Confessions and other Lies...

Where do you get your ideas from?

Normally I get asked this question at social gatherings; expat barbeques and suchlike.

And it's the one question that I find really difficult to answer.

I look around and think to myself...

Just here, with the 40 or 50 of us enjoying greasy sausage and baguette sandwiches and drinking too much red wine, there much be at least one novel and half a dozen short stories. For me it's not a struggle to find ideas; it's sifting all the ideas out and choosing only the worthwhile ones that is the hard task.

That couple over there, they're not married. Are they having an affair? Are they about to start an affair? I'd love to write that story even if I had to make it all up myself.

That other couple. They are married but she doesn't seem happy. Is he beating her or is she worried that he's suddenly become interested (in a non-appropriate way) to their teenage daughter? I wonder what there story is.

The hostess seems to be hitting the red wine rather hard. Is there something there that I should know (and write about?)

Or, for a novel, what if this was a school reunion and all these people were comparing their youthful expectations with the grim reality of real life. Yes, I know it's been done a thousand times in TV dramas but one more time shouldn't hurt.

Stories are about people

When it comes down to it, all we really care about in a short story or a novel are the people described.

When need to empathise with them, even if we don't like them.

Here's an example...

Madame Bovery

Living in France I tend to only read French literature. One of the greats of French literature is Madame Bovery by Gustav Flaubert. Although it's quite a chunky novel it basically tells the story of Emma who marries Charles (a poor country doctor), runs up debts, has a couple of affairs and then tops herself. Charles dies, impoverished, a few years later.

And that's it. That's the entire story but here's the thing...

There are really only two characters in the story - sure there are about half a dozen other characters that are required in order to progress the story but it's ony Emma and Charles that we care about.

And we do care about them, even if we don't like them. Reading the book I keep wanting to shout to Charles... "Man up, for God's sake. Take control of your life, take control of your wife!" And to Emma... "Stop being a cow; you knew who he was when you married him. Stop flirting and cut up those bloody credit cards. You've got a chance at a nice life; don't blow it!"

Doesn't mean that I like them, either of them, because I don't. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to read the book over and over again.

In a simple tale, with only two, quite unlikeable charcters, Flaubert manages to sum up almost all of human existance - life, the universe and everything.

And French kids (and their parents) will be reading that book for at least the next 100 years or so.

Now, I'm not sure how Flaubert came up with that story (and I don't really care) but I do know that I could, by chance, see an unhappy couple in a bar and come up with something similar. Although I freely admit that, no matter how hard I work, I'll never have Flaubert's genius.

In my version Charles would probably be a bike mechanic, happy with his lot and never even dreaming of opening his own garage or bike shop.

And my Emma would realise that she'd only married nice, kind Charles to escape her parents and for the promise of regular sex - although, the sex, as it turns out, wasn't as good as she thought it would be (Charles, nice guy that he is really is a bit boring.) And so she starts having affairs and running up credit card debts and, when the baliffs start calling, she takes the easy way out and tops herself.

Which, of course, finishes poor Charles off and he, effectively, dies of a broken heart.

You see, same story just set in a different world and...

All inspired by a chance sighting of an unhappy couple in a bar and the thought (the writer's thought)... "I wonder what their story is?"

And another example...

The Stranger

L'Etranger by Albert Camus

Really a very small book; Camus would have trouble interesting a publisher today with a novel so short.

And not much happens in it.

Mersault, an unambitious minor office worker, goes to his mum's funeral, he speaks to his neighbour, he takes his girlfriend to beach and, whilst there, kills an arab. Then he awaits his execution.

And that's it.

But every French school kid has to read that book. They've made two or three films of it and are currently (2026) making another one.

Because, in that one short novel the futility of man (Camus' idea, not mine) is encapusated. Life is meaningless, worthless - we are born, our mothers die, God is dead (perhaps he never existed at all) and...

Soon, so shall we be. Dead, that is.

Once again, I don't know how Camus came up with a story that we are still reading 85 years later.

I can, though, imagine seeing a man in a pub, sat all alone, or perhaps standing at a bus stop in the rain, and thinking to myself...

"He looks like a civil servant but, he's got a bit of muscle - perhaps he goes to the gym once a week.

I bet he's single and perhaps he has the capacity to do something horrendous - like killing an arab?

I wonder what his story is...

Love is Stories are all around...

For me, at least, stories are all around, if only I care to look for them.

You just have to care about the people that you're interested in (you don't have to know or like them - just be interested) and the story (the actual events - the haunted bobber, the patch of oil on the road during an early morning run etc. ) just seem to take care of themselves.

And that doesn't even mean that you have to be a "People Person".

I am not in any way gregarious. If I go to a party I'll be the one, in the kitchen, all on my own, slowly sipping a glass of wine (I don't like getting drunk in public) and listening in (but not joining in) to other people's conversations or just watching other people enjoying themselves.

But some of the time, wondering to myself... "I wonder what their story is?"

That doesn't make me a creep or a spy. It just makes me slightly shy, happy in my own little world and not totally at ease at parties.

And I really don't understand it when people who write (I won't call them writers) complain that they're blocked; that they can't think of any ideas to write about.

Perhaps they don't go to the right sort of parties or...

Perhaps they don't go to a bar and wonder why the man (possibly a civil servant) is sitting on his own, lost in his own thoughts.

Or, why that couple, sat together but somehow apart, look so unhappy?

And thinking... "I wonder what the story is there?"

“Well, that's my little ramble (which really show that I'm not at all an expert in French Literature) over and done with. If you're interested in writing yourself, you probably won't have learned anything worth learning from it and if you just like to read, there's only one thing I can say to you...”

Read to Live, Live to Read!

I hope that you have enjoyed this article.

All the best

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