Making a mountain, out of a molehill
By BusyMrFizzy
How us writers tell real stories, with unreal words.
I started writing when I was about 10 years old. By that, I mean writing so that people would read it, so that they could understand me, and my point of view. It began on what started as an innocent trip along the river Nene in Northamptonshire with my primary school classmates, and my head teacher, Mr Bates. Later, in my class project, when I described the events that were to take place, I was apparently so descriptive, so fluent in the language of words, that I won the school prize for literature.
When I accepted my prize (the book, Roald Dahl’s ‘Revolting Rhymes’, which I still have to this day), Mr Bates announced to the audience of children that I had won because of my ability to ‘create something out of nothing’ - something that has been said of me in various aspects of my life, ever since.
What actually transpired that day, was that when transferring the narrow boat from one section of the river to another, using a lock, the boat had ever so slightly ‘tipped’ to one side. Apparently, I had described it in my class report, was more akin to the Titanic sinking.
And that is what creative writing is all about. Perhaps not creating something out of nothing, but giving birth to a story from a simple idea. Whenever a writer begins a piece of work, be it poem or novel, fact or fiction, it always begins in a reality of sorts. Sometimes it is a direct experience they want to share, often it is something they witnessed, or another person went through and had shared, but it was real at some point in its journey to the page.
Like the ever so slight ‘tipping’ of a narrow boat, on the calm waters of the river Nene in rural Northamptonshire, what seems to many as an innocuous story, to the creative writer is filled with possibilities and untold angles. Whatever story you have to tell, imagination has a better version up its sleeve and the writer is the conduit. Exaggeration, fantasy, possibility, are all in the tool box of a good transcriber. I look back now, and realise this was always a natural ability I was given, not everyone is lucky enough to have this gift.
So, how do I use it now, as a 52 year old writer, poet and performer. When handed a simple truth,
I begin in the same way by asking, ‘What happened?’, ‘Why did it happen?’, and then most crucially, ‘What could have happened?’, that is the secret to creative writing. ‘What is the worst case scenario?’, or as Dr Pepper would ask, ‘Whats the worst that could happen?’. Extremities play a huge roll in fleshing out the truth into a page turner, one persons drama can become the writers disaster, and it’s as simple as your choice of words. And that, that is the writers gift, their ability and their trade.
Perhaps all writers are over-thinkers, stretching out the options in front of them like elastic, until they are exhausted of possibilities. Wringing out the last droplets of every plausible idea like water squeezed from wet linen. Either way, as a writer I know all my best stories come from a real moment in human existence. Be it a comedic masterpiece, soaked in sadness, or languishing in joy, that seed is what grows under the writers careful nurturing, into the story on the page in front of you.
Writers are often asked, ‘How do you think em up?’. The truth is, we don’t, we borrow. We take an anecdote, staple it to an experience, sellotape over it with metaphor, and paint the surface with story. The molehill can easily become mountainous, if you are looking at it from the right angle and that in its simplest form explains the writers job, to find the right angle - or the angle from which to write.
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