Chasing the Butterfly

Where do ideas come from? Essay, 900 words (~5-minute read)

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Chasing the Butterfly

by Ray Tabler

Where do story ideas come from? Metaphor incoming.

Imagine chasing a butterfly down a woodland path. The idea pops into existence, randomly fluttering back and forth. Usually away. That forces a slow, chaotic pursuit. At any moment, that darn thing might dart into the undergrowth, disappearing as if it had never been there. Snatching at the floating creature carries the risk of smashing it between my fingers. Trapping the concept is almost as difficult. And, sometimes, the path opens out into a broad clearing, where other butterflies play.

In short, you just have to let them come to you. Or at least flutter by. Of course, it helps immensely to hang around where ideas tend to present themselves. They will almost never come knocking on your door. So, talk to people. Listen to the conversation underway at the next table. Watch movies and TV. Laugh at comedians’ jokes. In case you didn’t know, comedians are guerilla philosophers who juggle truths so brutal they must be coated in laughter. Read books. Read newspapers and websites. Read street signs, labels and IKEA assembly instructions. Idea butterflies lurk in all of these places. Of course, they often arrive at the most inconvenient moments, when no paper and pencil are handy to anchor your ephemeral thoughts; in the shower, in the middle of the night, while mowing the lawn washing dishes, or shoveling snow.

Once you have trapped them, it might take years, or even decades, for the idea to mature into what it should be. The French author Marcel Proust famously drew inspiration for his 7-volume epic from a whiff of cookies baking. That reportedly unlocked forgotten memories which he strip-mined for his books. If you’ve made it through even one of them, you’re a better man than I, Charlie Brown. The point is that those memories slumbered and fermented for decades until it was time for them to burst forth and bloom.

Many ideas for novels have come from odd beginnings. Dostoevsky shaped Crime and Punishment from an actual French murder. Arthur Conan Doyle spun The Hound of the Baskervilles from an obscure ghost story from the moors. Moby Dick and Robinson Crusoe were both based on the accounts of actual marooned sailors.

Even after fingers start typing, the butterfly might twist this way and that. Listen to the idea talking to you. In the 1965 movie The Agony and the Ecstasy, an innkeeper told Charlton Heston (playing Michaelangelo) “If the wine is sour, throw it out!” Heston then ripped out the portions of the Sistine Chapel he’d already painted, because it wasn’t what his gut told him it should be. I’m no art expert, but I’m glad he started anew.

That’s fine. You don’t have to follow your original plan if it no longer makes sense. I operated that way from the start, barging ahead without much of a clue as to where the story was headed. Everything I read told me that I ought to have an outline, or at least a plan. Then I read Stephen King’s book On Writing. He advocates uncovering the story as you might carefully excavate a fossil from the earth. I’m no Stephen King, but at least I’m not doing it all wrong. It’s a legitimate stylistic difference, and totally not because I can’t come up with a plan and stick to it. 😉

Now, below are some examples of where ideas came from in my own writing. You can stop now, if you want. Because this essay might start to resemble one of those TV show episodes which consist of flashbacks. A “clip show” they’re called. Or, read on. It’s up to you.

The first story I sold, Local Boy Makes Good, grew from stories my father-in-law (a Japanese American) told of spending a portion of his adolescence in an internment camp. Surprisingly (to us, but not to him) he and his friends couldn’t wait to sign up for the military, to show that they were real Americans. He served in the Korean War. The story was relocated to space, and asks the question: How do you define “human?”

My first published novel, A Grand Imperial War, was inspired by a book I found in a used book store. It told of a silly, little 19^th century war, started because the British ambassador to Persia had an affair with a Persian princess. The setting for its sequel, A Grand Imperial Heir, came from an article I read about how diamonds rain from the skies of gas giant planets like Jupiter and Neptune.

The final battle scene of The Return of the King shows the orc army fleeing in panic once Sauron (literally) falls. I wondered. What are those orcs going to do for a living now? Choices in the Dark, another of my short stories, is about an orc, trying to go straight, and tumbled out of that random musing.

As a teenager, I read a Geroge RR Martin novel which was serialized in Analog Magazine, Dying of the Light. It was about people on a planet which was traveling through a solar system, and would only be habitable for a limited time. The concept of a doomed planet lingered in my head for decades, eventually inspiring my novel, Fool’s Paradise.

Go ahead. Chase the butterfly. There’s no telling where it will lead you.

END