From that moment I was on the way to doing the story. What ailed that man? What had gone wrong? What would he find when he came to the house and the two old ladies? And wouldn't the little road, in the end, if he followed it so far as it went, take him back, refreshed and strengthened, to the road and the life he had abandoned?
Edgar Young: A story usually starts, in my case, with an idea—some truth that I wish to prove, some fact that I wish to demonstrate, or some effect I wish to show. This, to my estimation, is what a story writer means when he speaks of "an idea" for a story.
Summary
Answering, 113. By a rough system of tabulating, allowing two points for a subject when it is usually or always the genesis of a story, and one point when it is sometimes or rarely the genesis, we get the following general view:
Character, 73; character and action, 4; character and situation, 10; situation, 73; incident, 69; titles, 19; setting, 19; purpose, 14; phrase, 11; "just born," 5; emotion, 4; miscellaneous, 26; varying as to genesis, 57; don't know, 4.
The miscellaneous include such as: contrast, condition of mind, problem, motive, period, tales, a name, a view of life, news, period.
These statistics from the data given can serve merely to give a general survey and to indicate, at least approximately, the relative frequency of use. That character, situation and incident should head the list was rather to be expected, though hardly in that order. That titles should rank next seems surprising.
The interest in these data is chiefly for the beginner. Probably the best place to get an idea for a story is wherever you can get it and be satisfied with it, but this data may show the beginner sources not previously considered. Perhaps the best service to him is the demonstration that creative minds do not all work alike and that general rules are to be regarded with suspicion until found really applicable to the particular case.
Aside from service, these data may be of some passing interest to writers, critics and editors in general.