Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Construction of a Story

I thought I'd give a quick story of how my latest story, "Afternoon Ride," came to be. I'll keep it self-contained but also include a link to it if anyone would like to read the whole thing, I'd love to have you read it.

So I guess more successful writers are always being hounded about where their ideas come from. No one's ever asked me that, but I do often try to trace the origin of a story and sometimes find I can't. I think that's just because I have enough bad ideas I discard that by the time I've settled on an idea I like I've forgotten where it came from. This story, I do remember, came to mind when I was following a biker, in my car, and he gave that biker greeting of cutting his left hand through the air to a biker coming the other way, who gave the same greeting in return.

I've never ridden a motorcycle, and I realize, especially when they're going fast, they're fairly easy to balance, but you could hit a pothole or get a blowout, you're better off holding on with both hands. It struck me that was beyond friendly to put your safety on the line to pass this greeting along to a complete stranger, who does the same for you. Kind of cool. The next thought to pop into my mind was a story an old friend told me about fifteen years ago. He was riding a Honda and gave a greeting like that to a biker on a Harley and the guy on the Harley gave him the finger. He explained how there is a friction between riders of Harleys and riders of Hondas.

To this point, I was just thinking but I got interested enough to start to wonder about how I could turn these thoughts into a story. So I took the Harley guy from my friend's story and reformed him from his ways of being kind of an asshole and had him greet a "crotch-rocket" Honda rider coming the other way. He is rewarded for this when the other rider greets him back, not by waving her hand but by opening her vest and flashing him a boob.

Then, of course, he follows her! From there I just tried to observe and let my characters surprise me. I'll leave the link to the complete story at Every Night Erotica, if anyone would like to read it.
 http://www.everynighterotica.com/afternoon-ride-gregory-allen/