What If?

I used to wonder how a writer came up with his/her story ideas. 

Then, after I'd been working on my very first written story for a few weeks--long enough that I'd started to believed it was something I could really do--I got to thinking about how it had happened.  Where'd that first inspiration come from?  Why did the story play out the way it did?

This is the way it happened for me.

I'd been reading a popular fantasy series that revolved around faeries living in the modern world.  The books were well-written and entertaining, and the concept resonated with me, but the stories ultimately left me unsatisfied.  The worlds that the author had created were well-crafted, but just not what I wanted to see.

As someone who'd always had fantastical stories running around in my head, I naturally thought about the way I'd tell a story like that.  Faeries in today's world?  Loved it.  Now, how could that possibly work?  How could I find a way to reconcile the conflict between magical faerie creatures, and our mundane, definitely unmagical, real world?

What if...  What if faeries and the faerie lands were real, as real as we are?  What if, a millennium or more ago, there'd been a way to pass between our world and the faerie lands, but even then that connection had been fading away, or closing up?  What if faerie magic had faded from our world, as its source was cut off.  What if those faerie creatures that could retreated back into the faerie lands, did so, and those that could not retreat, or chose not to, slowly died out.

What if our legends and stories about faeries and other mythical creatures were mostly wrong, but still had a core of truth?  What if all those stories sprang from a common source?

And finally, what if, now, today, that connection between our world and the faerie lands was once again beginning to open, and slowly at first, faerie magic was returning to our world, and faerie creatures were crossing over to earth?

I'm someone who's always been able to think better when I'm on my feet, walking.  I love to take a long walk at night and think.  I'll plan the next day, or work on a programming problem (I'm a computer programmer by profession), or tell myself a story.

One night, I was walking and thinking about that series of books, and faeries, and asking myself those 'what if' questions.  A story that would try to answer those questions sounded like fun.  I thought, what if this was a story that centered around a young girl who suddenly discovered she was the descendant of faeries--and her fae nature was starting to emerge?

My story's main character was suddenly there in my head, narrating her story.  I heard her 'voice', the way she spoke, her speech patterns and word choices.  I immediately knew what part of the country she lived in, where she went to school, what her home life was like.  Her personality came through clearly in the way she told her story.


I cut my walk short and made it home as quickly as I could.  I had to get her story down before it slipped away.

I wrote for four hours straight.  I probably paused a few times.  I had to have, but I have no memory of doing so.  I wasn't really writing so much as channelling her as she told her story.  I think I only stopped because I suddenly realised I was barely able to keep my eyes open, looked at the clock, and saw that it was 3 AM on a work day.

I no longer wonder where story ideas come from.  They come from an active, open mind, one that reads or notices something, and then asks, "What if?"