As I drove up the hill to my house, I saw two uniformed police officers interviewing a teenage boy in a ragged gray sweatshirt. He was slumped against a tree in the graveyard, arms folded over his chest and shaking his head as he said something that I was too far away to hear. I figured that would be the last the cops spoke to him unless he was booked for some other reason.
In life, things happen that don't relate to a larger story. Chance encounters in the supermarket are meaningless, you never find the hoodlum who graffitied your car as it sat in your driveway, and cops never catch several unknown criminals. That's life. We know this.
But as I drove by, my mind tried to fill in the blanks, make sense of the random event that was in itself a group of particles and wavelengths of light that just happened to coalesce in this exact universe in this exact spectrum of time. What were they saying? I knew I could guess based on what I had observed. The graveyard in not closed to the public so I figured it wasn't trespassing. Of course it is a center for illegal activity in this sleepy northern California town. I've heard stories about all manner of things happening in that place. Given the kid's dress and his age it was a safe assumption that it was a drug possession matter. Probably a warning since he wasn't being cuffed or driven away in the patrol car.
In fiction that would have been our first breadcrumb. The tiny bit of interest and mystery that answers a few questions but raises many more. The first piece that wets our appetite for what's to come. Not only does the trail lead our characters from one place to another, but also the writer takes the journey--wondering what the story is that he is telling. In many ways if someone were to ask how I create a story I'm not sure I would have a satisfying answer.
"I really just write them down," I would say.
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