Today in our final installment of the Where-Do-You-Come-Up-With-This Trilogy, Fictional Blake Lively time hops from memory to memory to explain the origins of a few short stories I am working on. There’s actually quite a few, but there are three that have fun birthings. Those shall be the conclusions of this trilogy.
Short #1
Setting: Fall of 2015, 1:30 am
Scene: Original hot blonde is asleep in her bed
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… ACTION!
RING! RING! RING!
::Hot Blond fumbles from her sleep to slap at her phone::
“What the hell?”
—Crying friend— Oh my god, he’s gone crazy! Literally crazy! It’s a nightmare!
“What? What is happening? Are you okay?”
He just went crazy! He was shouting and stumbling and crazy!
“Is he still there? Do I need to come up there? Do you need help?”
No, he ran out. I was trying to calm him down, calling him calmly by name, and he yelled at me “Stop saying my name! Stop it! You can only say it so many times before I die!” And then he ran out of the apartment. Oh my god, he’s gone full-blown Hannibal Lecter!
::Being the horrible writer friend that she is, Hot Blonde sticks a pin in that comment::
“What do you need from me write – uh, right now?”
And thus birthed “What’s in a Name?” – a story about a man whose family was cursed. Lukas’s great, great grandfather traded his soul, and the soul of all future males in the Lehmann line, for fame and fortune. The only stipulation; their name could only be said a certain amount of times before all their vital organs shut off. All Lukas wants is to break the curse.
Short #2
Setting: Pikes Peak Writers Conference, Workshop on the YA genre
Scene: Original hot blonde sits among a plethora of other hopeful writers, listening to an actual author talk about what YA is, and how to write it.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… ACTION!
“You only get so many words in a YA novel, so you have to really weigh your words.”
Hot Blonde’s Internal monologue:
Weigh your words, what a funny expression. Like, what if words actually weighed something. Would they have weight based on how long they were? How well used? How often? Hahahahaha. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious would kill someone!
Wait… weight! What if words made you gain weight?! Like, the more you talked, the fatter you got? Would people then actually stop to think about what they were saying? Hmmm….
And boom, “The Weight of Silence” was conceived. It’s an actual world where talking makes you gain weight. So, if you’re silent your whole life, you could potentially live forever. The story follows a garbage man who rarely talks, on his morning routine, where he is witness to a double murder. Hard to stay quiet when you’re the only witness…
Short #3
Setting: Summer of 2016, evening time at a SuperAwesome Friends’ house
Scene: Original hot blonde and Super Strong Husband are at their SuperAwesomeCouple Friend’s house. It is late, and it is time to put the SuperAwesomeGirlies to bed – but someone has mentioned the creepy mannequins from Doctor Who!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… ACTION!
SuperAwesomeMiniGirly freaks out a little at SuperAwesomeFather. “Great, now I’m thinking about the mannequins! What if they come alive at night? What if they come here?!”
SuperAwesomeMother – “Don’t think about them being scary. What would make them funny?”
Hot Blonde’s internal monologue: Riddikulus, obviously.
SuperAwesomeMiniGirly – “Well… what if they were in a costume shop? Like, what if they were dressed as superheroes, and at night they went around saving people?!”
Hot Blonde’s internal monologue – That girl’s imagination is awesome. Gotta love kids… I’m stealing that idea. “Hey SuperAwesomeMother, I’m going to write a short story about that. Just FYI.”
And that was the start of “Model Citizens”, which now may be a full length novel instead of a short story. After writing the initial scene introducing Gepetto and Pinocchio and the rest of the gang, I sort of fell in love with them. What they have to tell me might be more than just the 10-20,000 words. I like them, I’m going to let them take all the pages that they need as they try to find out why prisoners and mental hospital patients are all dropping dead within hours of each other.
I have lots of other stories in the works as well. There’s one story where the world has a celestial event that hasn’t been seen since the original passover – when thousands of people died. Another that revolves around Tinder. And another yet about a young woman with CIPA (congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis – basically, the inability to feel pain and temperature, and no sweating) who battles the bullies because she knows they can’t hurt her. Everything comes from things I hear or see. I haven’t yet been inspired by smell, taste, or touch – but I wouldn’t rule that out entirely. Point is, everything and everyone is free game to a writer’s imagination. So word of advice, careful what you do and say in the company of writers – you could end up in their next story.
