The Devil Is in the Details: How Stories Begin

I walked past this the other day: a skeleton Santa in a red hat, leaning over a doorway, a mug of tequila in hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I stopped. I laughed. Obviously, I took a photograph.

This is the kind of moment we used to build experiential exercises around in our Eat Write Roam screenwriting retreats. Not because it’s clever or ironic, but because it’s specific. You couldn’t invent this in a vacuum. You have to be there. You have to notice it.

So here’s the exercise, and it’s deliberately simple:

Go outside. Walk. No phone. Pay attention to something you’d steal for a script. One detail. The way a shadow plays over a wall. A gesture between friends. An overheard line you don’t fully understand. A texture. A sound. Something that lodges itself in your body before it makes sense intellectually.

Write three sentences. That’s it.

This isn’t about waiting for inspiration or pretending stories magically arrive. It’s about noticing what’s already there and letting it register. Most of the work happens before you ever write a word.

That skeleton didn’t come with a backstory. But I guarantee if I sit with it long enough, one would start to form. Meanwhile, a variation of this is already in my current script Café Eterno.

This is how stories usually start.

Only in San Miguel. Cheers to a very “Merry” Christmas.

Merry Christmas from San Miguel de Allende ©Lorraine Flett