Writing About Thanksgiving by Elizabeth Alsobrooks

 

Let’s think of Thanksgiving from a writer’s perspective. Normally, Thanksgiving makes people think of family dinners, holidays, and things for which one is thankful. You can unpack any one of these concepts and come up with dozens of story ideas almost immediately.

First there's the process a writer might go through using Thanksgiving as a story starter. The most basic ideas can start with who’s coming to dinner, and that can be either broadened or narrowed by some basic questions such as why, where, or even how. Mystery writers aren’t the only ones who ask and answer questions. How else can writers come up with goals, motivations, and conflicts?

When you throw in the broader category of holidays, you open a Pandora’s box of dread, loneliness, loss, joy, pleasure, and that dark and intriguing mask characters can wear to hide their true emotions, either immediately apparent to the reader or revealed through a series of revelations.

Then there’s the intriguing concept of thankfulness. It can be a great motivator for a character and can also be a means by which another character manipulates them, whether for good or evil. Con artists are perfectionists when it comes to establishing trust. Who better trusted than someone for whom you feel gratitude? And let’s not forget that individual who might resent someone who they are forced to feel obligated toward, especially if that person continually uses it to manipulate them. Or that person who wants to avoid at all costs someone trying to express excessive gratitude.

If you ever wondered how writers come up with ideas, I hope this brief discussion of Thanksgiving helps you better understand the way writers think. For a writer, the ideas are endless from a concept as supposedly simple as Thanksgiving.

Now go figure out what you're going to do for Thanksgiving this year!