Finding an Idea

I never expected to write the story I'm writing. I thought that, as I enjoy reading romantic novels, I would write something in that genre. Sometimes I watch a romantic film and feel I could write a better ending; so I was very surprised to find my story littered with dead bodies. Hardly stuff of romance.

In the early weeks of the writing course, we were asked to write a story plan. I wrote a boy-meets-girl formula romance and assumed I'd flesh it out over the weeks. I didn't. In my mind, it was not good enough to take further. Maybe later on I will come back to it and something will occur to me to pep it up, but for now, it remains an outline.

Without any idea for a story, I wrote a couple of character sketches, each of which had some merit but would not work in the same story.

Suddenly from nowhere, a character I was half-heartedly writing, opened the door to a bigger story. I don't know where the idea came from; it just did.

I was scribbling about a middle-aged man, a builder with his next renovation project on his mind, when it hit me. Who better to find something in the garden, perhaps an artefact, a time capsule, treasure or a body? Why and how did it get in the garden? Now I have a story.

Having started to write, I had to do some research into events in certain years, which I found interesting and needed to add weight to the story. I added this information to my timeline spreadsheet so that, at any time, I can quickly double check my facts... and fiction.

I am still surprised by the story I am writing. Some of the story is quite dark and I wonder at how I know such things! But it is only a story…