Book Review: Origins of a Story

What a fun little book exploring the idea of story germs that led various authors! In Origins of a Story, Jake Grogan compiles 202 stories of inspiration for some truly great works of literature. Of course, the explanations behind books I knew (having read or watched 77) were more interesting than unfamiliar ones. Still, I came away with appreciation for the various ways writers encounter a creative impetus, as well as more titles on my to-be-read list. Some stories were familiar (the advice given to Dickens to change the ending of Great Expectations or the Reys' transportation and transformation of Curious George). All were interesting.

I identified with many of the vignettes listed in this book. Although I have only published one book, I have written ten complete and two partial manuscripts. For one, a title popped into my head, just like Madeleine L'Engle's eureka moment with the names of her characters. (I found it intriguing that L'Engle wrote A Wrinkle in Time one year after she had "sworn off writing for good, citing her inability to earn a living as a forty-year-old woman despite all the of the time and effort that she put in." And she still persevered because that manuscript received 25 rejections before finding a publisher.) For me, one what-if premise sprang from a difficulty a relative was facing. My middle-grade novel grew from my experience as a pre-teen and one of my YA novels came from finding a stray bone during a walk with my husband. Everything I have written has an autobiographical element. Yet, one action some of these authors took was foreign to me. Several authors threw out manuscripts and rewrote them again from scratch, something I have never done.

So many of these brief stories were fascinating. In the section discussing Ordinary People (one I've heard of but neither read nor seen), the author explains her desire to write about the difficulty one has when experiencing the fluctuations of depression. Although I don't relish reading about suicide, the book sounds more intriguing after reading the impetus that motivated the author. In outlining Stephen King's story germ for Misery, it made me want to read Evelyn Waugh's short story, "The Man Who Loved Dickens." Holes grew from the anguish of yard work in the summer in Texas. (Perhaps I should tell Bryce to avoid this, ha!) In discussing Jane Eyre (a book I was listening to while reading Grogan's book), I learned that Charlotte Bronte's two younger sisters died of tuberculosis, just like a character in the book, something I didn't know. I wasn't aware that S. E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15-years-old. All in all, this was quite an interesting read, especially so for a writer.