Finding Your Story
- Cully Perlman
- May 13
- 6 min read
E.M. Forster, in his book Aspects of the Novel, begins the book like this: “We shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel is its story-telling aspect . . .. Let us listen to three voices. If you ask one type of man, ‘What does a novel do?’ “he will reply placidly: “ . . . a novel’s a novel . . . I suppose it kind of tells a story, so to speak.” "Another man . . . on a golf course, will be aggressive and brisk. He will reply: “Why . . . tell a story, of course, and I have no use for it if it didn’t.” And yet a third man would say: “. . . in a sort of drooping regretful voice: “Yes—oh, dear, yes—the novel tells a story.” And later: “We are all Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next. That is universal and that is why the backbone of a novel has to be a story.” But where do we, as writers, get our stories?
My friend, the writer John Dufresne, has a term he’s used over the years which he has posted on his blog or Facebook, or somewhere, though I can’t remember where, that’s something like “Found story:” which is something he’s seen on the news or in an article in a newspaper or magazine. They’re always off-the-wall stories, like this one he told to the writer Mary Bonina, in an interview she did with John for Červená Barva Press, when she asked him about where he got his inspiration for his characters: “I needed a character, of course, and found one while watching the evening news when a story came on about a local man who’d kidnapped his boy at school and fled the area. I began to think about why he might do that and where he’d go, and then I realized he had two kids but only took the one—why is that? And so on.” This is what finding your story is all about.
We are all Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next. That is universal and that is why the backbone of a novel has to be a story
--E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
Over decades and centuries, writers have taken inspiration from everywhere you can think of. They take their ideas from the culture around them (or from reading about other cultures), from current events, from history, dreams, their life experiences, from people watching, from prompts, from wherever. For me, it’s usually a combination of a few of the above. The novel I’m currently revising is taken from contemporary political events. The one I wrote last year was about a family falling apart and the deception of one of the novel’s main characters. My novel The Losses had a similar plot, though told from the perspective of each of the characters. It was set in Helen, Georgia, a small, “Alpine village” in northeast Georgia, which I was familiar with because it’s where I married my ex-wife.
Here's something I’d like to share about this post, to give you an idea how my brain works and where I got the idea for what you’re reading. My house if overrun with books—nonfiction, fiction, writing books, and of course magazines, literary journals, picture dictionaries and thesauruses geared toward writing, and so on. Today I figured I’d write a little something about aspects of novels, and so, naturally, I grabbed Forster’s book. When I opened it, however, a postcard fell out of the book’s pages. The front of the postcard has four pictures of penguins in various acts—lying down, a profile picture, a few penguins marching forward, a penguin looking back as if waiting on one of his penguin buddies. Right down the middle of the postcard are orange street signs: two penguins; a “Drive Slowly” sign; a “Penguins Crossing" sign. Apparently the postcard was sent from a place called Oamaru, New Zealand. When I flipped to the back of the postcard, I can see, in tiny writing, that it’s addressed, “Dear Tim & Caitrin.” I have never heard the name Caitrin, but apparently it “is a girl's name of Irish-Gaelic origin, meaning "pure" and a variant of the name Catherine” (thanks Google). The date 1/8/05 is written an inch or two to the right of the greeting. Beneath that is a description of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony, which are, apparently, the smallest penguins in the world. The postcard was sent by someone named Michelle, and as you can see from the picture below, it took quite a few stamps to send to Massachusetts, where, presumably, Tim and Caitrin live(d).
Now, that’s a found story, if ever there was one. At least in my opinion. Immediately, I want to know who Tim and Caitrin are. Might Tim be an American and Caitrin the wife he married after meeting her in a village somewhere in Dublin during a business trip? Or maybe his gap year? Was she the nanny that he left his wife of thirty years for? Are they even married? Or are they “living in sin,” as Caitrin’s mother and father might believe, given their Catholic background? And who is Michelle? I’ve blocked out the details of what Michelle’s written, but I can say this: the content was more something a friend would write rather than a relative. You can guess from that what the postcard may have said. And while I can’t read their full address, I know Tim and Caitrin live in Waltham, MA, has been settled since 1634, becoming its own town in 1738. In 1854 the Waltham Watch Factory opened. It was the first watch company to have an assembly line. According to Wikipedia, “Francis Cabot Lowell and his friends and colleagues established in Waltham the Boston Manufacturing Company—the first integrated textile mill in the United States.” The city is only thirty minutes due west of Boston.
I needed a character, of course, and found one while watching the evening news when a story came on about a local man who’d kidnapped his boy at school and fled the area. I began to think about why he might do that and where he’d go, and then I realized he had two kids but only took the one—why is that? And so on.
--John Dufresne
Back to what this original blog post was supposed to be: Aspects of the novel. Well, as we know, “story” is one aspect of the novel. I’d argue it’s the main one, for everything else in a novel is there to support the story. The plot. The characters. The settings. The scenes. All of these elements help the novelist tell the story of the characters she’s writing about. We write these days using pencils and pens (maybe some of us use crayons). But writing derived from stories that were originally communicated orally. Peoples of the past told stories and passed down histories, they sang songs and relayed their customs so as to preserve who they were. We do the same these days, both in nonfiction and in fiction. Nonfiction is based on facts, on real events, on “the truth.” But so is fiction. We may take liberties with the truth, especially if we’re writing science fiction or fantasy or whatever. But the story is why we stick around. We want to know what happens. And those stories come from wherever you want them to come.
As a writer, the postcard that fell out of my copy of Forster’s Aspects of the Novel influenced (and changed) what I wrote about today. Tim and Caitrin and Michelle, people I don’t know and probably never will, shared a moment, and somehow, serendipitously, I became a part of their story. They may not know I did, but I have, and for me, that’s a story in itself waiting to be told. And you can find your stories in the same ways that I have found mine. In the traumas of my childhood. In the perilous journeys I’ve taken around the world. By watching the nightly news. And sometimes, even in postcards that fall out of books.
John Dufresne’s Ted Talk, entitled “How to Write a Story” has over 1 million views
Mary Bonina’s most recent book is a book of poems titled, Lunch in Chinatown.
Cully Perlman is a novelist, short story writer, blogger, Substantive Editor, and author of The Losses. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com
*I am not paid for any of the books sold by anyone mentioned in this post. Even if I sold a bunch of my own books I’d get, probably, a few pennies at best.