Writers & Their Ideas

One of the frequently questions novelists are asked is, Where do you get your ideas? Depending on the book, writers have various answers to this question.

William Peter Blatty said his idea for The Exorcist was based on a newspaper story he read as a 20-year-old English literature major at Georgetown University. The article by Billy Brinkley appeared in the August 20, 1949 issue of the Washington Post and was headlined, “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held In Devil’s Grip.” It told the story of a 14-year-old boy from Mount Rainier, Maryland who supposedly was possessed and how a Catholic priest freed the boy by performing the ancient ritual of exorcism. It was latter learned that the boy was actually 13 years oldand from Cottage City, Maryland.

For years the notion of demonic possession stuck in Blatty’s mind, and twenty years later, he began writing The Exorcist. He finished the novel during the summer of 1971. As part of his research, Blatty contacted the priest who had conducted the actual exorcism. The letter Blatty received revealed that a diary was kept by an attending priest, who recorded daily events related to the ongoing exorcism.

Blatty requested to see the diary, but the priest refused. After Blatty changed the lead character from a 14-year-old boy to a 12-year-old girl, he obtained a copy of the diary and based much of his book and movie on the material. The diary revealed that the exorcism was partially performed in both Cottage City, Maryland and Belmore, Missouri. Several are newspapers at the time reported on a speech a minister gave to an amateur parapsychology society, in which he claimed to have exorcised a demon from the boy named Robbie and that the ordeal lasts a little more than six weeks.

A film called The Haunted Boy – The Secret Diary of the Exorcist was released in 2012. It was based to an article Haunted Boy, by Mark Opsasnick that appeared in Strange Magazine.

 I haven’t read Blatty’s other books. But The Exorcist is what made him famous. The same is true for Peter Benchley’s Jaws,  John Knowles A Separate Peace,  Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Octavia Butler’s Kindred,  J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451.

Writers are an uneven bunch, but when they’re on their game, they can produce  something that not only reflects some essential truth about the time in which they live, but also reflects an essential nugget about human nature.