“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
Roy Batty in 1982’s movie “Blade Runner[paid link]”
During the first half of the twentieth century, a stranger arrived in a town outdoors in El Salvador; he entered one of those places people went to eat (not a restaurant); a “Comedor” is the exact Spanish term for them. Once in there, for entertainment or unknown reasons, he performed magic tricks the people of that time did not expect. Some of the witnesses were so impressed to the point of catching a fever after the incident. A girl heard this story from one of these feverish people; she was my grandmother.
My mom’s mother lived with us when I was a child; she was an essential family member; she was certainly a severe woman but also instinctively wise, becoming a defining person in my life. As a kid, my siblings and I listened to her stories, which she repeated. Over time, some of them stuck with me, and even though I had forgotten the exact words or details, I kept the imagery I saw in my mind whenever I listened to them as if they were movies I rewatched.
When I was finally ready to write a short story based on her tale, she was no longer around to read it (she passed away in 2009). However, in this post, I want to share with you how I did, hoping that it can also help anyone do the same with those tales your elders used to tell you so they have a chance not to get lost in time, like… well, you know the rest.
Not a formula but a guideline
While I did not think of an in-depth structure before starting writing, I have developed a guideline for building my mystery short stories that I have found to be very effective. The diagram below explains it easily.
I need some characters driving some opposing forces or “conflict” between them that constitutes the story's setup. This story should drive these characters (or the characters drive the story) to a main event or “incident.” After the incident, the setup needs to be resolved and lead to an end.
The above is what I can recognize consciously and turn into a comprehensible guideline, but there is another unknown part, even to myself, and that is how I came up with the story setup. As Stephen King says in his fabulous book “On Writing [paid link],” he accurately states that writers usually don’t know where their stories come from. Let’s assume this is where your creativity or capacity to “steal” an idea to create the story comes into play.
The first thing I needed was a main event, which in this case was the one I shared at the beginning of the post: the stranger's visit, which would be the story's climax. Since I knew nothing about the witnesses or the reasons behind this man's presence, I had to create the story's setup around the main event. This made-up story will take the reader along the way.
The story
The protagonist is a kid, Mikey, who is recalling the events, just like I am recalling the tale of my grandmother. Everything starts when Pipo, a young man and the main character's cousin, is suddenly dumped by his girlfriend. Mikey unintentionally provokes Pipo, who is suffering a heartbreak crisis, to leave the house. The escape of Pipo conflicts with the interests of Mikey, who wants to attend the town’s fair. None of the family members will go to the fair if Pipo is not found. Here’s a relatable conflict and the core of the made-up story. This plot would eventually take the reader to the main event.
Pipo is suddenly found at his father’s house (where he lives with his stepmother), allowing the main character to go to the fair. This is a false victory for Mikey because, afterward, his cousin escapes again to evade his sorrow by drinking at the fair. The kid is again taken out of his fun day to help look for Pipo. It is while this search is taking place that the kid witnesses the arrival of the stranger at one of the fair’s huts (linking the made-up story with the main event).
The traceable inspiration
This made-up story needed to be relatable and to have a weight of its own; by this, I mean that it did not necessarily have to be related to the main event, at least not directly. In old towns, especially in the outdoors, many family members used to live in the same house. I knew this from my experience since my grandmother, aunt, and older cousin (on whom I based one of the characters) lived at my parents' house. So this was my character’s setup, the dynamics of several family members living together under the same roof.
Mikey, still ignoring the complexities of human relationships, provokes the sudden departure of his cousin. When you’re a kid, you’re still incapable of grasping all the depths behind many family incidents. This connects to the other relatable topic, that of split couples and broken families. Pipo’s father is divorced from his wife, and now Pipo is separated from his girlfriend. The family house is Mikey’s grandmother’s house (a symbolic reference to the fact that this story is based on a tale of my grandmother), and both Mikey and Pipo live fatherless with their respective moms. The magic tricks performed by the stranger will add to this breakup theme and give the name to the title of the story, “The Tiny Paper Man.”
If you are willing to read the story, it is available for free in two mediums:
Read it online on Wattpad, either in the English version or its unique flavor in Spanish.
You can also download it to your device (both versions are available here).
I am hoping that having these stories written and soon publishing them in paperback format will be a way to preserve these memories. Since then, I have written many short stories (two more based on my grandma’s tales), published and unpublished, but this is one I always enjoy going back to read every now and then. I feel this is the only way to have my grandmother tell me a story again. How about you? Did your grandmother or grandfather used to tell you stories, too? What if you turned them into a short story as well?