More than once, while scrolling social media, I have seen people in writing groups ask how to come up with a story. I want to scream at these people and ask if they have ever left the house. Stories are everywhere, if you only take a moment to lift your eyes off your phone and look at the world around you.
Now, a killer story idea is fantastic, but I am of the belief that stories often come to life when they have characters we can all relate to in one way or another. I find the art of small talk to be painful, but by God, it is worth putting yourself through the internal agony of being sociable in order to extract information that will make its way into a story. In my 4 hours sat at a bar in Maui, I met the following people, not one of which is a figment of my imagination.
A father and son from Missouri. Dad is here on a work trip with his adult son tagging along. Dad spent tens of thousands of dollars to gain custody of his kids in a messy divorce that took longer than it should have given that mom dumped them off at her parents after getting custody right after the divorce. Dad is a powerlifter and son is ADHD and goes a wee bit nuts when drinking too much.
We also had a late 50’s California hippie girl on a bender because her boyfriend had spent the first 2 days of the vacation passed out asleep in the hotel. She seemed intent on running up his tab and having a good time while he zoned out. By early afternoon, she was out, but not before insisting on buying me a pint.
Things got interesting when a pair of 50-something couples came in, with the macho male dude insisting that the best 2 presidents since Eisenhower were Reagan and Trump, all while his wife begged for him to shut up. The bartender, who was incredibly cool, insisted on poking the bear in hopes of the dude totally burying himself. His efforts to do so could not be, in any way, described as a Herculean task. BTW, this is not me telling you guys my politics, as I have none. I am simply relating what I saw
Finally, I spoke to a young couple visiting Hawaii for the second time. The first was for their honeymoon, while this trip was a working trip for the young man. He works for the federal government doing what he described as boring work studying the effects of brush fires and floods. I found him endlessly fascinating and asked questions that eventually led to him saying that he could not, due to secrecy situations, tell me any more. My work there was done.
They will all, in one form or another, find their way into a story, where they will almost certainly be killed off within the first 4 pages. My advice to all you young writers is to get off the phone, shut up, and listen to what people are saying around you. Your potential cast of characters is endless.
A true writer never really takes a vacation right?
That was hilarious mate.
This is great advice. Real people are endlessly stranger and more specific than characters we invent from scratch. 😂 Also, the fact that all these perfectly ordinary bar strangers are probably destined to die by page four feels extremely on-brand. 💜