=Bill Adams=: Usually three words with a bit of a slideway to them,
thus, "There was once a ship"--or "The sun of morning shone upon the
water"--
I don't know how it grows, or whether it grows--it sort of occurs, as it
were.
=Samuel Hopkins Adams=: Genesis--usually from an incident, sometimes
from a single phrase which illuminates a character; never from a title.
In my entire experience I have found so-called "true stories" available
only once or twice, and then in greatly modified form. Life is dramatic,
but it isn't fictional until interpreted and arranged by the fictional
mind.
=Paul L. Anderson=: The genesis of a story with me may be any of the
things you mention, or something else, entirely different; a newspaper
item, a picture, a story some one else has told (I mean I get a
suggestion from another yarn, not that I take some one else's story and
tell it as my own). For example, the genesis of one prehistoric animal
story, was a picture in Henry Fairfield Osborn's book, _The Origin and
Evolution of Life_; of another, a group in the American Museum of
Natural History; of one story, the fact that a man will do more and
suffer more for his loved ones than for himself. The genesis of the best
story, by far, that I ever wrote, which has been consistently rejected
by magazine after magazine because it is too gruesome, was this: lying
in bed one morning, on the borderland of waking, I dreamed I heard some
one say these words: "Far above us in the darkness I heard a trap-door
shut with a clang." The memory of those words carried over into waking,
and the story grew from that. The genesis of another yarn was a trip I
once made in my flivver, which involved crossing a railroad track laid
along a side-hill. Etc., etc. "All's fish that comes to the net."
=William Ashley Anderson=: No definite principle can be laid down as to
the inspiration of a story. It may be based on an actual occurrence; a
striking tradition; a strange custom. Or an argument may suggest a point
to be proved by a story. An extraordinary character, an unusual scene,
an atmosphere even (fog, storm, scorching heat). I think one of the
basic principles is the desire to tell something unusual about things
that are commonplace, or to tell something commonplace about things that
are extraordinary.
=H. C. Bailey=: Nearly always in my mind a story begins with a character
or characters. This holds good though the main interest of the story may
be incident or the surprise of its plot. Making the story is with me the
process of providing these people with things to do and say which will
express them. I never began with a title (they are my plague), or a
setting. Once or twice with a situation. Occasionally with a sentence
which came into my mind from heaven knows where.
=Edwin Balmer=: The genesis of a story is decided, I think, by the
writer's age and experience. As a story is usually the writer's reaction
to that which at the time is of most interest to him, it used to be that
a story started with me with a situation. I started writing when I was
eighteen when I was in college, and I then caught at a situation which
established suspense. That struck me as the best start for a story.
Gradually, situation became less the whole thing and a definite increase
in concern for the characters came. I never started with a title, but
sometimes with a setting, or rather, a setting creating a
situation--such as the Alps suggesting a mountain-climbing story. Now
though I never really start with a character, the situation does not
mean much to me until it has a character in it.
=Ralph Henry Barbour=: An idea for a story is anything upon which a
story may be built, and story ideas come from as many sources as do
ideas of any other sort. The inspiration that provides the idea may be
generated by an incident, a person, a situation, a locality, even, I
think, by a condition of mind, or by two or more of these in
combination. To me a title does not very often suggest an idea for a
story; it merely suggests the idea to write a story; there's a
difference! In my case the genesis of a story is more frequently a
situation. After that a character, an incident, a locality, in the order
given.
=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: A story may grow from any of the sources you
suggest--even from that mysterious "or what?" Something serves as a
spark to fire the dry kindling of your imagination. The two essentials
are that the spark shall be hot enough and that you shall have kindling.
=Nalbro Bartley=: It, the genesis of a story, could spring from any of
the suggested things--an idea for a story to my mind suggests a theme
such as capital versus labor, love versus money, etc.
=Konrad Bercovici=: I will be hanged if I know what the genesis of a
story is. I only know I do not sleep well a few nights before I write
one. And after a headache or two a story comes. As a boy, it broke my
heart never to be able to see the actual breaking through of a plant. I
always found it broken through in the morning,--if you get what I mean.
And then pictures begin to rise before me. Pictures of things I have
seen and others that I wanted to see. And then the men and women in my
stories walk through those pictures and stay where they like and see
what they want and I stand by and watch them and agree most of the time
with each one of them and sometimes say what I would say under similar
circumstances. But, like "Mr. Saber" of _If Winter Comes_, I can see his
point of view. When the whole thing has come to an end in my mind, I sit
down and write.
=Ferdinand Berthoud=: I usually pick on an incident from some actual
happening to myself or to one of my old-time friends. Then tack on other
incidents of which I have heard. Once or twice a story has come from a
peculiar expression or the manner or speaking of some man I have known.
Or some man's way of looking at life.
=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: Ideas. Some situation or idea possessing possible
dramatic value will come to me; I will lie awake the best part of a
night or two nights thinking it over, and put it on paper the next day.
Sometimes the whole story seems to unfold itself instantaneously before
me; again I will work it out detail after detail mentally. Some ideas
for stories have come from remarks of friends, from some anecdote, or an
experience that was personal and of which the dramatic value was
unrecognized at the time.
=Farnham Bishop=: The wedding of a newly-discovered fact to something
already in mind, followed by the swift begetting, birth and growth of a
story. Example: "Carranza to Blockade Mazatlan. Mexican Navy to be sent
through Panama Canal, against Stronghold of Revolution" (newspaper
head-line, sometime in summer of 1920). That, plus British naval
officer's book (which I had recently read) containing description of the
_Scooter_ or C. M. B., developed within ten minutes into fairly complete
mental outline of _The Rest Cure_.
=Algernon Blackwood=: The genesis of a story with me is invariably--an
emotion, caused in my particular case by something in nature rather than
in human nature: a scrap of color in the sky, a flower, a sound of wind
or water; briefly, an emotion produced by beauty.
=Max Bonter=: Anything that stirs my emotions is likely to furnish the
idea for a story. It may be an incident, a character, a trait of
character, a situation, a setting, a title. It may be any one of them, a
combination of several of them, or all of them. An idea embodying all of
them, of course, would really be more than an idea; it would be
practically the story itself--either a true story in which I had
figured, or one that I had heard related--and would require at my hands
little else besides an amalgamation of the attributes specified.
Pure fiction, in my case, seems to have its inception in a contrast, or
in a sudden break of continuity--something irregular or freakish that
draws a quick focus of the mental faculties and demands of them why,
how? My mind immediately struggles to paint the significance of the
contrast, or to splice the broken threads of circumstance into a tissue
of normality. In other words, it is my mind's tendency to give balance
to unbalanced or opposing conditions or things.
For example: In a quiet little community of soft-spoken, well-civilized
males I find an old barbarian--the boss stevedore of a freight dock--who
chews, swears, drinks, and lives with a common-law wife. Their little
household is practically in a state of ostracism. My emotions are
aroused; my sympathies enlisted in an endeavor to place in a better
light this old pariah whose chief fault seems to be the carelessness
wherewith he persists in being human. I bring the opposing standards
together and after the clash the stevedore's chief detractor--a
prominent church-goer--is found to be a sly old rake; whereas the
dockman's tough hide covers a heart that had kept him true even to an
unsanctified union.
That is what I would call an "idea" for a story. Around it I would build
plot, detail, incident, characterization, etc.
=Katharine Holland Brown=: Once in a long while a story begins as a
situation: as a tangle, a conflict, to be unwound, fought out. But
almost always the story arrives as a whole--without any planning
whatever, the story is suddenly _there_, a big blurry mass of pictures
and incidents and action, that must be splattered down in black and
white as fast as you can possibly write. It goes racing by like a
runaway movie film and the best you can do is to snatch at the most
significant moments, before they escape. Therefore the idea for a story
is not an idea; it is the story itself. (With a serial, which must have
a succession of ascending climaxes, a rough outline is made and
followed, _after_ the big scenes and the principal action are jotted
down.)
=F. R. Buckley=: The genesis of a story with me is likely to be
anything. Occasionally a character; more often a title; more often
still, a good basic situation, up to and from which the story can lead;
most frequently, an ending. Story I liked best, _Archangel in Steel_,
deduced from setting and period: Florence, XVI century; connoted an age
of plotting and intrigue; since plots were villainous, hero must be
anti-plotter. History supplied the conspiracies; the story consisted of
the hero's counter-actions.
=Prosper Buranelli=: My first idea is always an incident or a situation,
sometimes several to be combined. Or a generic situation in some phase
of life--such as an opera singer's being at the mercy of the orchestra
conductor.
=Thompson Burtis=: I have had stories come to me as a result of all the
things mentioned in your question, except a title. And I'm about to try
to construct a story around a title. The most usual starting-points for
stories with me are either incidents or characters. In a large
percentage of cases I start with an incident and then work my main
character into it with regard to his particular traits.
=George M. A. Cain=: A story almost always takes its genesis with me
from a situation, sometimes suggested by an incident, character, trait,
setting, title, anything. Unless any other feature can shape itself
readily into a situation for me, there is no story. But the situation
may not mean the beginning of the story as told. I may write the whole
story to get that situation.
=Robert V. Carr=: The question involves, at least to my understanding,
chemistry, heredity, environment, psychological wounds, tricks of
memory, and a thousand and one mysteries. No doubt there will be writers
who will cleverly announce that they know exactly where they secure
their ideas, but it is beyond me. The writers of motion-picture
scenarios should be able to tell you in a few words where they get their
ideas. For my part I do not know the true genesis of any idea.
=George L. Catton=: A story with me may grow from, to begin with, the
merest trifle. Sometimes I start with a character only; other times
perhaps it is a title, or a peculiar characteristic of a character, a
situation or a setting. But the big start for me, the start I always try
to get, is a theme. It's a poor story I'll write if I can't put down the
title before I write a word. I never wrote a story yet that didn't have
a theme, and I never will. A story without a theme is a story without a
soul, and is just about as much use as a man in the same predicament. An
idea for a story with me, then, is a theme.
=Robert W. Chambers=: From an incident.
=Roy P. Churchill=: Most of my story ideas come from what I call a
"condition" for want of better expression. That is, affairs of life in a
certain setting, with certain characters, assume a "condition" which
makes for the unusual.
=Carl Clausen=: An idea for a story always means to me an incident.
=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: A story always starts with me at the finish--I
write the rest of my story to a climax. In other words, I get the big
punch of a story, and build up the rest of the structure to fit it. In a
mystery story, I always get the explanation of a thing, then fit my
incidents to this.
=Arthur Crabb=: It seems to me that a story may grow from an incident or
a character, or even a trait of character or situation, which it seems
to me are other ways of saying the first two.
=Mary Stewart Cutting=: The genesis of a story with me usually grows
from some small incident or the reverse of the incident. But in an
autobiographical story the character is the main theme.
=Elmer Davis=: The genesis of a story, with me, is a
situation--invariably the same. I see financial obligations falling due.
My salary is fixed; my credit distended to the bursting point. No way to
meet the bills but by writing fiction.... Whereupon I grab anything that
looks as if it might start a story; usually a character in a situation.
=William Harper Dean=: The genesis of a story with me sometimes is a
single word, the title, which strikes the motif of the story; sometimes
a character, sometimes a situation, or a setting. But most frequently
the beginning is the climax, from which I work backward through the
middle and to the beginning.
=Harris Dickson=: Any of these, or a combination. More usually, perhaps,
it is a story, or an incident that I hear or see. For instance, _The
Trapping of Judge Pinkham_, in _The Saturday Evening Post_, is
approximately true, and happened not long ago at the very place
described. Real incidents, however, generally begin "up in the air" and
end the same way. Better beginnings and climaxes must be worked out.
It is quite rare with me that I deliberately devise a story out of the
whole cloth.
I live in the South. It is a country that has attracted the attention of
much enthusiastic ignorance on the part of philanthropists, and many
attacks. Sometimes I do a story for the purpose of showing some
particular phase of life that is not understood at the North, and try to
make it so convincing as to silence these long-distance reformers who
haven't an idea as to how we live, and why. For this purpose I believe
temperately-stated truth, rubbed in with humor, is the most effective
vehicle.
=Captain Dingle=: In general my story comes from a vision of a character
and a situation. Sometimes only the situation. Then I make a character
to fit it--usually out of material I know.
=Louis Dodge=: With me, the genesis of a story is usually a character,
perhaps coupled with a characteristic action. I like to imagine what the
logical destiny of that character would be. And so I try to work it out.
=Phyllis Duganne=: Ideas for short stories usually come to me through
something I actually see or hear about; sometimes a person is
interesting or romantic enough so that I begin to make up things that
might happen to him--and discover I have a plot on my hands. Or
sometimes a situation is a good beginning or ending for a story, and I
try to evolve the rest. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't--I suppose
every one has loads of fascinating situations that he can not quite whip
about into story form. Sometimes it is just a romantic spot--a house
that should have a story about it. And once in a great while I just
discover myself with a perfectly formed story on my hands, not there one
minute and utterly there the next. That's real magic--and doesn't happen
so often as I wish it did.
=J. Allan Dunn=: It varies. I am, of course, deliberately setting aside
such stories as are suggested by the needs of editors, expressed by
themselves. But I think the genesis of many stories is hard to trace.
They are evolved in the brain cortex by that comprehensive and all too
liberal phrase "subconsciousness." I mean by that process that every
writer is perforce somewhat of a dramatist, somewhat of an artist, and
that his mind, inclined and, later, trained to observe, does this
continually until an idea is born. Not necessarily, not probably is this
idea complete. Occasionally a short story that works out delightfully is
thus conceived and will project itself into the conscious mind upon the
proper stimulus--perhaps after a walk or during it, perhaps while
hearing music.
Sometimes I read a story that a man has written down as news, the
skeleton of a yarn that needs flesh about it, a heart and soul added.
Very often I endeavor to work out some particular trait or character,
with its weakness and strength. Sometimes a character I know suggests
the story. But I believe the genesis is born very much as is the theme
of a musician, the desire of an artist to portray a certain mood or key,
the inspiration of a poet.
I believe that the story-teller's profession is one of the most ancient.
I believe it may well have antedated the artist--as animated in the
cave-carver or the painter of skins. That it may have prefaced the
musician in the drum-beater or the blower of a conch. I think there was
always a tale-teller about the fires of the wildest, earliest tribes,
one who stimulated their imaginations, touched their pride, bolstered
their bravery. There are such to-day in almost every wild tribe that I
have met. And, as the modern musician, the modern artist, have evoluted
from their primitive forebears, so I think that the spark, the flicker
of story-telling, has come down in the cell together with the ear for
music, the eye for color and proportion. Add to that your technique--use
of action, color, suspense, opposing forces, laughter, tears, tragedy
and the results of experience and observation--and your story appears.
I do not mean to say we are all genuises but that the story-teller, as
the poet, is made, that the impulse is engendered with his ego.
=Walter A. Dyer=: Formerly I used to try to manufacture a plot as the
starting point for a story, but always found it very difficult, my mind
usually being ready to stop with a situation. Sometimes such a situation
would make a story, sometimes it wouldn't. I have found it comparatively
easy to get color into the settings and to do the thing up in some sort
of style, but my mind isn't inventive in the field of complete and more
or less intricate plots. Of late I have had better success in beginning
with character. And I have heard that others have reached the same
conclusion. First visualize a real person or persons, with distinctive
and out-of-the-ordinary characteristics (consistent and plausible, of
course), and get them to function like human beings. Then throw them
into the situations and settings that come easiest and see what will
happen. Sometimes a real story grows out of it, and when it does it is
likely to be a better story than one in which lay figures are fitted
into a ready-made plot. This, however, does not apply to the
requirements of all editors.
=Walter Prichard Eaton=: A story comes in a dozen different ways.
Sometimes a title waits two years or more for a plot to plot it.
Sometimes a character comes and grows. Sometimes a situation. I find I
am most successful when it is a _character_, however, which comes first,
and dictates the rest. The hardest unit is to start with a general
thesis (problem) and then get a plot and people to seem natural.
=Charles Victor Fischer=: I am writing a story that has to do with
Little Rock, Arkansas. Sitting at the eats this evening (two hours ago),
I had Little Rock buzzing round in my up-stairs. My sister spoke of an
old black mule she'd seen during the afternoon; how sorry she was for
the poor animal--skin and bone were the only things he didn't have
anything "else but." On top of that my father pipes up about a diamond
ring theft.
See the point? I'm thinking about Little Rock. (I was there about two
years ago, shortly after I came out of the Navy.) And whenever I think
of Little Rock I think of coons. The mule--the diamond ring. And all of
a sudden I had a story.
=E. O. Foster=: The genesis of a story with me generally grows from an
incident which I have observed, around which I weave a plot taking the
characters from people whom I have known.
=Arthur O. Friel=: It differs. It may be any one of these things.
Sometimes hits me suddenly, like an electric spark forming contact, and
the wheels begin to buzz. If I keep them buzzing, I have a story.
=J. U. Giesy=: Genesis with me is generally either from an incident
heard or read, or from a title which suggests a parallel or divergent
train of thought.
=George Gilbert=: All depends upon the story; some grow out of single
incidents or characters; some out of several.
=Kenneth Gilbert=: My stories seem to spring from three sources: (1) A
strange and interesting fact or incident that apparently has never been
touched upon. One story had its genesis in a piece of newspaper
miscellany, which stated that Marconi was experimenting with wireless
apparatus that would keep out eavesdroppers. That was new, so far as
fiction was concerned. Using it as the basis of a plot, I wove around it
color from my own store of wireless knowledge, decided on the title, and
proceeded to transcribe it. (2) An interesting character. One of my
animal stories illustrates this point. It was about a raccoon, which I
selected because he is a highly interesting animal; very intelligent,
and with traits that approach the human at times. Moreover, he had not
been "written out," as would seem to be the case of the dog. I had
written stories about nearly all of the menagerie except _procyon
lotors_; therefore, why not a 'coon story? The setting I supplied from
life; the incident from study and experience, and the "atmosphere"--a
vital component of an animal story--took care of itself. (3) A title. A
snappy title always suggests a story, and while I have utilized this
method several times, I prefer a plot germ in other form.
=Holworthy Hall=: To date I have written perhaps two hundred short
stories. The basic ideas arrived approximately as follows: From titles,
not over ten--notably _The Six Best Cellars_, _Henry of Navarre, Ohio_,
_You Get What You Want_, etc. From a situation, at least one hundred and
fifty. From characters or traits of character, the balance. Incidentally
I have never yet written a story in which the basic idea was not
fundamentally serious and a part of my personal philosophy; nor would I
have any interest in writing a story in which the basic idea did not
seem to see or partake of a certain universality of thought or conduct.
=R. M. Hallet=: As to (I) I think the characters and the action
reciprocally contribute to the growth of the story. Hardly anything but
action will really illustrate character, it seems to me. The further you
develop the characters, the better glimpses you get of the plot; and if
you have an idea for a plot, that will usually thicken character for
you. As to which comes first, it's probably the old problem of the hen
and the egg. Either might, logically.
=William H. Hamby=: There is no rule with me. Sometimes I start a story
with a character, and, all things considered, that makes the best story.
Sometimes the plot comes first; again a situation or an incident will
start the mind to weaving a story. The series of stories, _The
Adventures of a Misfit_, which one of my friends assures me were the
worst stories I ever wrote, was suggested merely by a name. _Red Foam_,
which other of my friends claim is the best story I have written so far,
was written from a motif--I had a strong feeling that I wanted to
visualize that frothy shallowness of judgment which is so easily mislead
by a little palaver.
=Joseph Mills Hanson=: The genesis with me is usually an incident,
situation or setting. I always have in mind a lot of provocative events
in the history of the Northwest or elsewhere, and hang my stories on to
them. I try to make my characters appropriate to the time, the place,
the atmosphere, the special problem that has to be solved.
=E. E. Harriman=: I usually think of an incident, a situation, and roll
it over like a snowball until it accumulates enough to make it a story.
=Nevil G. Henshaw=: I've no fixed rule, although, in a long piece of
work, I try to present a certain section with its corresponding
inhabitants and industries. With short stories I either work from a
single plot idea, or propound a certain phase of human character and set
out to prove it by means of the story--(as in _Madame Justice_ I
endeavored to give certain conditions under which a mother would kill
her well-beloved son).
=Joseph Hergesheimer=: It grows from the emotion caused by a place or an
individual.
=Robert Hichens=: Usually some big situation arising from the clash of
two characters.
=R. de S. Horn=: The genesis of a story with me is generally an
incident, a situation, or a character or trait of character, with the
incident predominant. I have some settings tucked away in my note-book,
but I expect they will be used only when I've got a situation, character
or incident idea to go with them. The title is the last thing I write
usually, and it generally comes hardest. However sometimes I stumble on
it in the middle of the story. Every idea that suggests a story
possibility I immediately enter in my note-book.
=Clyde B. Hough=: My story ideas generally grow out of a phrase or a
sentence and this phrase or sentence most often takes its place in the
story, either as the core, the hinging base or the climax. This sort of
plot germ is generated in various ways. Sometimes by a scene, sometimes
by a spoken word and sometimes by a man's action.
=Emerson Hough=: Some big motive or period. Not a Peeping Tom incident.
=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: Character entirely.
=Inez Haynes Irwin=: It is very difficult for me to tell you what I mean
by the idea for a story. There is so much to say that I would like to
answer this question in a book. That idea may come from anywhere or grow
from anything. It may be as you suggest "an incident, a character, a
trait of character, a situation, a setting, a title." It may come
through a conversation, by analogy, out of the very air itself. In my
experience a single scene has suddenly amplified to a whole story, a
whole novel has suddenly diminished to a story. Parts of stories, quite
disconnected, have suddenly sprung together and made one complete story.
I have had the experience of having two or three stories develop in
successive instants from a single germ; sometimes I have waited years
before writing because I could not decide which one of them was the
best. Mere ideas that I have carried in my mind for years have suddenly
developed into stories. Mere phrases and titles have spawned stories.
Interiors, empty houses, geographical situations have exploded stories.
Stories, full grown, have sprung without any warning into my
consciousness; and apparently with no spiritual or psychological _raison
d'etre_. I have even had stories, all complete, hurtle out at me from
life itself. Reading the stories of other authors sometimes brings
stories into my mind; their first paragraphs are occasionally
exceedingly stimulating. Certain ideas have always been highly
stimulating to me--uninhabited islands, ghosts, fourth dimension,
murder, they have engendered numberless stories. In brief stories come
in every way and through every medium. Everything on earth, under the
earth and above the earth is fish to the creative artist's net.
I would like to illustrate every one of the above statements but it
would make the answer to your first question interminable.
=Will Irwin=: The genesis of a story is with me usually a situation. To
give an example from a piece of fiction which I have recently finished,
a friend with much experience of the underworld mentioned in
conversation a case where a convict just released struck his girl who
was waiting for him at the door of the prison. Speculation on what
circumstances might lead to such an act gave me my story. Sometimes,
however, the story grows from contemplation of an interesting character
and speculation as to what he would do if placed in unusual or dramatic
circumstances.
=Charles Tenney Jackson=: The genesis of a story with me is more likely
to spring from a single incident, a situation--perhaps even a
phrase--one might say, a mental gleam that seems unique--and then
appears to gather to itself the characters which lead on to a plot that
slowly evolves. But always the urge of it is the first suggestion.
=Frederick J. Jackson=: With me stories grow from incidents, characters,
situations, settings _and_ titles.
Give me a good title: I don't ask more. For example, six years ago, in
New York, one popped into my mind from a clear sky. Down she went in my
note-book. Last spring I felt the urge to work. Not an idea in the
world. Out came the old note-book. I thought about it for a day, then
batted out the story that the title suggested. The title and nothing
more to start things moving.
For one story--the skipper who could always cross Humboldt Bar when
other master mariners were helplessly bar-bound.
Give me a good parody or take-off on a well-known phrase or quotation
and I seem to ask nothing more.
The first story of one series evolved from the character I conceived.
The genesis of one story was a vivid picture that occurred to me of an
outlaw coming over a hill to the cemetery outside a western town and
finding four fresh graves. Three of them were occupied, the fourth
empty, significantly so, since the other three were filled by the
outlaw's pals on their last raid. A pleasing picture, and I made it more
so by placing three sticks of wood at the heads of the filled graves,
pieces split from a wooden box. The sticks were upright in the fresh
earth. The top of each stick had a slit in it, and into each slit was
placed an epitaph. The three epitaphs were the knaves of hearts,
diamonds and clubs. In town the outlaw learns that the sheriff is
carrying the knave of spades and an earnest intention to place it at the
head of the fourth grave. This much just came to me. The rest of the
story is a matter of mechanics.
Setting? The origin of the idea for one tale was a matter of setting,
the kelp-beds along the coast south of Cape Mendocino. Small
vessels--fishing-boats--sometimes put into the kelp for shelter from
high seas and gales. The heavy kelp has much the effect of oil on
breaking seas. With this in mind, the story was a matter of mechanics. A
steamer leaving Eureka for San Francisco, a run of twenty hours, and
then disappearing for eleven days, given up for lost. She had lost her
propeller, her deckload, her boats and all loose deck-gear. All this
came ashore _north_ of Cape Mendocino--sure sign she had gone down, with
a southwest gale raging. But her skipper had managed to get her into the
kelp--he knew the kelp--and there piled all his cargo forward until the
propeller shaft was above water. He shipped a new propeller right there
in the open sea. The vessel lay against a background of cliff, the
country back of it is deserted, isolated; steamers passing there were at
least fifteen miles out to sea to get around Blunt's Reef; there was no
wireless aboard. Therefore she remained undiscovered, given up for lost,
until one morning, battered, smashed, burning her lumber cargo for fuel,
she limped into San Francisco Bay.
Fine! An editor wanted a series about the character--the nervy,
never-at-a-loss young skipper. The skipper was pure accident. I had
given no thought at all to characterization. The story, the situations,
his grasping a slim chance for life when his older officers could see no
chance at all, were what I thought made the story. But upon close
analysis it was he who made the story.
In the story I had unconsciously used the same combination of characters
as in another series--the young sea captain, the ship owner and his
daughter.
More stories wanted. Not an idea in the world. But a lot of promised
money will make ideas come. I squared off at the Underwood and started
in with the ship owner.
Conjured up a pleasing picture of him seated in his private office with
wrath oozing from every one of his pores. What will make a ship owner
mad? Loss of money was the answer. How could he lose money? By one of
his steamers being bar-bound. So the largest steamer of the fleet is
bar-bound in Gray's Harbor--has been for three weeks. Empty, she went
over the bar all right. With a couple of million feet of lumber aboard
she couldn't get out. "Martin" to the rescue. He gets her over the
bar--all this is deliberately manufactured with not a single idea one
paragraph ahead of my fingers on the keys. Then, with the steamer at
sea, ideas come galloping. It is very seldom that I start a yarn with
not even a title to work on, not an idea in the world as to what is
going to happen. But I finished up with a real story which brought a
bigger check than any I had received up to that time for any story.
The third of the series came easier. In _The Saturday Evening Post_ I
read a story by Byron Morgan called _The Elephant Parade_, a tale of
motor-trucks. Into my mind popped the idea of using caterpillar tractors
in a sea story. By this time I had "Martin" firmly in hand,
well-trained. The fourth story went over nicely. But in the fifth one I
made the mistake of bringing some war stuff in. Editor said nix. I got
disgusted with "Martin" right there and left him flat.
Now in your question you have omitted the word "theme," which might be
included. For instance one was the growth of something that can not be
called a definite idea. It was hazy, vague, when I started it. All I had
in mind was the traits of blondes (feminine) as I have known them,
especially movie blondes. My working title on the story was _The
Cussedness of Blondes_. I changed that to _Press Agents' Paradise_, and
wound up with _A Million Dollars' Worth_. The working title changed as I
got into the thing and began to see sunshine ahead. The only thing I had
in mind with which to end the story was a beautiful double-cross on the
part of the blonde girl. I ended it that way. I had many a laugh at the
situations I had conjured up and slapped into the story. Laughing at my
own stuff. Read it and weep.
=Mary Johnston=: Sometimes one, sometimes another. But usually a
character or a situation, or an idea that seems to have ethical or
evolutionary value. To see the idea for a story means to see the story.
=John Joseph=: The genesis of a story? The _idea_ for a "red-blooded"
story comes from my own experience. That is, things I have actually
seen. Such stories are, as a matter of fact, fictionized facts. Some
stories are based on a peculiarity of human nature. That is, they arise
from a study of human nature.
=Lloyd Kohler=: Of course, the idea for a story may spring from almost
anything. With me, however, the idea for the story usually springs from
an incident in actual life. Quite often, too, the story grows from a
very brief newspaper article. Incidents from my own life and the sharp
brief stories of the daily press have furnished all the ideas for my
stuff.
=Harold Lamb=: The genesis of a story is most often some happening that
comes into the fancy, followed by the impulse to draw character in
connection with that happening.
=Sinclair Lewis=: Varies. Usually from a character.
=Hapsburg Liebe=: My best stories grow from a character; then a
situation to fit in with the character. I have had most of my failures,
I think, from inventing a situation and sticking doll-like characters in
it.
=Romaine H. Lowdermilk=: With me, the good stories originate around a
character. As the characters are supposed to seem real and be
interesting to the reader I feel that they, as the actors, are more
vital than their doings. When I have my characters in mind I choose one
upon whom to center interest and one for humor unless I can combine the
two. Around this character (or characters) I work out action that I
think true to their natures and the setting to which they are native. It
takes considerable thought to think up a series of incidents leading to
some definite end or some theme, but then that's the writer's business.
He's got it to do! Given a character you can make yourself acquainted
with, you can write a story around him, and the more commonplace the
character the more likely you are to hit on a story that reads true to
life among a majority of readers. Sometimes I write from situation,
setting or incident, but usually go back to the beginning and find the
character who, when properly used, seems to work out most of the story
himself. The title is my stumbling-block. I never find a title until
after the story is done, and then only after great effort and generally
at the suggestion of some of my family who act as "critics" on the
completed work.
=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: The genesis of a story, with me, may be any bit
of mental detritus lodged in the flow of thought long enough to collect
about it enough flotsam to round into a missile to throw at an editor.
The "bit" may be any of those you have listed, but I like best an idea,
or a theme. Given an idea, I like to try to translate it into life--_i.
e._, fiction. Ideas, though, are scarce. But whatever the story germ is,
it has to bite hard, else the story is not likely to be much.
=Rose Macaulay=: I usually start from some idea I have in my head about
the world or life or people and illustrate it with the particular plot
and character that seem to suit it.
=Crittenden Marriott=: The climax; I always start with it--and write up
to it. I begin anywhere, and half the time I have to begin again and
perhaps again till I find a beginning that lets the story run smoothly.
I keep the false beginnings and work some of them into the story.
=Homer I. McEldowney=: The idea of a story with me has been of varied
origin--a name, a situation, a character, or a plot. I have only written
four yarns thus far, and I have used four different methods. Perhaps the
next will be still different. And I wonder, when the various methods
have been exhausted, if I'll be, too--at the end of my rope!
=Ray McGillivray=: Two people at cross-purposes, two or more opposed
forces, or a person and a conflicting force, usually give a yarn of mine
initial impulse--at least of consideration. I sketch a plan or synopsis,
then dictate it straight through from beginning to end. My steno hands
me a result which--because of her garbling, my smoke-clouded diction and
incomplete ideas--resembles a finished story somewhat less than a plate
of steak and Idaho baked potatoes with pan gravy resembles a fat man. I
chew away at the script, and return to the girl a mess of pages upon
which there is more pencilling than ink. Being human and slightly
myopic, she does not turn out a final draft--yet. The third typing
finishes a script, though--unless it be part of a novel, or an editor
asks rewriting done. Given the right sort of quarrel, dilemma or
unconscious conflict between interesting persons or forces, however, I
believe that setting, incidents of development, and atmosphere traipse
right into the yarn without being paged.
=Helen Topping Miller=: My stories usually begin with titles. Often I
carry a title in my mind for years before I am able to find the story to
go with it. Occasionally I begin a story with only a character, but I
must have my title before I can write. Having got my characters I devise
the "conflict" which is to develop those characters, and then build the
plot around that.
=Thomas Samson Miller=: There are stories which have their genesis in an
author's rage at an inhumanity or injustice. We writers all start out
being missionaries, I think, and only slack up when we discover that
readers delighted in the jam--the story--and missed the pill. I have to
be moved by a strong desire to expose some wrong to get across a really
strong story. But my commercial success (if I may claim success) falls
along adventure stories for young men and boys. In such stories incident
is of the first importance. The incident has to dovetail into a plot,
all the action flowing to a logical climax. The second importance is a
hero--a manufactured hero, whose best traits only are shown, for
character is complex--the admirable traits always associated with less
admirable.
=Anne Shannon Monroe=: I believe a story almost always grows with me
from a character; a certain kind of a person who always gets into
trouble--or out--because he does certain sorts of things.
=L. M. Montgomery=: The genesis of my stories is very varied. Sometimes
the character suggests the story. For instance, in my first book, _Anne
of Green Gables_, the whole story was modeled around the character of
"Anne" and arranged to suit her. Most of my books are similar in origin.
The characters seem to grow in my mind, much after the oft-quoted
"Topsy" manner, and when they are fully incubated I arrange a setting
for them, choosing incidents and surroundings which will harmonize with
and develop them.
With short stories it is different. There I generally start with an
idea--some incident which I elaborate and invent characters to suit,
thus reversing the process I employ in book-writing. A very small germ
will sometimes blossom out quite amazingly. One of my most successful
short stories owed its origin to the fact that one day I heard a lady--a
refined person usually of irreproachable language--use a point-blank
"cuss-word" in a moment of great provocation. Again, the fact that I
heard of a man forbidding his son to play the violin because he thought
it was wicked furnished the idea for the best short story I ever wrote.
=Frederick Moore=: The genesis of a story with me may be any of the
things mentioned, but generally I find it is some incident upon which a
plot may be built. And frequently the plot in its final form has no
bearing whatever on the original incident which gave birth to the plot.
=Talbot Mundy=: With me, the genesis of a story is too often the need
for money; or at any rate, the need for money generally has too much to
do with it. I disagree totally from the accepted theory that it does a
writer good to be "hard up." It is true that I wrote some of my best
stories when I was frightfully "broke"--_The Soul of a Regiment_ for
instance; but the idea of selling that story never entered into the
conception or construction of it; had nothing to do with it, in fact. It
was an idea and an incident that took hold of me and thrilled me while I
wrote it. It was based on a tale that my father told me one Sunday
morning at breakfast when I was about eight years old. He told it to me
all wrong, but contrived to put across the spirit of the thing, and it
seems that that part stuck.
Ideas, I am afraid, are no good unless pinned down in the very beginning
to a character and one main incident. I can live in a world of ideas; in
fact, I generally do, dreaming along without much reference to "hard"
facts. I see pretty clearly the necessity to make ideas concrete by
turning them into persons, things and incidents. A plot is otherwise a
mere conundrum without much interest to the reader, however appealing to
the writer it may be. Thus, an idea for a story (in my case) may be an
incident, a trait of character, a situation, setting, title or almost
anything; and the temptation, which I fall for much too often, is to go
dancing along with the idea, letting it will-o'-the-wisp me all over the
place. Whereas the true process is to pin that idea down and make it so
concrete that the reader doesn't recognize it as an idea, but does
recognize a sort of familiar friend--concrete as a sidewalk. This is a
counsel of perfection; but it's the nearest I can get, after a dozen
years of trying, to an answer to your question. Be concrete. Get away
from the abstract by making it concrete. With that proviso, anything
whatever is an idea for a story.
=Kathleen Norris=: The genesis of a story with me is usually a
situation; the feeling that such and such a relationship between persons
of such and such ideals or ideas would make for human interest. A
servant girl who holds a baby above a flood all night--a boy who hates
his father's second wife, etc., etc.
=Anne O'Hagan=: The stories that I have taken the most pleasure in
writing and that have seemed to me the most successful have grown out of
speculation upon a character in a situation. If I may use an
illustration, _Wings of Healing_, a short serial published last year in
_McCall's_, grew out of speculation upon a character, proud, resentful,
out-of-joint with the world, returned to the environment which had
embittered her, brought back face to face with all that she thought she
most hated in the world. Of course, being a professional writer I have
written many stories without any such genesis, stories based on an
incident or even a setting. But with me, this is not my serious method
of trying to write a good story.
=Grant Overton=: With me, a story may begin with a background, an
incident, a character, a situation or a title. My idea of a story is
simply something arising in the first place from any one of these
sources. I should not say that a trait of character was sufficient for
me in the beginning. My first novel arose from a particular background;
my second novel was originated by an unusual situation, which I heard
of; my third novel (in point of writing) was suggested by a place; my
fourth novel arose from a character, Walt Whitman. The only two short
stories I ever did that are of any account whatever, were both inspired
by houses with "atmosphere."
=Sir Gilbert Parker=: Character always.
=Hugh Pendexter=: Dramatic situation. A flashlight picture of a climax
with no explanation. Then technique of going back and building up to it.
=Clay Perry=: To me it has been a character, a situation, an incident, a
title, striking enough to set imagination at work.
=Michael J. Phillips=: Out of nowhere at all an idea comes into my head.
It may consist of a novel association of two apparently unrelated ideas;
it may be a picturesque phrase or it may be an out-of-the-ordinary
incident. I think to myself: "That might make a story."
Immediately the other side of me pops its head out and says: "You poor
boob, there's nothing in that at all but grief and hard work and
disappointment. There isn't a story there and if there is, you can't
write it. That isn't your style at all, so forget it."
Consciously I forget it. But the next day as I am walking to the
office--most ideas come while I am hiking,--the first half of my mind
says apologetically: "Of course we know that was a fool idea we had
yesterday and there's nothing to it and we can't do anything with it,
and we don't intend to, but--If it was any good and we expected to use
it and if we had enough talent to make a readable story out of it, here
is a little incident which would tag along with it."
Then the germ and the incident are rudely thrust back into limbo. This
sort of thing happens for about three or four days, the story taking
form until I know the story and the finish and most of the incidents
before I consciously accept it and start to polish it off in my mind.
The story is complete, or practically so, before I set it down on paper.
The only story which didn't come to me that way hit me all of a heap and
convinced both sides of my mind at once, taking the citadel by storm. It
was the real, authoritative goods, and I knew it, and glowed over it. I
have rewritten it twice, and it's still unsold. While others, which were
dragged on to my door-step by my unwilling brain working under
compulsion, but which I wrote more or less easily, with my tongue in my
cheek, have been pronounced good by hard-headed gents who pay money for
fiction.
=Walter B. Pitkin=: A story may grow from anything with me. Most
commonly, though, from a big critical situation, then from a setting
(atmosphere); less often from a character trait; and still less from a
complete character in real life.
The four best stories I have written, judging quality exclusively by the
approval of editors and readers, grew out of a combination of an _idea_
and an odd situation.
A story idea sometimes starts with a title; but I find that the title
never carries me very far, though it may start something going.
=E. S. Pladwell=: I can not answer. Sometimes it just grows out of
random thoughts. Again, it comes from stories I have heard, or personal
experiences. An idea for a story grows out of a setting, a character and
a climax. The three combined make the finished job.
=Lucia Mead Priest=: I should say that the genesis of what stories I
have written have never been twice alike.
A situation, a phase of character, a setting, some other fellow's
adventure or one of my own, have furnished the kernel around which the
matter has concreted.
Now and then it has meant immediate germination but more often the corm
has been tucked away on a mental shelf to ripen or desiccate.
I do not know whether that is the usual process of a mentality or the
working of an irregular one.
=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: How would a given character react to a given
situation? Answer is a story. Character, situation.
=Frank C. Robertson=: The world is full of interesting situations and
unusual characters. I think I always carry around some of these
somewhere in the back of my head. Every once in a while one of the
unusual characters will accidentally get into one of these interesting
situations and the story begins to crawl. These two, character and
situation, always seem to come simultaneously and demand to be written
about.
=Ruth Sawyer=: Generally from an incident or character. Primarily it is
the human appeal which decides.
=Chester L. Saxby=: A story with me grows out of any kind of seed, but
most frequently from an incident or a situation. The character is
essentially a part of that incident. The character is the shaper of the
idea in my mind; without him and apart from him it does not exist. But
the dramatic possibility of the idea is the thing.
=Barry Scobee=: It may be any one of these, or from an idea that pops
into my mind as I read or watch a movie, but mostly the genesis starts
with a situation or a _condition_. By situation I mean, of course, the
position a character is in. By condition I mean a dramatic, novel,
puzzling or pathetic theme or phase of life, somebody or group of
somebodies. To illustrate, the remote, isolated big-ranch people of
southwest Texas. They are in a _condition_ from which rises the dramatic
or novel. After all is said, an idea for a story, with me, is a
situation--even if it be the mental situation brought about by a man's
own state of mind. It is that more than character or the other things.
=R. T. M. Scott=: To some extent the genesis of a story comes to me from
all the things which you mention. More particularly it comes to me from
a character or a title. All my "Smith" stories are from character with
the exception of the first of the series. One came from the title out of
the "nowhere." There is one source, however, which you have not
mentioned and which has had significant results for me. I refer to
dreams. If I can get to my typewriter before the atmosphere of a dream
has vanished the story is sold. A case of this kind occurred with _Such
Bluff as Dreams Are Made Of_, the first of the "Smith" series. I crawled
out of bed to my typewriter and wrote the thing straightaway without an
alteration. It sold at once and, as soon as it appeared in print,
_Cassel's Magazine_ of London wanted it and I was asked to cable my
reply. I dreamed both of the dreams described in this story. Selling
dreams is clear profit.
=Robert Simpson=: The idea for a story has, with me, no specific method
of birth. It may be derived from any of the sources you refer to, or it
may, as sometimes happens, spring out of nowhere, practically complete
from introduction to climax. Most frequently, however, and particularly
with short stories, I merely sit down and write. A sentence of some sort
finds its way on to the paper, then another and another, and ultimately
a story begins to take shape. A number of these "germ sentences" may
have to be removed from the finished product, but most of them remain.
When I have evolved a story idea by this method, I go just so far and no
farther until I have decided on a climax. If I can't create a climax
that satisfies me, I allow the idea to rest for a while, and usually,
when I am not consciously thinking about it at all, a fitting climax
comes along and the story is written. With book-length stuff, however, I
generally begin with four things--a character who sounds a decided
key-note, the setting, and, however vaguely, a conception of the
beginning and the end. Until I have these ingredients fairly well fixed
in my mind, I don't attempt to "write them into existence." Generally
speaking, the principal character is suggested to me first by name. I
can't write about anybody whose name doesn't "fit."
=Arthur D. Howden Smith=: Sometimes a situation; sometimes a character
or group of characters.
=Theodore Seixas Solomons=: "Story germ," though a trite expression,
hits it with me as to what a yarn grows from. But it may be a situation
or a very odd trait of character in what would otherwise be a not
uncommon situation. Sometimes an incident, if it seems a germinal one;
rarely or never a setting or title.
=Raymond S. Spears=: Generally speaking, I have a personal interest in
some subject or other. I begin to collect information about it, as
pearls, trapping, Mississippi River, shanty-boaters, etc. Perhaps a news
clipping starts me off, or a book, or a fiction story. After a while,
perhaps I have a hundred, a thousand clippings, books, etc. Then I go to
the scene; thus I went to Muscatine, Iowa, on a motorcycle to spend half
a day in a button factory, and a few days around that button-making
town, buttons and pearls going together! Then I went on into the Bad
Lands of western South Dakota, and spent a month on the prairies in
homestead country. Later I rolled thousands of miles in homestead
countries, to get "the big viewpoint."
Sometimes the story comes ready made in the material. Sometimes it comes
divested of environment--atmosphere--and I have to dress it up in a
desert, then a river, then a green timber environment, or facts, to find
which fits. Often a story idea appears as a character of certain
tendencies, and this character I bring up by hand, sometimes for years.
I gather my material of all kinds, and each group of material has
characters, plots, ideas, themes, etc., wandering and wallowing around
in the wilderness, and gradually a group of all sorts of things that go
to make up a story is precipitated by conditions, and if I'm in too much
of a hurry, I write too soon; the way through is invisible, and I run
into a blind cañon.
=Norman Springer=: In all of these ways, incident, title, etc., but most
often (say four times out of five) I visualize a character, and the
story grows about him. (This character, by the way, is never dragged out
of real life, and I don't try to make him a type. He is--at least while
the yarn is in the making--a distinct individual, with individual
characteristics. Though I do find that, as the story progresses, he
acquires little habits of mind and manner of people I know or have
known. If I don't guard against it, the character in the last story is
likely to carry over and intrude his personality into the next story,
where he isn't wanted.)
The genesis of the story is something like this: I think of the
character. I try him in this situation and that. Perhaps he fits, and
the plot grows naturally to its completion. Perhaps he doesn't fit, or
the material is only half a story--then I shove the whole matter into
the back of my mind. Weeks or months later additional situations, or
maybe new incidents, occur to mind. Out trots the character from his
seclusion, bringing his story with him.
Stories that come _via_ the title route are nearly always of the "fate"
variety.
If the plot is imagined first, and then the characters, I find that the
latter are likely to be wooden and lifeless, and the story very hard to
write.
=Julian Street=: Sometimes a situation. Practically always, however, the
situation grows out of _character_. _Never_ a title. That's always
cheap, I think. The more I work and (I hope) ripen, the more I believe
that the basis of most good stories is character. Character makes plot.
=T. S. Stribling=: I have derived stories from incidents, characters,
tales told me by traveling companions, but my longer and more serious
stories are nearly always something rather larger than a "setting"; I
would say a social condition. I like to select a people whose form of
life has the possibility of great drama. Then I enjoy studying that
people, seeing how they live, get as nearly at their psychology as I
can--customs, habits. Then I take their country and pick out spots where
I will have a scenic background that best suits the mood of the story I
propose to write.
For example just at this moment I am interested in Venezuela. I lived
down there a year, I learned enough Spanish to talk and read
intelligibly, and I expect to read Venezuelan books, histories, etc.,
for about three years more before I do a novel I have in mind on the
country. Naturally, this sort of work must be planned for years in
advance, and usually while I am working up a big story, I can get a
bunch of smaller ones on the same theme. Otherwise I would starve
between drinks.
=Booth Tarkington=: I shall have to leave this pretty indefinite. The
answer differs with every story.
=W. C. Tuttle=: Usually the title is the last thing to be printed on my
manuscript, and I pride myself on the fact that I have only had one
title changed in seven or eight years of writing.
It may sound queer to you, but it is a fact that a certain character
bothers me until I write a story around that character. Crazy, eh? Still
it is a fact. Somehow I can see and feel that personality and a strong
urge comes to me to put him in print. The strange part of it is that I
worry about that mythical character until I put him on paper.
=Lucille Van Slyke=: Story genesis with me is usually some very
insignificant object that I see in a half-light--or blurred--or far off
when I am not thinking about writing at all.
Example: Listening to a second-rate opera company give _Lohengrin_ my
eyes note very idly that one fat chorus lady has very shabby black
street shoes. My eyes travel--her face is deadly serious. Somewhere the
back of my brain clicks off a story somebody told me about Henrietta
Crossman's early struggles--how she nursed her infant son between acts
while she played "Rosalind"--on the way out of the theater I hear a
laughing feminine voice say "Chiffon is warmer and stronger than you
think--" These things I scribbled in my plot-book when I reached home.
But it was at least two years before I wrote the story these things
suggested--_but the impetus was undoubtedly a pair of shabby shoes_--and
the story was about a fragile, gay little chorus lady, the very
antithesis of the fat lady with the shoes. (Nor were shoes ever
mentioned in that story!)
Example: I pass a brownstone house, very swanky one. On the basement
window-sill is a battered tin luncheon-tray with a soiled napkin, a
wilted salad and some scraggly bits of lamb. I am on my way for a
holiday, in an I-shall-never-write-again mood. But the little old
nervous ganglia that serve as brains begin "What a rotten lunch--must
have been for the dressmaker--and maybe the dressmaker was a dear--a
princess in disguise effect"--and I find myself humming an old hymn,
_Oh, happy day_--"Felicia Day would be a good name," saith my tune. So I
jot it down in the back of my commutation-book and forget it. It's three
years later that I _write a book around that luncheon tray_.
The funny part of all this is that I didn't know until your letter
arrived that in almost every instance of either short story, serial or
book I saw a definite object in the beginning. I tried to bunk myself
into believing that I didn't, that a person or a character did it or a
plot, but it's a thing--usually in half-light--so I see it rather
blurry. Why?
=Atreus von Schrader=: A story may grow from anything; an incident, a
character or trait, a setting, a title, a situation. It is my own
experience that more stories develop from situations than any other
course. I wonder if this would be true of a writer of character stories?
By "situation" I mean a preconceived inter-relation of the dramatis
personæ.
=T. Von Ziekursch=: Genesis of a story.--I have little idea where the
ideas for stories come from. They merely seem to be dreams in which the
characters become clearer and clearer until I live through the incident
with them in an existence that is very real. I always have regrets when
a story is finished; then the characters seem to fade out like old
friends, gradually becoming hazier until they are lost. In my animal
stories I believe incidents that I have seen and animals that I have
studied form the stem about which I build the branchings. Perhaps the
same thing occurs with the human characters.
=Henry Kitchell Webster=: My theory of the genesis of a story is a
dynamic one. The motive power behind any story is furnished by the
setting up in some life, or group of lives, of a condition of strain or
disequilibrium, and the story itself is the sequence of events by which
equilibrium is sought to be established. I never started a story from a
title, but I fancy I have started at least once from each of the other
items of your list.
=G. A. Wells=: Story ideas occur to me in flashes. As a rule it is no
more than an idea, very brief and not, in most cases, sharply drawn.
Most ideas come to me while reading the work of others, whether of
fiction or fact, and it may be peculiar that the idea as it occurs is
never similar to the story or article as a whole or any part of it that
I chance to be reading at the time. To name a case in point, I
distinctly remember that the idea for one story came to me while reading
the third book of Dryden's translation of Virgil's _Æneid_. The idea hit
me so hard that I dropped everything else and began the story at once. I
don't attempt to explain it. I have never deliberately set about to
invent a story idea. That is beyond my mental capacity. Ideas occur to
me unwilled or not at all. But, given the idea, I will with confidence
contract to work it out in any manner suggested.
=William Wells=: Anything gives me the idea for a story; my head is full
of them all the time.
=Ben Ames Williams=: It is quite impossible to answer generally any such
question as this. Some of my stories grow out of incidents observed or
imagined; some are transcribed almost literally from experiences related
to me; some grow up around a character, or an apt title, or a trait of
character; some are built up as a play is built up, to put forward a
definite dramatic situation; some put in the form of fiction a
philosophic or religious idea which has appealed to me; some are merely
whimsical studies in contrast. The only general statement I can make is
that George Polti's book on dramatic situations has been of great help
to me, not so much in suggesting stories as in assisting me to see more
clearly what effect I want to produce.
=Honore Willsie=: I always start with some bit of human philosophy that
I want to get over.
=H. C. Witwer=: I'm afraid I must answer this one rather generally. That
is, I mean the genesis of a story with me grows from not one, but all
the elements you mention, _viz._, character, situation, setting, title.
Sometimes I hit upon a good title and write around that; sometimes I
spend days on the proper title after the yarn is finished. A chance
remark of an individual, quaint, funny, philosophic, etc., may furnish a
story and so with the other ingredients above. I would say, though, that
the majority of times the first thing I get to work on is a situation.
Next title. After that, I go to it!
=William Almon Wolff=: If I go back I can find that stories have grown
out of all the things you mention. But the actual making of the story
never begins until one or more persons are in my mind. I have to deal
with people, and the real planning and building of the story nearly
always begins with speculation as to what this person or that would do
in a certain situation. Here is a concrete example:
My friend, Robert Rudd Whiting, gave me, years ago, this, as an idea for
a story. Repairs to a post road in Connecticut made him, for several
days, take a detour; a little, lonely sort of road. And he used to pass
an old house, where two old ladies sat, looking out eagerly at all the
bustling life that had so suddenly come along their road.
Bob had tried to write the story, and failed. The idea fascinated me,
too. My notion was to try to work something out and do it with Bob--I
know, of course, that, if only he kept on, he could do the story, and do
it better than I could ever hope to do it. But the war came along, and
it took Bob. He was killed in action as truly as any man who died in
France, although the records don't show that. So I felt that I was
doubly obliged to write that story. But it eluded me until, at last, I
saw in my mind exactly the right man, troubled, oppressed, sick of heart
and mind and body, lured from the great road, with its rushing motors,
by the peace of the little road.
From that moment I was on the way to doing the story. What ailed that
man? What had gone wrong? What would he find when he came to the house
and the two old ladies? And wouldn't the little road, in the end, if he
followed it so far as it went, take him back, refreshed and
strengthened, to the road and the life he had abandoned?
=Edgar Young=: A story usually starts, in my case, with an idea--some
truth that I wish to prove, some fact that I wish to demonstrate, or
some effect I wish to show. This, to my estimation, is what a story
writer means when he speaks of "an idea" for a story.