So I was recently commissioned to write a short story for a student’s personal website. When I first spoke with Abdul, he had this idea for a story involving a Muslim orphan from Afghanistan whose dream it was to meet the Queen of England.
He wanted to dedicate the story to his mother as he took a lot of inspiration for it from her life. It took me a few questions before I realised that, no his mother had never been an orphan from Afghanistan and to the best of his knowledge had never cherished a desire to meet the Queen.
So where had this idea come from?
“It’s just something that has been in my head for the last 5 years or so” was Abdul’s response. It was then that I decided I needed to do a little more digging before writing anything. I asked him a few basic questions about the central characters and how he wanted them to be and act. I gave him some feedback and a few suggestions, then asked him to think about it over the weekend and then come back to me on the Monday.
Come Monday, we finally got to the bottom of the story he actually wanted to tell.
The Queen was not in it.
And the Muslim Afghan Orphan had disappeared entirely (maybe he went back to Afghanistan).
The story he actually wanted to tell was partly based on a real life experience he had involving a woman…come on tragic romance! The two themes he wanted from his original idea were still intact;
- That the boy was a young Muslim who loved his religion and was a very shy but peaceful chap.
- That the boy fell in love with a woman who he thinks is Muslim but turns out to be a full on Christian.
The critic in me had pointed out the total lack of conflict between his characters in the original idea so I was pleased that he had taken my suggestions and now there was a little more meat on these people. Here were some characters I could flesh out and make more interesting.
But it was still missing something. Originally he wanted it to have a happy ending, but to me that just didn’t seem true to these characters.
We opted for a compromise and I began writing the story.
Final Result
The point of me sharing this tale is that I like so many writers, often find that the original idea for a story often morphs into something completely different when you actually start fleshing it out.
Abdul’s original idea was interesting, but for what he wanted it wasn’t interesting enough. Enter a story that pitches these characters into a situation the reader can identify with whilst still retaining the original themes.
I like to think of it as a hopeful kind of story. As to what Abdul thought of it…well I’ll let him tell you:
“John wrote a brilliant and engaging story, and was happy to edit it until it was perfect!! John is also very imaginative and adds great substance to the plot of the story! It was a great pleasure to have bought this and I’ll definitely be coming to you again in the future! Thanks once again John”
Abdul K.
Only one person’s opinion of course, but as it’s the opinion of the person who paid me, I’ll take it as a good sign.
And as for the story…due to a publishing rights agreement I can’t publish it on my site…yet…but me being clever I managed to get a publishing agreement that allows me to use the story in print and online in the future. In the meantime once it is up and live on Abdul’s website I will be posting the link on here in the near future.
If you really want to read it before then and you know me well, maybe I can show it to you privately. Until then…you’ll have to wait.
