Stories come to me when everything around me is almost silent. This can be at any time but particularly during the night when things seem kind of strange, I might hear a noise, a far off plane or truck, this stimulates me to walk into another world and time. I might see a person, I would sculpture their features with my imagination, inspired from faces I’ve seen on the street or throughout my past life. Like an artist I combine a nose from one person, an eye from another or color of hair from yet another person to create a character’s face. As if I’m an actor in a play I imagine myself reacting to this person, then a personality emerges, attributes are added others taken away, then gradually a character that is real to me emerges. We all create characters according to the environment and circumstances of life. A character like Tenashar gradually grew, he doesn’t take a fully aggressive stance in the story, he is quieter, he doesn’t say much he doesn’t seem like a central player, but all the events around him are observed, he listens, he can’t control things, but this is real life. Seldom can an individual be a central player. The other characters are part of Tenashar, they are part of his path, they follow his quest although it doesn’t seem this way. I see people differently from other writers, this is my experience; circumstances and the world creates a stage of life, there is no center in the real world, only in a written story is there a certain central character, circumstance or place, but the central character isn’t everything in the story there are other parts that are important.
Some creations in stories may never come from our lives, this means that characters, events, the surrounding environment, clothing, architecture and everything else could come from pure imagination only minutely stimulated by life and things, but this is a very small part of the story process. Then, where do these characters come from? They just walk into my life as if they are real people, as if I can see them, every detail of their face from blemishes, discoloration, makeup, and moisture on their lips to their personality in all situations, even their clothing. I already know the height of the person, their hue of skin, their past and present life.
The architecture in a story seems real, I really see it as if a photograph was taken of it or if I was really there seeing every detail from the material its made out of, scratches, dents, color or decay of the building as if every possible detail was there. I could also imagine the structure at different parts of the day when sunlight falls on it. Even the surrounding landscape is there and it seems so real that I can remember the smell, the sounds and the feelings of that particular moment. I would imagine a structure, it might be surrounded by dirt, then I would discard this imagining, then I would sort of improve the image with paved tile or glass.
The world can be imagined through a piece of music, a city on a particular part of the day what does this mean? Imagine the sunlight on the side of a glass building at the end of the day when the sun is almost towards the horizon and many colors and shapes are reflected; the shapes suggest strange architecture of another world, then I imagine the building itself transforming into another shape, then the moon is large and there are no other buildings just open space with trees, this is when a possible story is created. After a rain, pavements with a puddle can become an immense pool of water surrounded by a landscape of a reflective pure translucent material that glistens in the sunlight. Then I would start to form a story around these things creating characters that are part of this world.
There are all kinds of limitless possibilities for stories.
