“Sufficiently Entertaining” Or, What To Do With Story Fragments
In a profile in New York Times Magazine this week, Neal Stephenson (writer of one of my faves Snow Crash), says that writers’ “Job #1” is to tell a “sufficiently entertaining story.”
When I have the urge to write, but my ink is dry, it’s usually because I have a nugget of an idea, but nothing else to transform the idea into something “sufficiently entertaining.” If possible, I save these small ideas in case an opportunity comes up to use them later. Random notes app pages and google drive lists with hints of ideas. I have a dugout full of short story ideas but most of them never get up to bat, or if I do let them hit, they don’t make it on base.
(Why am I making baseball metaphors? Softball was the absolute worst part of my middle school experience. Somehow even more embarrassing than periods, training bras, and unrequited love. And let’s not even talk about the time I was pressured to join a so-called “beer league” as an adult under the guise that it was all just for some fun. The stakes were actually very high. Being terrible at both hitting and catching, as I am, was a huge bummer for my teammates. No beer is worth this humiliation.)
I’ll revisit my list of story ideas when I feel pressured to write something new, but perversely, these slight and undernourished ideas often kill my germinating creativity.
For example (I love examples)…
First idea: A story set in the far future where Harry Potter and Star Wars are the sacred texts of future warring religious cults.
There is something funny about this that I like. But as it stands, there is not enough there for a story to start flowing.
What’s the central conflict? Who are the characters? And if it’s too far into the future, how hard will it be to fit the world-building in a short story? How do I adapt the main elements to be obvious to readers without actually using any intellectual property inappropriately?
All the work feels overwhelming and I decide that I’m done writing for the day and would rather go back to reading “Klara and the Sun” which is gorgeous and finished and not my responsibility to make good. I can just absorb the genius of Kazuo Ishiguro instead of doing anything hard.
I go back to my ideas list.
Second idea: What really happened to William Clark?
This is a germ of an idea that I’ve had floating around for years. YEARS. I’m from the Oregon Coast originally and as such, obligated to think about the Lewis & Clark expedition more often than most. Oregonians generally know about the expedition and President Jefferson and Sacajawea, etc., but few talk about the violent and mysterious end of one of the explorers: William Clark. Years after his co-eponymous expedition, wanting to die very much, Mr. Clark slit his both wrists and then shot himself in the head, all while locked inside a hotel room.
I’m very intrigued by this story, but to what end? Should I presuppose that there is more here than just a despairing man? What good would it do to invent his last moments? The scene calls to my imagination but there isn’t enough here to send my fingers flying.
Here’s one way to tackle story fragments: take two ideas and combine them to see if a story pops out:
Combo example: In the far future, a new planet has been colonized by historical earth. After thousands of years of spaceflight, one ship arrives with the Potterians, who use the seven books of the boy wizard as their sacred text. The other ship spent most of the trip watching movies, and now worships the videos of the force and its Jedis. Upon arriving on the new planet, two scientists from either ship are tasked with leading an expedition down onto the planet to find the best place to build the first city. These two are Bill and Louis, who become as good friends as they are total opposites. Louis is happy and optimistic, while Bill is forlorn and morose. Once they find a good spot to start civilization, Louis gets married, has kids, and is generally pretty relaxed. Bill, on the other hand, is plagued by doubts and inner demons. He focuses on one particular message from his sacred texts: “To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
Okay, pretty silly and definitely a copyright nightmare, but at least there is some scaffolding there to start construction.
