Last night, I decided to try a little literary experiment. And, actually, it turned out pretty well! Just see for yourself. I asked several people to write me one sentence of a fictional nature. It could be any valid sentence, like you’d read out of a novel. The rules evolved as I went along, and eventually people asked for an example. As I didn’t want anyone to see anyone else’s, I came up with my own: “The single most important thing I was ever told was not to cry in front of witnesses.” As I didn’t necessarily care to embark upon the story until after I’d collected everyone else’s statements, I didn’t use that line. However, it’s at least here for posterity.

My original intent was to get five people’s sentences. I had picked the people out carefully based on what I figured was either a guaranteed willingness to help with literary excursions or importance to my life or some combination of both. However, I started late at night and most people had gone to sleep, and I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, so I shotgunned a request to a number of people. As it turns out, I got almost everyone I was going for initially, plus a couple extra, and wound up with seven sentences to use.

One of the things I liked was how each sentence completely rearranged what I thought was going to happen based on everything I thought might happen beforehand. As I said, I didn’t really start writing until after I collected everything, but ideas were coalescing with each puzzle piece everyone gave me. Here’s what people gave me, in the order I got it:

  • Larry Saunders – My partner gave me the simple and straightforward line “I went to work today.” I eventually added on the clause that it couldn’t simply be something that was an inverted true statement, i.e. “the sky is not blue.” Given how short and straightforward it was I thought his sentence would be easy to work in and wouldn’t have an impact, but given the nature of the last paragraph, and the way it showcases Mildred’s escapist desires, I think it added some nice depth.
  • Eric Will – Eric, who has contributed to this blog and works with me, gave me the statement “When I was young, I met this beautiful girl by a lake.” His was particularly interesting in that he started a trend that would be shared later where he gave me something from an abandoned story he had started himself. This beautiful girl turns out to be a pretty pivotal point in one of the narrators’ lives.
  • Jason House – Another coworker, after giving me a bit of grief, as he is prone to do, gave me the most difficult sentence to work in: “Unicorns are primarily found in warm tropical climates but have been known to travel as far north as new hampshire in november to enjoy the changing colors of the evergreens.” I’ll admit that I cheated and used it as a quotation from a non-existent book. However, like the girl, this book turned out to be a key component in altering the first narrator’s life.
  • Jessica Hughes – From an old character biography, I got “She stood tall and boldly faced the east with the burning remnants of her house and former treasure behind her.” Jessica has been a long-time friend of Larry’s and now we converse regularly on Twitter about music and many other things. Her statement contrasts with Eric’s pretty well, with the fire and water dichotomy, and features prominently at the point where the two narratives intersect, which I didn’t even realize until I was almost finished.
  • William West – A friend made entirely through the power of social media (read: we are Twitter buds) gave me “I never did find out if she was a stripper or a bank teller.” He apologized for it, which he said himself he should stop doing, so shame on him. The character he gave me turned out to be more of an indication of the kind of life the first narrator led, free-wheeling and womanizing. That made me re-think the love interest with the girl at the lake, because I still wasn’t sure what was going to happen there.
  • Molly – Another Twitter user, interesting in that I think she lives at most 500 yards away, I’ve probably seen her without realizing it, and I don’t know her full name, told me yet another line from a story she had started herself: “Mildred made weekly trips to the farmer’s market for social interaction and intrigue.” Strangely, this seemed to fit into the kind of lifestyle that the narrator would find interesting, per William’s entry earlier. It was also curious in that she finally used a proper name. I had considered restricting to pronouns in my request at first, but finally decided I wanted people to have as much freedom as possible. She was the only one who picked up on that open-ended promise. And it turned out to be the key to the hook that I came upon with the next and final sentence.
  • Mykl Levi – A recently-made good friend gave me the final sentence I would collect: “He was institutionalized when I met him, but that didn’t make me want him any less.” At first I thought I’d turn my narrator into a bisexual or something, but then I realized I could simply make him crazy all along. Of course, after flipping that switch, I had to decide if all the women he was after were fantasies, or reflections of the same woman, or any number of other things. I eventually settled on his mother, who it turned out would be Mildred. Naturally, she couldn’t say she wanted her son unless I wanted to make this a really twisted story (which I did not want to do), and she definitely wouldn’t have just met him anyway.

From this point out, I created the whole story. A lot of what I said in the comments happened anachronistically from how it’s presented here. Clearly, the second narrator didn’t even come into play until after Levi gave me his sentence, but I mentioned both of them as early as the first as though they were a given. At this point, it’s sort of difficult to remember at what points which portions came into being. What really matters is that I really love the end result. It turned out amazingly well, better even than I had hoped it would be.

I know there is probably some medical fallacy in the son’s insanity, Eric or Molly (who I think is a doctor or a researcher, I’m not sure which) could probably set me straight on that. This story was not really about doing tons of research, though. Usually I pop open Wikipedia and Google and go to town researching everything, but for this I just had the quotes at the top of a text file and just streamed it through the fingers. I edited two sections after the fact, adding one or two sentences a the top and taking out a couple at the bottom, but ultimately it just flowed.

So, after all that has been said, I’d like to issue a big thank you to everyone who helped me out with this. It sounds like I’m making a big huge deal out of such a short story, but I think it’s pretty good and I have some good people to thank for that. I hope none of you are offended at how I used (abused?) your creative contributions.