Cooking a Story
I bake.
Rarely.
Once every year, maybe?
I leave the baking and the cooking to my spouse, who actually enjoys it. (I usually do the clean up. Fair trade-off in my book).
Baking is precise, mostly. Recipes call for specific, measured ingredients, or you’ll end up with flattened soufflés or lumpy breads or pies that taste like salt. With cooking, you can be far more inventive. The recipe is there as a guide, and the chef adds a pinch more of this, a teaspoon of that, all the while putting his or her own spin on a classic dish.
But, really, authors are cooking all the time. They take a few ingredients and mix them up, until they find just the right flavor. Often the finished dish is much different than what was originally envisioned.
Here’s an example. Say I have the following three ingredients:
- Unusual Dialogue
My friend overheard a conversation on a bus in Seattle a few years ago, and jotted it down for me, thinking I might be able to use it in a story at some point. It went something like this:
MALE PASSENGER: Well, did she get it back?
FEMALE PASSENGER: Yeah, I guess so. I’m not sure though. I was still in jail.
MALE PASSENGER: You gonna ask her?
FEMALE PASSENGER: Probably. But she got in a car accident last week.
MALE PASSENGER: She okay?
FEMALE PASSENGER: Guess so. She asked my brother for $10.
- Fascinating Characters
I found out recently that my grandmother’s sister, Mary Ann Thielges, was a pilot, and flew as part of the Dublin Corps during World War II. She’s mentioned in the archives of the International Women’s Air and Space Musuem:
http://iwasm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/women-airforce-service-pilots/s-t/item/245
I had no idea! I wonder what inspired her to do this, what kind of training she underwent, what sorts of things she saw. My mind reels with questions.
- Whacky life adventures forever embedded in the memory
It was 1982. Pre-cellphone era. Bitterly cold winter in my home region of Rochester, New York. I’d had my 1972 Galaxie 500 winterized for my commute to college a few days earlier, but the mechanic hadn’t added the right mix of antifreeze. So my radiator stopped working, and engines don’t like it when the radiator isn’t working. So I pulled over onto the shoulder of the icy highway as the engine block seized up. Ah, yes, moments of panic during a snowstorm, with no heat and no form of communication. Thankfully, a truck driver came to my rescue. He was on his way to make a delivery at a big, Rochester-based multinational corporation, and suggested when we pulled into the warehouse that I could go off to the main office and find a phone.
And I did just that! Unfortunately, this facility was a top-secret research lab, and the receptionist who let me use the phone promptly signaled security that some college kid was wandering the halls looking for a telephone. About an hour later, and after a thorough grilling from security, my father came to get me. As Dad and I pulled out of the parking lot and through the gate, the guards and I exchanged long, angry, confused stares.
So there it is. A treasure trove of material.
Now, what to do with it? That’s where the cooking comes in! There are so many ingredients to pick and choose from, it’s now a matter putting things in a big pot and seeing if you can make something edible out of it all.
It could be the female bus passenger’s friend had inadvertently found herself in a research lab after her car accident. The lab is designing technology for a new jet for the Air Force. Her last name happens to be in the database, but the first name is different, yet through some error on security’s part she’s granted access to an area that she shouldn’t be in.
From here…well, I don’t know. But it all involves adding flavor, and letting it stew, then adding more ingredients while making sure it’s not overcooking. And with some hard work a little luck, an author hopes that he or she dishes up something that Shakespeare and Julia Child will approve of, and ask for seconds to boot!
Now I think I want to pursue this story outline.
But…I need a snack first.
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Tinseltown, a Finalist in the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, is Barry’s first novel. His novel The Celestial won the Gold Medal in the 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards and was a Finalist in the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. Reunion, a collection of linked stories, was a Finalist in the 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards. His latest novel, Paradise at Main and Elm, was a Finalist in the 2013 Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association (PNWA) literary contest.
His work has appeared in SNReview, Perspectives, Time Pilot, Liquid Ohio, Nocturnal Lyric, Midnight Times, Gival Press’s ArLiJo, and Polari Journal. His stories, novels and teleplays have won awards, including a 2008 Pushcart Prize nomination; 3rd Place in the 2010 PNWA literary contest and finalist status in the 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2013 PNWA contests; 3rd Place in the 79th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition and a winning entry in the 2013 WILDSound Screenplay competition.
When not embroiled in his own writing, Barry sips wine, nibbles on chocolate, and watches films and TV—both the classic and the cheesy. (Mmm…cheese!)