A Daily Dose of Creativity

Writers ask questions

         Have you noticed that writers are always asking questions? They are always the one observing the not so obvious.
         We are the ones who always want more. More facts, more details, and we notice things that others over look.
         Don't just give us the facts. We need more than the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Regardless of how those details play out in the story, we want to know, smells, sounds, and we need more whys.
         My husband calls this reading more into it than was there. But I call it quality reporting. An eye for detail, the ability to recreate the moment right down to the last speck of dust sitting on the mantle. Sometimes it might be that the speck of dust was important, but we want to be able to edit what is there.
         I think it is what makes us better writers. We have honed our skill to learn to ask the questions the reader may have. If not, then, we should. We have to anticipate the questions, and carefully answer them within the story.
         That is how I had come about some of my story ideas. I asked questions. Not so much from the one relaying the information, but I asked the questions that I thought as a reader I would want to know.
         My dad has so many wonderful stories of when he was growing up. Sometimes the stories he tells are from just passing by a familiar spot and he tells me about what used to sit on that corner. Sometimes, he recalls an old friend, whose obituary he has read in the paper, and he proceeds to tell me about some adventure they had as young boys growing up.
         He is sharing with me a piece of his past, and later as I sit down, I wonder, "What if?" What if this happened to them, what if that happened? How would this character change from one moment to the next? Would they be the same?
         I'm not sure if I had said this before, but I will repeat it here just in case, but while researching my families history, I ran across a most peculiar what if.
         To state the fact, my great grandmother was rumored to have been a mulatto by the other ancestors. Of course, here in the South, mulatto was used to refer to someone who was of mixed race. Black/white, indian/white, indian/black. It did not matter the ancestry, mulatto was someone who's true heritage was muddled in the mix.
         The main reason for this, was that even after the slaves had been freed, the "lawmakers" found more and more ways to lessen the freedoms to the point that it did not matter if they were free or not, they had no rights. I'm not going to get into a whole racial thing here so I will end with that.
         As I was researching for my grandmother's ancestry, I found a young woman's name who was the same, listed in the census, who was mulatto, and who was about the same age. I'm still unsure as to if she is the one (my great grandmother passed away when my grandmother was barely 2 years old, so we have no word of mouth history to go on, and my great grandfather's side was a little embarrassed by the whole situation), but this young girl was living in a boarding house run by a young black teacher. Most of the boarders were young black adults and the aforementioned mulattos.
         But in an interesting questioning of the facts, my mind was led to wonder. How these two young teenagers came to live here (the young girl was there with her brother)? And even more, how this young single teacher came to run this boarding house full of children. And I thought, with more research. What if she was helping these children learn to read and write so that they could vote. (in the South, to keep the blacks from voting they would have to prove they could read and write)
         So many story ideas can come from just looking at things you see or hear in a different light. To try and see something that may not be there, but would lead to such interesting story lines and plots.
         Still to this day, I am haunted by that story that needs to be told. The characters are lingering over my shoulder saying, "tell my story." They long to come to life, to be made real. They wait for me to ask them the right questions and answer them with words grasped from the air.

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