Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #8: The Ghost of Christmas Present, or Taking Ideas from Famous Stories

After I published five stories in a row about my ongoing character, musician Sossity Chandler, I decided I needed to do something else. Ongoing characters are common. W. Somerset Maugham wrote several stories about Ashendon, a British spy. Not many people know that Mark Twain wrote two novels about Tom Sawyer after the publication of the initial book on him. Other authors have done the same, but I thought maybe I ought to branch out a little bit lest I get caught in a rut.

The Christmas holidays were approaching. Christmas is many things, but to those who read a lot it is also Dickens' famous novella, A Christmas Carol. Soon I had an idea for a new story.

Doing a spin-off story was nothing new for me. I said in an earlier blog that the first story I published, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake," was modeled on a Henry James story, "The Aspern Papers." But this would be a little different. It would reference a well-known piece of literature. It would continue the creative "conversation" on the piece. I had seen some spins on the story. The made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol set the story in the USA during the Great Depression. Everyone from Mickey Mouse to Mr. Magoo to the Muppets had been included in versions of the story. This story, however, would employ elements from the Dickens ghost tale and go off in a different direction from the original.

Doing this sort of thing is an old tradition. I often 

hear people talking about how Shakespeare "stole" all his plot lines from other authors. I once heard a poet tell about how William Wordsworth "stole" the idea for the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" from his sister, Dorothy.  But the idea that every story must be original is a relatively new development. In the past, authors took elements from other stories, used plots, tropes, characters, and ideas freely. And even modern writers do. My favorite story, W. Somerset Maugham's "Mr. Know-All," borrows plot from "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant. Examples could be multiplied. But if you're going to communicate with an existing 

work of literature (I like this term better than "steal"), 

you'd better do it with a little bit of skill.

The story, "The Ghost of Christmas Present," appeared in a British magazine called Neonbeam (no longer published). It is about a lonely, down-and-out guy, Jerry, who receives a visitor on Christmas night. The young lady says she has no place to go. He assumes she is homeless. She is dressed retro (1960s) and doesn't know what a computer or bottled water is. Finally, she confesses that she is a ghost.

He looks up her story and finds out she was murdered after a rock concert some time back. Once it is established she is a ghosts, she quips, "I guess I could be the Ghost of Christmas Present."  He remembers how as a child he had thought this meant "present" as in "gift" and that the ghost brought people Christmas presents. Jerry goes to bed that night thinking he can't even score with a ghost girl and this Christmas will be like the others in his adult life:  lonely and disappointing. In the middle of the night, however, the girl materializes in his bed. She informs him that from midnight to about 3 a.m., ghosts have bodies and the two of them make love. She also tells him why she is a ghost. Pretty and sought-after in life, she led many young men on. One ended up committing suicide after she dumped him and, when she is later murdered, she can't go to her rest. Being with Jerry makes her realize that to "go on" she will have to do good. The good is showing him love, giving of herself, and then being willing to face the consequences (whatever they are) when she goes on to her reward.

Shakespeare also informs the story. She haunted the theater where the concert after which she was murdered was held. But when a church rented the place for a Christmas celebration, she was driven out and had to flee. At the beginning of Hamlet, when Horatio and his friends are speculating on whether or not they've really seen a ghost, one comments,

                                       Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
                                    Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
                                    The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
                                    And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
                                    The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
                                    No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
                                    So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

Something about Christmas and ghosts doesn't jive. So the girl, whose name is Bari, is driven away and has to seek refuge in Jerry's house. Here is another instance of "stealing." But for writers, using other texts is par for the course.

Bari is able to go on—though she's not sure 

what awaits her later in the afterlife—because 

she has done good and shown love to someone. In the morning, Jerry gets a call from the only girl he ever dated inviting him to spend Christmas day with her. The Ghost of Christmas Present has indeed brought him a gift—the gift he wanted most of all.

Stories that reference familiar works of literature are risky. The author has to walk a fine line, not borrowing too much from the story, not crassly appropriating another author's content, but making, in a sense, a commentary on the possibilities an existing story opens up. "All books speaks of other books, and every author tells a story that has already been told," novelist and critic Umberto Eco once wrote. Stories have already been told, but they lead to innumerable tales that can proceed from the original. "The Ghost of Christmas Present" was like this. There have been other "takes" in my writing career. Appropriating ideas from well-known literary works, revising them, and recasting them is a great exercise for any writer to do.

Take a look at my newest book, Mother Hulda, a science fiction story based on a tale by the Brothers Grimm. 

Check out my Writer's Page for more titles. 

Comments are always welcome!