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By Gary, January 17, 2008

I posted a couple of excerpts from a novel manuscript I was working on a couple of years ago. Mostly I was hoping to get some comments, reactions, criticism, or something useful for me.

That hasn’t happened yet, so let me use the content of those two posts to perhaps start some discussion on this topic: Where do you find story ideas? Do you find ideas from your personal life or family experiences? Do you get ideas watching or reading the news?

This particular story idea came about when I made a trip back to the small town where I grew up in southeastern Nebraska. It’s a place of about 1,700 people. The main “industry” in town is a chicken processing plant located beside a railroad track that runs through the town. I left there when I was not quite 10 years old and never got back until I was 22. My wife and I live about 375 files from the town and once every year or two we drive up there to visit my mother’s and grandparent’s graves.

On a trip back there a couple of years ago, we were in town during library hours so we went by the public library they’d built the year before. Pretty fancy operation for the town and the county. I struck up a conversation with the librarian, told her I’d lived there as a kid, and she took out a bound volume of the town’s weekly newspaper, which extended back to the early 1900s. Knowing I was a writer, the librarian told me some of her favorite newspaper stories and asked me if I’d ever heard about the mysterious murder that had happened in the early 1900s.

I was shocked. I had lived there from 1947-57 and never heard of any murder. I turned to the story, read it, and made a photocopy to take home and mull over. That event was the seed for this story idea. There actually was a man living outside town who had a well dug, then refused to let the well digger fill in the old well, insisting he wanted to do it himself. Two days later, the man left town. Several days after that, curious neighbors dug into the old well and discovered the bodies of his wife and young daughter.

Story ideas are everywhere. You just have to pay attention to what’s happening all around you. When something catches your interest, look carefully at it and ask yourself, “What if …” You’ve got a story idea. Now turn it into a best-selling novel and we’ll applaud your efforts.
[tag]story ideas, writing and life, writing tips at garyspeer.com[/tags]

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By Gary, January 16, 2008

I hope posting that novel excerpt earlier today was useful to some of you. I guess posting the next section of it is probably just vain.

Seriously, though, I hope some of you will comment and give me some feedback on what you think of it, whether it’s interesting at all, whether you would pursue writing more of it if the thing was yours.

So here I go again:

“Damn your hide, woman,” he had shouted. “Curse you and send you straight to hell.”

Maddy remembers hearing her stepfather yell at her Momma. That wasn’t anything so strange. He’d always yelled at her. Sometimes he hit her, hit Maddy, too. He was even worse than her real father had been.

Of course he was worse, she thought, as she began turning her head more upward. He killed Momma and me. He threw us down this hole. She sobs quietly, choking more dirt into her mouth.

Maddy remembers him yelling those awful words at Momma as he grabbed her hair in his huge left hand and punched her sharply square in the face with his right hand. Momma screamed, but it didn’t matter. As usual when he started punishing her for one thing or another — his supper’s colder than he likes it, the tea’s too warm, the coffee’s not hot enough, whatever — there was no one near their small farm along the railroad at the edge of town to hear.

Momma tried to pull free so she could run off into the cornfield and maybe sneak back later, or go into town to her friend Sarah. But the monster only laughed at her struggles, slapped her this time, and pulled her close against him.

Maddy remembers again as she wiggles slightly upward in the old well, her feet pushing against Momma’s breast below her, how stiff and cold she felt plastering herself against the side of the house, too frightened to move as the deacon yanked Momma’s hair, hugged her tightly, crushing her. She was too afraid to help Momma, too afraid even to run off.

The huge man released Momma and she fell silently into the dirt of the yard in front of him. He looked down at her and smiled. His smile is always so sweet and loving that, for just an instant, Maddy forgot he’s the monster who just harmed her Momma. The smile had drawn Momma to him that day in church just after they first arrived in Frances. The smile kept Momma coming back to him no matter what he’d done.

Then she saw the monster spot the skillet with burnt breakfast eggs laying where it had come wobbling to a stop in the yard near the porch steps. Maddy’s old terrier, Bosco, oblivious to the ruckus around him, was licking at the eggs and the grease puddled in the cast iron bottom. The monster walked over to the skillet, kicked the dog aside and picked it up.

He hefted it in his right hand. Maddy saw the smile turn wicked as a new idea rose to the surface of his mind.

“No! Please, no!” In her mind’s eye in the suffocating darkness of the well, Maddy hears herself screaming again, sees herself running around the side of the house again. Her legs weren’t
paralyzed then, but even as she ran, the girl knew she was too late to save her Momma.
She watched in horror as the skillet descended, thudding against the top of Momma’s
head and cracking it open like a melon.

She remembers the monster turned toward her after he had killed her Momma. She wanted to hurt him, wanted to make him die for what he did to Momma. But he was too big and barely noticed that she was struggling as he picked her up by the arm, laughed, and shook her so hard the arm felt like it was coming loose. But just before the arm broke loose, he switched his hold to the other hand, wrapping it around Maddy’s throat and holding her off the ground.

“All right, little witch,” he whispered as he pulled her close to his face. “You can
join your Momma in hell.” With that, he hoisted her Momma up using the same hand that had smashed her. He walked across the yard to the side of the house, enormously strong,
holding Maddy still by the throat in his left hand while he carried Momma’s lifeless body
in his right.

He came to the old well. It was boarded over, but the boards had long since rotted and opened up a ragged hole in the center down into the deep shaft.

“Have a happy trip, Honey,” he said as he laughed and tossed Momma into the shaft. He turned his full attention to Maddy then, using both hands lest she squirm away, held her over the well, laughed again, and dropped her into the bottomless hole.

Comments? Suggestions?

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By Gary, January 16, 2008

I’ve mentioned from time to time that I’ve got some novel manuscripts started and gathering dust on my hard drive shelves. Here’s the opening scene of one. All criticisms, critiques, and suggestions welcome:

She tries to breathe, but only sucks in more dirt. She knows her eyes are open, but all she sees is darkness. It’s darker than any night she remembers. It’s so dark, she can’t even tell the difference when she closes her eyes. She definitely knows her arms and legs are still there because her whole mind is focused on the intense pain from all four. She wants to be rid of the pain, to make it go away somehow, almost more than she wants to breath.

Happily, as she twists a bit trying to squirm away from the pain and darkness, she touches her arm with her head and knows there’s an air pocket around her face. She thinks that air pocket might last if she takes just tiny breaths. She guesses she’s alive, though just barely.

But, really, Maddy Rice knows she’s the same as dead. The air trapped around her arm and face might keep her alive a little longer. But there’s no life for very long down in this hole.

That thought suddenly reminds her of why and how and where she fell. With a firmness in her that she’s never in her eight years of life felt before, Maddy knows she’s got to get back to the air, got to get out of the dirt, got to live. Except, and she realizes this at the same time as she feels more pain from her arm, if she even gets out of this deep dirty hole somehow, the monster’s still up there.

She takes even smaller breaths now, instinctively knowing the air pocket is getting empty. She tries again to squirm around slightly. The only lucky thing for her besides the air pocket around her mangled arm is that he threw her Momma down the old dry well first. She understands the only reason she has lived was that her poor Momma’s dead body broke her fall into the hole.

Here’s my number one question for you: Does it “grab” you and make you want to read more, to find out more about 8-year-old Maddy Rice and what happened to her? Your feedback and comments, please?

Technorati Tags: novel excerpt, critiques, story beginnings, writing tips at garyspeer.com