If you don’t like the subject matter of your stories, or you’re not sure what you want to write about, this article is for you. I hope it will help you sober up from those thoughts that have settled in your mind and create negative feelings.
Recently, while reading forums on the internet, I came across people asking if their topics were suitable for storytelling. To be honest, I found this situation quite strange. But it had nothing to do with the fact that I already had a story and was working on it; the answer to the question was already there and I could see it. The thing is, they couldn’t see it.
Ray Bradbury is a brilliant writer, whom I often mention in my articles, and I consider myself very lucky to have read the works of a writer like him. In his autobiographical work he said in general: “If I don’t have a story in my head, I find one by what happens in my own life.”
I’ll continue with an example that sounds ridiculous. I was walking down the street and I got a piece of chewing gum stuck in my shoe. Some of you will say, “No way, how can you write a story about that? You’ve gone too far!” Yes, of course it can be written. I will even tell it in two different ways. First of all, let’s start with the narrative that can be realistic.
I had a hard time getting this piece of chewing gum out of my shoe. I kept rubbing it on the floor, but to no avail. I was a bit annoyed, where did it come from? I looked in the nearest bin, but there wasn’t one, so it must have been someone who didn’t care and decided to throw it on the floor. I tried a few more times and didn’t get any positive results. I let it go, but it kept sticking to my shoe. Do you know that sticky feeling?
Eventually I couldn’t get it out of my mind and I became increasingly angry. I looked for the nearest corner to sit on and examined it thoroughly. It was clinging nicely to the gaps, as if laughing mischievously. It seemed to enjoy standing there, as if its main purpose was not to be chewed in the mouth, but to drive people mad by sticking to shoes. Of course, the pink colour was fading and getting lost in the grey. I didn’t want to pick it up because it was obviously dirty.
I looked more closely, looking for a piece of stone, or at least a pointed object, that I could attach to the gum. When I found it, I began to scrape and remove some of it. I don’t know how it had taken on such a hard shape so quickly, but all I wanted was to get rid of it as quickly as possible. I struggled and struggled. Finally I managed to get it out somehow. I didn’t forget to clean the stuck ones to make sure. I was relieved, I had finally got rid of that feeling. I threw the stone away because I didn’t want to see the gum.
I took a step to continue on my way and saw what had happened. A small piece of rock had got stuck in my other shoe. It was hard not to freak out, but this time I fought the annoying feeling all the way home.
This is a short moment, maybe 5–10 minutes, a daily, ordinary and annoying one that can happen to anyone. But when I told it, you were able to immerse yourself a little and remember a similar experience you had. It was just a piece of chewing gum stuck to my shoe.
Photo by Ruth Ochoa on Unsplash
Now I’m going to analyse the same incident in a different way. Let’s talk about it afterwards.
I was bothered by a piece of chewing gum stuck to my shoe. It was there all the time. Even if I shook it off, it wouldn’t go away. It was just like my endless and haunting worries in my life. You know, when you say, “We’ve got one out of the way, it’s over,” but the other one comes and won’t go away. I couldn’t see anything around me that would lead to a result, because sometimes we have to take responsibility for ourselves. Difficulties can be of varying degrees of difficulty, but they can also annoy or even torment us. The chewing gum was like that, constantly digging into the soles of my feet. It was good at making its presence felt, like a friend who demands his debt in advance.
The suffering was endless and I finally decided to take a breath and confront it. I couldn’t hold it in any longer, it had a knack for overpowering me. I sat down and spoke to it. “What’s your problem? Why are you here?” And it says that this is its role, that making people angry is its greatest pleasure? To deal with my anger, I grabbed the nearest thing and pointed it at gum as if it were a knife.
There were approaches that yielded results, some minor annoyances no longer occupied a place in my mind. Still, the darkness clung to me with its claws, watching what I did. “I’ll get rid of you,” I told it, determined. “I’ll get you off my shoulders, I’ll be relieved, you’ll stop being a nuisance and you’ll take your pointless games and get the hell out of here.”
Do you know what happened? It seems that this time I succeeded, even though it was difficult, I left all the problems behind me. So sometimes it is not necessary to worry too much, even if every small or big one is looking for a place to limit our lives, there is always a way out. Until a new one comes and finds you. “Oh great, another one!”
You can see the difference between the two stories, can’t you? In the first narrative I took a more direct approach, conveying almost directly what I experienced. In the second, I tried to blend it through a different approach, making analogies, giving it character, adding dialogue and reinforcing its problematic structure.
Now we see that the question takes on another dimension. Instead of asking “What should I write?”, it becomes “How should I write?” As Bradbury says and includes in his book, your subjects can really cover all kinds of events that you have experienced in your life. More than one event, a slightly altered event, a memory from the past, sometimes a dream, sometimes what you remember from a rumour you heard... The important thing is how we get it across.
If you don’t believe me, think about the novels and stories you read. You will see how simple they are when you are asked to summarise them. “Here is a boy, when he was a baby, something bad happened to his family and he lost them. He grows up without a family, without love. His life begins to change when he goes to school. This is where the whole extraordinary chain of events begins.” Which book am I talking about? To give you a clue, the author of this book is the first and only person to become a billionaire by selling her books. Her story has also been rejected many times. She was 32 when her first book was published in 1997, but the idea was conceived in 1990.
The theme we worked on was as follows. We can choose any event in our lives and create a work by shaping it into the narrative form we want. This can be a realistic approach or it can be more abstract and as unusual as possible by adding different styles.
On the other hand, we can also approach the subject from a different direction. We can present a narrative based on fiction.
There is a well-known question for this. As Neil Gaiman points out in his own article, he also uses this method. The question is: “What if?” The most basic secret to creating unexpected stories with simple questions is to ask this question. Because this question creates an alternative and allows us to think about a reality that is different from the usual situation. The answer to the question is now divorced from the existence of the situation and left entirely to our imagination. At this point the creation is in our hands, in our imagination. Give yourself an example right now using this pattern of questioning.
“What if the colours of the paintings we studied changed according to the mood we projected onto them?”, “Suppose we could fly at certain times of the day, what would we use it for?”, “Well, let’s say we woke up one day and heard a song playing in our heads. What could we do to fix it, or what would life be like?”
As you can see, the questions are different, but they all have the same direction; they try to give a different dimension. For some it may be an attempt at the impossible, for others it’s like finding a new toy and starting to enjoy it. Adding the unusual or unpredictable to an otherwise monotonous life is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it can remind you of who you were as a child.
This means that you can choose either a piece of your life or something completely fictional as the subject of your story. Your creation is yours and you are as free as you think you are. How you tell your story is up to you. Turn the wheel where you want it to go. No one can ask you why you prefer it that way. Stop overthinking and try to optimise what you have in mind. Either make a preliminary plan or keep writing as you go. Finally, don’t beat yourself up and write from the heart.
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