Where do short stories come from?
During the course of these blog posts, I’ve written about
origins firmly couched in childhood, and ideas that showed up in last week’s
shower. I’m related ways that I glue unlike ideas together or bend real life
events to fit a dramatic structure.
But rarely do these things write themselves.
Let’s fact it. Real life is boring. Even a momentary spate
of excitement is most often surrounded on all sides by a lot of talking and
sitting around. Not the stuff that keeps readers turning pages.
Ah, but sometimes there are those rare, golden moments.
“Change of Plans” is a story some of you may have read. I
included it in a selection of stories for Kindle, and it’s in my print
collection Tough Job at Driftwood.
Here’s a fine example of real life quilted into the weave of
the page.
My son, Wyatt, is color-blind. We’ve known it since he was
four or five, but we rarely think about it.
A few years ago, Wyatt and I were riding over the Flint
Hills of Kansas in the middle of June.
Never before had I seen grass so green unrolling before us
like an endless carpet. The white flecks of flint invited us to stop, and we
had some fun hiking along a friendly trail.
“C’mon, deputy. Let’s mount up on horseback and ride across
this here range,” I said.
“Isn’t it all a beautiful orange?” Said Wyatt.
“Orange?”
“Well...yeah,” he said.
Then I remembered his visual condition.
“Good thing I’m not sending you after an outlaw in a green
shirt,” I said.
“Good thing the sheriff’s not wearing an orange shirt,” he
said. “I wouldn’t know which one to plug.”
And that was it.
Got back to the car. Wrote it down.
After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch
worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South
Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history
and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what
they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger.
In 2016, Richard roped the Spur Award for short fiction given by Western
Writers of America. Read more at
www.RichardProsch.com
The writer's mind notices, "Hmm, that's weird..."
ReplyDeleteThat bit of inspiration was too good to pass up. Nice little piece of flash fiction!
Thanks, Vonn! You're right: the writer's mind picks up on all that stuff--the good and the bad! Gina says I often practice catastrophic thinking, but I blame the writer!
ReplyDeleteI think that a big part of being a western writer is being able to recognize those little, mundane, day-to-day things that other people don’t even think about; and then speculating on how that might have impacted people 150 years ago. In all of the countless western books and stories that I have read over the years, I don’t think that I have ever come across a character that was color-blind.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Michael! Really appreciate what you're saying. Yes, it's the little things that make up most of life!
DeleteGreat insight, as usual, Richard. I like to learn a little from writers about the genesis of their stories. In my collected short stories (6 volumes) I add an Afterword doing just that. The western collection (Vol.3) is VISITORS. http://authl.it/B06XK4K5C3
ReplyDeleteThank you, Nik! I'll pick it up and enjoy reading your afterwords. Much obliged!
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