A common question “How do you come up with story ideas?” People are hardwired to come up with stories. We do it all the time to make sense out of our world. Say you go to visit an old friend. He lives alone. There is obviously the remains of a breakfast on the kitchen table – a half slice of toast, a small empty glass, a plate, and a coffee cup with a lipstick stain. You don’t want to intrude upon your friend’s privacy, but you make up a scenario in your mind. Whoever had the breakfast wasn’t hungry enough to finish their toast. The small glass probably means they had something like orange juice. There’s not much you can tell from the plate, but the coffee cup with a lipstick stain means your friend’s visitor was a woman.
You have constructed a story in your mind to make sense out of what you observed in your friend’s kitchen. I think storytellers do much the same thing from little things they observe. They observe events around them and then use them to construct a story they are going to tell. It might be a young couple who are oblivious to everything around them or a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. The first observation might be the basis of a love story. The second could be many things – an injured veteran of a war or an accident or someone born with a birth defect who never was able to walk. Next time you see something and find yourself making up a story to understand it, welcome to the world of a storyteller.
