the marvelous real
[Adapted from Vanessa Furse Jackson’s lesson, “From Imagination to Plot,” in Naming the World]
Where do stories—or more specifically, plots—come from?
What is it that enables writers to write not just a nonfiction piece but a story, a piece of fiction?
The key is imagination, allowing yourself to dream up people, ideas, and places that never existed. But imagination alone cannot create a story that feels like a living, breathing thing. In addition to imagination, we also need memory, knowledge, and experience. Those aspects are what make our fiction feel relatable, powerful, and real to readers.
That’s why many beginning writers are told to “Write what you know.” But if all writers followed that advice to the letter, there would be no fiction, or science fiction, or magical realism in the world—only memoir and personal essays!
In order to write fiction, writers must blend memory, knowledge, and experience with things that never happened. In other words, the real must become entwined with the unreal.
Vanessa Furse Jackson believes that, for fiction writers, there’s a vital balance to be struck between staying close to what we know and exploring imagined ideas. She says:
“Some of the best plots for stories come from the interconnectedness—and the tension—between what we already have stored in our minds and the transformation of that stored knowledge and memory into something original. …It seems to me that if we fail to mine (think gold or diamonds) our own vein of riches, or fail to then take those riches and convert them into something breathtakingly other, we have failed to take full advantage of the extraordinary faculty we have been gifted with as humans and as writers.”
So how can you mine and transform your personal experience to create original stories? Try Furse’s exercise below, which encourages you to interweave the real and the unreal.
Make a list of events you’ve experienced that have particularly stuck with you.
When you have a good list (10 or more events), choose one that you’d like to explore further.
Then, write the basic outline of what happened.
Now, ask yourself:
What if something else had happened at some point in this event?
What if it had happened in a different place, at a different time, or to a different person or set of people?
What if the event hadn’t turned out okay after all, or—perhaps in contrast to real life, what if it had turned out amazingly?
What if there had been a magical or otherworldly intervention at this time?
What if a stranger had arrived on the scene, altering the course of events?
As you ponder, make a list of (at minimum) five “what-ifs” that could have affected the event.
Now, begin writing a draft of a story that contains both elements of the actual event and purely fictitious elements.
By working with a blend of the real and the unreal, you can transform your personal experience into a fictional story that feels resonant and true to the reader.
