Where does a story come from?

Where does a story come from?

I often wonder if it is solely out of the author’s imagination or out of their experience? Unless it is a story handed down from previous generations, the answer must in most part be a combination of both imagination and experience. It certainly is in my case.

I think some authors start with a character they are fascinated with, real or imaginary or an event they want to relate. As you may know, Michael Morpurgo is one of my favourite authors and he so often takes an actual event and weaves a story around it.

I always start with a story I want to tell to which I add settings, characters and events – some of which are entirely fictional and some relate to places, people or events that I have either experienced or been told about.

Both Nick North books started with a desire to tell a story with a Christian undertone that dealt with the difficulties that can be inherited down generational lines. As I have written previously this is a topic dear to my heart. In Nick North: Blood Quest Nick deals with a generational curse that has affected his family for many years. Into this I added a section about witchcraft in the Middle Ages. In Nick North: War Zone the story revolves around Leone’s family and a tragedy from the First World War that plays out into the present day.

The next Nick North; still in the writing process will feature the work of SOE in the Second World War though continuing the theme of inherited generational problems.

 

Odette Sansom SOE agent

However there is much more to writing novels than the plot or storyline. You need convincing characters.  I can honestly say that unlike Basil Fawlty based on the real life Torquay hotel owner, Donald Sinclair, my characters are not based on real people.  I tend to have a fictional person in mind for whom I then create a character profile.  

Settings however are another matter. Aston Turnberry is a combination of two villages in Buckinghamshire and the church, central to the story in Nick North: Blood Quest, was based entirely on the church in a village where we used to live. The scarecrow festival in Nick North: War Zone was also placed in that village.

'My' Aston Turnery church

If I don’t have a mental picture of a setting I want to write about or have not experienced it like a First World War battlefield then I pore over pictures till I am confident I can place my story there. In my latest Nick North I needed a picture of a World War Two aircraft used for dropping agents in France that I found via Google.

Events that make up the story and carry it along come from all manner of places. The letters in Granddad’s diary in Nick North: War Zone were based on the letters my Great Uncle wrote to his brother, my grandfather from the Western Front. The scarecrow festival though came from photos that a friend showed me of a festival they had visited. 

One of the events central to the resolution of this story came about in unusual circumstances. It was important that Harry, the soldier terribly wronged in the War, had his name added to his local war memorial in Burradon. I will not divulge why his name was not on the war memorial as that might spoil the story for those who have not yet read the book. 

I got the idea for this small part of my story on, of all places, the bowls green. I was playing bowls and one of the opposition was telling me about a mate of his that was killed in the Suez crisis whose name had been omitted on our local war memorial. He felt so strongly about this that he contacted the Royal British Legion who have now attached a special plaque to the memorial with his friend’s name on it.

 

The actual war memorial. If you look carefully you can just see the plaque on the back panel.

My latest book, due out soon, about trafficking of children into domestic slavery relies on my experiences of visiting Romanian orphanages in the 90’s. I rather hoped my descriptions of life in the orphanages would be out of date but unfortunately, after checking with a Romanian friend and another who regularly visits Romania, the descriptions are still all too accurate.

Nowadays fantasy novels abound and I salute those authors who can create worlds, people, animals and situations that have little connection to 21^st century life on Planet Earth. However my favourite type are those where people from our time and place find themselves in another world such as C S Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books, John White’s Archives of Anthropos and Victor Kloss’s The Royal Institute of Magic books.

What’s your favourite type of book?

Generations

I am convinced our awareness of generations enlarges as we get older. When we are young the only generations we are interested in are our parents, siblings and maybe our grandparents. As we age we have our own children and grandchildren and I have found that I have developed a sandwich filling mentality. By this I mean that I feel like the ham or jam in a sandwich by which those before me are one slice of bread and those younger are the other.

When younger I had little interest in previous generations but as I have got older I have pored over the family tree wondering about those who lived before my time. I have developed a sense of progression, not just of the people but of the lives they lived. Many of my forebears were what would have been sniffily called ‘trade’.  They were glaziers, miners, milkmen. Then my grandfather broke the mould and made the transition from the rank and file to management and then senior management. His was a lifestyle undreamed of by those who went before and as a result my father and aunts were educated and became professional people. 

My generation benefitted financially as well as educationally from this. We enjoyed the benefits of the inheritance bequeathed to us; our own home, private education and travel. In my day we grew up knowing if we worked hard in all areas of life we too would one day have the lifestyle of our parents. Now our children have all been educated to degree level and in turn have not just good jobs but careers and a lifestyle that matches or even exceeds their parents.

However it is not just the material and education that are bequeathed from generation to generation. Looks, talents and abilities are also passed on. In addition and of great personal interest to me is the  spiritual inheritance that can be handed down.  The Bible has much to say about passing on to our children their spiritual inheritance.  When God made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Israelites and David it was not just for their generation but for the generations to come.

Throughout the Bible God exhorts the Israelites to pass on to their children what they have learned. These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life Deuteronomy 6: 1 – 2

God promises to show love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Deuteronomy 5: 10

I also became aware as I grew in my Christian faith that as well as the good and Godly aspects of inheritance, we can also be passed on generational sickness and problems. There is no doubt that divorce seems to run in families, as well as things such as rejection, debt, addiction or abuse. It is this aspect that I have been exploring in the Nick North series of books.

Nick has no idea who his father is but in fulfilling the quest that the Shepherd offers him, he discovers that in generations past a curse spoken over his family has caused generations to suffer all manner of ills. He deals with both the past and the present ending the cycle of broken relationships and abuse.

In the second book the Shepherd and Nick help Leone break the cycle of guilt and anger that has plagued her family since a tragic incident in the First World War.

As I have become aware of my own previous generations, I have become increasingly thankful for the Godly inheritance that I have inherited and even more thankful to God for the fact that he can set us free from the negative inheritances we may have been bequeathed.