I’ve blogged about this before, but I started teaching a new three-week “Creative Writing” class at church last night, and that was the gist of my first topic. Or it would have been if more than two people who are writing fiction had shown up (the other two are thinking about writing their memoirs). So I focused on talking about imagination, creativity, and inspiration instead.

I love this quote from C.S. Lewis:

I know very little about how this story was born. That is, I don’t know where the pictures came from. And I don’t believe anyone knows exactly how he “makes things up.” Making up is a very mysterious thing. When you ‘have an idea,’ could you tell anyone exactly how you thought of it?

If you think about it, published authors make their living (or would if we actually could make a living at it) for losing ourselves in the world of make-believe. Because that’s the only way to capture a reader’s imagination—if we let ours out to play first.

Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out “allegories” to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images: a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. It was part of the bubbling.

~C. S. Lewis, “Creating Narnia”

As I mentioned Wednesday, I’m working on a new contemporary romance series proposal. I’ve already written the proposal part—which was the last part I did on the historical proposal that went to my agent on Monday. Why? Because I already know the basic story ideas for the three books I want to include in this series. Whereas I had to come up with three completely new story ideas and all new characters for the historical proposal, I already had these three ideas sitting in my Ideas folder on the computer—because I come up with a lot more ideas for contemporary stories than I do historical stories. Each of these ideas has been there for a while—the newest being about a year, maybe eighteen months, old and the oldest being about five years old. But as soon as I pulled them up and read them, they sparked my imagination. I started seeing images. A man who’s lost his purpose in life and let himself go—wild hair, scraggly beard, schlumpy clothes, a vacant look in his eyes. A woman on whom the stresses of almost twenty years as a PR person in the music industry has wreaked havoc—followed by losing her job because her boss embezzled money and bankrupted the label—but who’s trying to look like she still has it all together. A quaint town that has become a tourist spot mainly because of its name and the legend built up around it.

Some of you may have seen my tweet the other night:

I love that moment when I find the right real-world template for a new character!

The first of these story ideas in this new proposal came from my developing a crush on someone on TV. And even though I’ve cast someone else as the character—another TV crush (find out more tomorrow!)—there are so many little nuances about the person who originally inspired this character that I find myself watching his program with a notepad handy so that I can make little observations like this:

1-finger typer—types all the letters with the index finger of his right hand, uses the index finger of his left hand for the shift key. Rarely has to look at the keyboard.

Now, obviously, something like that does not make a plot. Or a subplot. Or even a goal, motivation, or conflict. But it’s fascinating to me, and an interesting character quirk. And it makes me fall in love with the character just a little more. It’s inspiring to me and makes me want to learn even more about the character and who he is and why he does things the way he does them.

This morning, I read this blurb on News Channel 5’s site (our local CBS affiliate):

A man was killed and a woman was critically injured after being struck by a car Wednesday night in South Nashville. The incident happened on Nolensville Road near Harding Place.

Witnesses told police the two people stepped right into the path of the car. Police do not expect to file charges against the driver.

And, after the initial tragedy of the incident passed, my writer’s brain went into overdrive. Who were these people? (Were they on their way to Walmart, or coming from Walmart?) Why would they seemingly step out in front of an oncoming vehicle on purpose—together? Why didn’t any of these witnesses try to stop them? Who was the driver—and what is that person thinking/feeling/dealing with this morning? How did the first first-responder on the scene deal with it—professionally and emotionally? What if there’s actually something more sinister at work here?

A suicide pact between two young lovers forbidden to be together. A driver who inadvertently killed someone and is so affected by it he/she decides to make a complete life change—affecting everyone in his/her life. A police officer who’s seen just one too many senseless accidents in his career. A paramedic who gets a sense of victory out of saving the life of the woman who survived. A possible hitman or assassin.

Five or six characters and story ideas from a single 50-word news blurb. And those are ideas I’ll never even use.

So now I put the question to you:

Where do stories come from?