By now, you have at least THREE stories in front of you -- the story from your own life, the extant story that is similar to your story, and the extant story that is those stories' opposite.
1) Take a fresh piece of paper. Draw a large circle. Around the circle, at equidistant intervals, write the numbers one through eight (like a clockface, with fewer numbers).
2) At each point on the circle, you will write a few words to represent a SINGLE IMAGE. Here's where my notes aren't quite thorough enough, but I think what you want is this:
3) For Images One Through Four, write a single image from your original stories (of the actual people and places in your life that have inspired your writing). For images four through eight, write images from the stories that are their OPPOSITE.
4) You should now have a circle of images that draw from your own life and from a life of literature/stories/broader mythic culture. In the middle, you have an EMPTY SPACE. That space is important; it's where character lives, it's where new ways of looking at your story live.
5) Here's the fun part. Imagine that these images are dancers at a party. Bring two into the middle; what's the NEW IMAGE that's formed when you smash them into each other? On a separate piece of paper, make a list of NEW images formed by playing your 8 "circle images" off each other in pairs, in threes. List images until you stop finding anything new and interesting.
6) Look at what you have. Imagine that what you have are memories or images from a character's life or story. WHO IS THIS CHARACTER? Take a few minutes to tell yourself who this character is, maybe what his or her story might be.
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