Stories Everywhere

'Where do you get your ideas from?'

That question is maybe the biggest cliche in writing, and most big-time authors have developed a funny, droll or caustic response, depending on their wont, to trot out at dinner parties (Neil Gaiman has some great answers here).

And the truth is kind of like he tells it (although it takes a class of seven year olds to drag it out of him) - you see, just like anyone else. Your senses take in information, just like anyone else. The difference is you remember it, you examine it, you engage with it. You ask questions (what if and so forth), and you combine and change elements. You take what is, and imagine it differently, or describe it perceptively. You make people see what they didn't see, or didn't imagine could be instead, or just categorised the first time around (we often mistake categorisation for seeing - we lose the detail by fitting what we see into an easy box with a rote response). So, just like with a painter, the key first step is to see, to keep your eyes and all your other senses open, all of the time.

So I look around, and I see. And the things that catch the attention are often the controversial things, the things that are tough to unpack. The furore around Jade Goody is one. Here's a very average person, scrutinised and carried up on a media wave, and exploited, and deeply flawed. It makes me think about the uncertainty principle. Does she change, does her morality change, through being observed? The Poppadum joke was not good. Surely its like is heard once a minute. Was she a devil, then? She got cancer. Millions do. She used her spotlight (which most of those millions don't have) for good, to raise awareness, and has undoubtedly saved lives, before she died. Is she a saint, now? She was human. Much as I want to find no interest at all in whatever The Sun proclaims I should be interested in, I find that, as an average human held up to the light in a way few have been, she is an interesting case that makes me think of plenty of ideas, about being human. Which is what stories are about, of course. Even if they're about being elves or dragons.

Susan Boyle is another case in point. It's a complex one again... she came to attention on Britain's Got Talent, set up for some ridicule from the crowd and the judges as a woman who's not what they've come to expect from indentikit twenty-year-old hopefuls. One amazing performance and thirty million youtube hits later, everybody has an opinion: 'It's all an edit, a set-up', 'The fact that it's gained attention is an insult to her', 'It didn't surprise me', 'She showed them', 'It's all cynical TV', 'The audience and judges were disgusting in the way they treated her', 'What's the big deal, she can sing - lots of unattractive people can'... Where's the truth? Again, she's human, the audience are human. But we can all strive to be the best humans we can be. For me, it says a lot about expectations, and reactions, and assumptions, and the lesson is to think carefully about the basis for your judgements. Don't assume; don't categorise. See.

Who knows, maybe you'll get an idea for a story.