Where does my inspiration for stories come from, and how do I come up with these crazy stories? It’s one of the most common questions I get, and it’s one of my favorite to answer.

Let me explain.

Each of my stories (as all stories should) has two conflict components to it:
1. A Character Conflict (or the actual story)
2. A Plot Conflict (what guides each character to change)

Our Greatest Enemy as a collection was heavily focused on the former, which is why I consider it psychological horror with supernatural elements.

Discussing each conflict in more detail:

A Character Conflict or Internal Conflict

So how do I come up with a character conflict? Easy! I take a sliver of my own personality and I blow it out of proportion.

In Belt, I borrowed from my time as a child where I felt I was stuck between fighting parents (sorry, mom – love you). It’s a small aspect of my past, but it’s there. I took it and I maximized it to create William. In Wrapped in Silk, my character struggles with anger and depression, both things that I, too, deal with from time to time. Sometimes my anger scares me, because I don’t like to be an angry person. Everyone gets a little angry, but Erik… he’s a lot angry, and that’s scary to me. For Inside a Concrete Box, I borrowed a ton of myself to create Arthur, a dad struggling with the loss of his own father and learning what it means to be a dad.

In each of these examples, I found a piece of myself that I was struggling with at some point in time, little conflicts that everyone deals with day to day that make up their own character, and I made a new person out of it. And thus, each character is a sliver of myself.

A Plot Conflict or External Conflict

This is where the horror genre comes into play. This is where I get creative and come up with something fun and catchy, but important, too. The Plot Conflict has to drive the character from a state of conflict to a state of resolution. A good story must have a character story, as well as a good plot that drives that story (this is my biggest complaint with fiction today – a good deal of it is all plot and lacks character).

In The Transfiguration, Sam is coming to terms with how he was rejected by his family (Character Conflict). The driving force behind him finding resolution to that conflict was his love for Riley, the family dog. In Our Greatest Enemy, Adam is dealing with loneliness. The driving force or plot to him finding resolution to this conflict was (I’m not going to spoil anything here) the world ending event and the conversation with his father.

In summary, how do I come up with these crazy ass stories? It usually starts with the fun plot, or an idea for something creepy. In each of my stories from this collection at least, the plot ideas came first. Sometimes while alone in the shower (Wrapped in Silk), sometimes during conversations with friends (The Transfiguration) From there, I come up with a character with a matching conflict that needs to be resolved.

So when you’re reading these stories, try to guess which sliver of myself is hiding between the lines!

If you haven’t read the story yet, pick it up on Amazon. Free for Kindle Unlimited readers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7QW7VQ5