So yeah, we moved.
It was a pretty big deal.
…okay, to be specific we moved one train station and we’re still in the same suburb. But none of that negates the time, effort, money, beer and stress that went into getting all our stuff in boxes at one end, sticking them on a truck, driving ten blocks and then unloading them all at the other end. Plus furniture.
So apologies for the radio silence; apologies too for being behind schedule on Obituarist II and a number of other things. But the roadblock is now mostly cleared away, there are only a few dozen more boxes of books and artwork to find homes for, and it’s time to get my blog on.
And tonight’s topic is… writing stories in which people move house. Yes, like the time I did a whole blog post about toothache, I’m taking ‘write what you know’ to its most quotidian extremes and then out the other side.
Off the top of my head, then, here are five ways to get story out of a change of address.
Human drama
You don’t have to have explosions or vampires to get a story that’s tense and full of conflict – you just need reasons for people to yell at each other, and moving house gives you plenty of those. The stress of house hunting, house viewing, making applications, dealing with estate agents, emptying your bank accounts, throwing out half of what you own, wishing you could throw out the other stuff, calling movers who never show up, waiting a damn week to get the internet connected… any and all of these can be fodder for a great story about fighting in cars, crying in the shower and having heroin for breakfast. Throw in poor impulse control and a blunt instrument and you’ve got a solid foundation for a crime story; throw in some dick jokes and you have one of the lesser Richard Pryor movies.
What you leave behind
Moving house is never clean; there’s always something that gets lost in the shuffle. What if it was more important, dangerous and/or embarrassing than a pair of socks or whatever was in the oven? How terrible (and storyworthy) if you left behind a door to Narnia or Venus, the Holy Grail, a bagful of severed heads or a body? Or if your wife/friend/housemate did, and this is the first you’ve learned of it? And while losing it is bad enough, the real story comes from what you’ll do to regain access and get it back (or cover it up forever) before the new occupants move in. Especially if things go wrong. (Spoiler: they’d better go wrong.)
Starting afresh
But forget about what you leave behind – think about where you’re going. Sydney, New York, Alpha Centauri… these are places to begin again, to discard the person you used to be and their problems. This can be simple and personal, something that matters to you and only you (much like when I moved from Brisbane to Melbourne). Or you could have the kind of past that follows you from place to place, and you have to do something dramatic and extreme to shrug off that warrant, that horde of evil shadows, that legacy of pirate vampirism that comes of being the last descendent of Captain Dracula. Moving gives you a new status quo – what will you do to maintain it?
New neighbours
It’s not just about where you live, though – it’s who and what lives around you that has a big impact on quality of life. Hopefully the people are nice, hopefully the streets are friendly, hopefully the pub has your favourite beer. It’s always a shame to move to a new neighbourhood and find the gutters choked with alien blood, the drug dealer upstairs constantly bumping 120-decibel dubstep or that the bottle shop only stocks gin and ichor. Or flip it – maybe your new neighbours are great. Better than great. Maybe they want to give you drugs, teach you their language and take you to bed. Maybe that’s when good neighbours become good friends. WHAT A NIGHTMARE.
The house from hell
Horror stories get it – new places to live always come with secrets. Dangerous secrets, like gates and doors that change you, corridors that grow longer and abandon you between dimensions, or maybe just a shitload of ghosts. Moving in means getting caught up in the baggage of your new address – and no matter it seemed during that ten-minute inspection, it’s going to have a hidden drawback. Maybe there’s a briefcase of stolen money buried in the basement, maybe the One True Grail Knight’s mail still gets delivered there… maybe it’s just asbestos in the walls. Hell, maybe it’s built on top of a forgotten graveyard – it’s a cliché, sure, but then again there’s a golf course built on the cemetery of a 19th century insane asylum not ten minutes from my place. So now you’re stuck with angry ghosts. Or bones getting stuck in your plumbing.
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Rightio, that’ll do. Time to walk the dog, climb the stairs, shove a box of assorted connection leads to one side and call it a night.
And if you’re moving house this weekend, best of luck.