your article makes us want to sit down and discuss stories with you. Congratulations on your most recently published.

    My big question: Did you hire anyone to kill your 5th grade teacher? Eve knows a guy who knows a guy…

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    1. HOAs can do the same thing, Leigh. After my parents retired to Florida, my mom decided at one point to replace her front door's screen door. Afterward, the HOA forced her to take it down because it was nicer than everyone else's. The 1960s the 1990s, no matter the decade, there are people who insist on conformity.

      Thanks for making me laugh with your chortle, and thanks for your congratulations. As to my fifth-grade teacher, I plead the fifth.

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  7. Great post about where ideas come from....I'll race you on speaking quickly!

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    1. Thanks! I once had a boss who complained I talked too fast, but I was doing it purposely with him. He had a limited attention span, and if I didn't pose all my issues to him before that happened, I wouldn't get all my questions addressed.

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  8. Barb, the history behind your stories is as entertaining as a good short story. Thank you for sharing one of the secret ingredients of your success.

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    1. You're welcome, Lisbeth. I hope the information is helpful to you.

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