Psychology in Writing: Front Page News

Article by Vasilios

When searching for new ideas for your writing projects, the creative spark may lie in a newspaper on your coffee table or buried in a pile of dated magazines in the waiting room of the doctor's office. Your writer's instinct may sense the potential of expanding an article into a larger work of nonfiction, or you may want to take specific elements within the story to serve as the foundation for a work of fiction. What begins as a news article can become a novel, a screenplay, a short story, or a collection of poems, whose theme is based on this one article.

The date was November 16, 1959, when writer Truman Capote was going through the New York Times where, on page 39, he read an article titled "Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain". The result was the novel In Cold Blood, a 1966 bestseller which became the harbinger for the nonfiction true crime genre. In Cold Blood would go on to be made into a 1967 movie, a 1996 TV miniseries and the novel's development would be the basis for two additional films: Capote (2005) and Infamous (2006). This, because Capote's instincts sensed a greater potential in a buried news article; something that begged to be explored further and culminating in a classic novel.

To assume that Capote's book is pure nonfiction is to assume wrong. With the best of intentions, a writer can only offer a personal interpretation of a real event since no two people can describe, in dispassionate terms, the exact manner of how a book is researched or which points are emphasized. Our individual writing styles make this impossible.

Peter Benchley's novel Jaws published in 1974, began as an article Benchley read ten years earlier, about a two ton Great White shark caught off the shores of Long Island, New York. Allegedly, an earlier shark attack in 1916, which claimed the lives of four people, off the coast of new Jersey, also contributed to developing the novel which, though fictional, has its basis in real life events.

Another Maritime favorite, author Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851), also a tale of fiction, draws inspiration from two real events. One was the ramming of a whaling ship in 1820 by a large Sperm whale. The second was the killing of an albino Sperm whale nicknamed Mocha Dick whose body was pierced by dozens of harpoons from previous attempts to kill it. Mocha Dick was also known to ram whaling ships. Moby Dick, a fictional novel, was subsequently developed from these two real life events.

Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) was based on the real kidnapping and murder of the Charles Lindbergh baby in 1932. It was referred to as the Armstrong Kidnapping Case in this fictional novel. Christie had experienced traveling on the Orient Express in 1928 and heard that the train had been trapped by snow some months later. This was also incorporated into her novel.

Today your computer takes you to current events from around the world and offers you the same stories from diversified angles. A trip to the local library may reward you with magazines reporting past and present stories for you to evaluate. At home, you may also have magazines and DVDs waiting to be rediscovered.

True life crime stories have a proven track record of attracting significant public attention. Many such events are best treated as nonfictional works while others may form the basis for a fictional work in taking certain aspects of the story and giving them a new outcome.

For example, take the case of Anthony Sowell, aged 50, a resident of Cleveland, who killed eleven woman and kept them in his house while they decomposed. The convicted sex offender was clearly not bothered by the smell nor did his neighbors think much of it. Here is a story that appeals to the horror fiction genre but may also be treated as a nonfictional account of a study in psychological and sexual dysfunction.

As an aspiring writer you should be alert, allowing the environment of reality to bring you these real life stories. Eventually, one such story will trigger your dormant imagination and ring the alarm inspiring you to write.

It may be that curiosity killed the cat but you, the writer, with the same curiosity must now ask how the cat was killed as well as why, when, where and what. This is your calling.