Origin Stories

I'm still in the midst of rewrites on my novel. I've discovered that I need to add one more POV for the story to function as a mystery, which brings me to the topic of origin stories. Origin stories are probably most familiar to people from comic books. They are the moment when batman becomes batman -- a robbery, a gunshot in an alley... Drama, action, high stakes are the hallmaks of an origin story, but there are origin stories for everyone if you take a moment to think. All characters in a book have their origin story and families have them too. For instance, thinking about my own family, there is a family legend -- as in I'm not sure how much is embellishment and how much is the truth -- we were told about my grandfather and the great depression. Here's a Miller Family origin story for your reading pleasure.

My grandfather, his brother and his parents had to leave their farm because of the dust bowl. They got down the road a bit and were discussing where to go. My great-grandfather wanted to go to Texas where they had other family and thought there would be work. My grandfather wanted to go to California. They stopped the car, got out and had a fistfight on the side of the road. My grandfather won the fight and they went to California. Eugene Miller (my grandfather) met and married Ethel Godfrey (my grandmother) in Berkeley, California. If my grandfather hadn't won that fist fight my grandparents would never have met, my father wouldn't have been born and I wouldn't be here today tapping away on this blog entry. There you have it, a real-life origin story, with drama, action and high stakes.

Thinking through your own origin stories is a great way to come up with ideas for your characters. I've thought of a few really good ones for mine just by rearranging personal and family stories to suit.