Where does a good story come from?
Well, in the case of my friends, it comes from experience. (See the "Stories To Tell...") entry on that matter.
But, in the case of fiction, they sometimes can come from anywhere.
I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the idea of "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," but I do know the condition I was in when I sketched it out:
Sick.
Very, very sick.
I'd spent the previous day with a chain smoking friend who had little to no ventilation in his small trailer, and no matter how I tried to avoid it, I caught a lungful by the end of the day.
The next morning, which was a pleasant late Summer\early Fall morning, saw me laying in bed with my windows open listening to the 90's On 9 XM Radio station.
A mid 90's dancehall tune came on, called "Sweet Dreams," by La Bouche.
The chorus went like this:
sweet dreams of rhythm and dancing
sweet dreams of passion through the night
sweet dreams are taking over
sweet dreams of dancing through the night
I then casually looked at the DirecTV display (yes, XM on DTV), read the title, and sort of just laid there a second.
"Hmm, sweet dreams."
It had obviously gotten me thinking.
Prior to all this I'd casually thought of one day doing a story about a sandman, but I never had any details and never really gave it any thought. It was just a statement.
But I rolled over, managed to grab a note pad, a pen, and while coughing up a pound or two of second hand smoke, I sketched out the most basic ideas of what would become "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
Odd that a 90's tune should inspire this script, 'cause my real inspiration (which was at that time unknown) came from a more magical presence: 50's doo wop music, and staring up at the night sky in the very early morning (5:30) and the early evening, just after the sun had gone down and the first stars had appeared.
I'd been doing that all summer.
I'd also been paying attention to the lunar phases.
And all these notions formed an alliance in my mind and I immediately set to work writing a story about a 17 year old guy living in 1953, becoming a Sandman, and living out the rest of his life watching the modern world go by.
Of course it's a little more complicated than that, given the mares, the Egptian Mau, Kieran the other Sandman who disappears mysteriously (only to reappear just as mysteriously in the 80's), and ultimately passing the bag of sand to a younger man who really fouls things up by rejecting his new duty and puts the entire town of Twilight Place to sleep.
So, the night, music, and a sickened state of being.
That's one place where ideas come from.
There are others.
Oh yeah, I was writing this in the fall of 2007, a full year before I had even heard of Stephenie Meyer's series "Twilight." I just want to clear that up.
And, again, I can prove it to be so. Hell I only started reading "Twilight" after I saw the movie back in November.
