A friend of mine posted the following to Facebook: “It’s Frankenstein day today, where I stitch together the bits of a new draft and see if it’s alive.” The metaphor describes how many people write stories—in bits and pieces, then later stitching them together. Something magical either happens, or doesn’t happen, to make these pieces, once stitched, feel like a story. (Of course, I am simplifying. There’s more work to it than that.) I believe a similar process occurs in the production of those scenes and images, before they are ever ready to be stitched together. However, that stitching often happens in a way that is harder to understand.

It reminds me of Mary Shelley’s waking dream. There’s so much skepticism surrounding it. Yet, she got it just right; she has described exactly how it feels, to me, to begin a story.

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together…. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me…. Swift as light and cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. ‘I have found it!’ (196)

That’s the way it feels to write a story—at least for some writers. You feed your brain. You read lots of books. You have intelligent conversations. You pay attention to the world around you. Then your subconscious pieces it all together and presents you with an image or a scene or a “waking dream.” You take that dream and you write it down. Then you analyze it, try to figure out what it means, go back in, and fill in the holes. Later, you’ll do a little more stitching, when you link it to other scenes, images, and waking dreams that your brain has mysteriously conjured up for you.

Shelley’s description of the dream does not negate or deny any of the other research she did for the novel—either the reading and general exposure to ideas she had before she started it, or any intentional manipulation she did after the draft was on its way. In fact, the dream happened because of the way she fed her mind.  And, of course, early influences and later editing are crucial to the novel. However, that dream can still feel like the defining moment of creating a story. It’s the exciting part. It’s the moment the story comes “alive”! Shelley very likely has an agenda in presenting the story’s genesis the way she does, but that doesn’t prove that her description is inaccurate. Literary scholars’ frequent skepticism regarding Mary Shelley’s dream seems somewhat misguided to me. But the fact that they are concerned about the story’s genesis at all (any story’s genesis, really) is quite revelatory; it parallels Victor Frankenstein’s quest.

That type of quest, in which an individual plays god by molding a creature and setting it, somehow, to life, is not unique to Frankenstein. One ancient example is that of the golem, from Jewish folklore. These monsters are not animated by technology or alchemy, but through prayer or incantation. Other similar examples are haunted dolls—animated by ghosts or evil spirits. And horror tales of re-animated dead, for example, abound. Human beings, it seems, have not required Frankenstein’s “science” (whether it be pseudo- or actual) to speculate about and caution against, playing God. Modern technology, however–computers especially–have given the old tales new “life.” Cylons, cyborgs, evil robots, the matrix—the list is long and varied and I’m not geek enough (yet) to do it justice.

Scholars debate the source of the creature’s “life” in Frankenstein. Is it science or alchemy? Technology or something closer to mysticism? Mary Shelley’s novel doesn’t explain precisely how the animation works; Victor is tight-lipped. Movie versions speculate according to their own agendas. There’s a ray beyond ultraviolet! Amniotic fluid! Lightning!

Mary Shelley’s waking dream draws all of these questions of life’s genesis together for me, and shows me how much they are related. That debate over whether it is technology or alchemy that animates Frankenstein is a telling one, just like the controversy over how Mary Shelley generated her ideas, just like the mystery of bringing any story to life. So the mystery of the spark of life, of what it is that animates, is very similar to the mystery of writing stories and novels. It happens. Stories come alive. But how? What, precisely, has made the novel’s monster live? And what makes the novel itself live in the public’s imagination? What draws us to keep asking? It seems to me this question has a lot to do with the interest in how Mary Shelley wrote her book, about what animated it—was it a waking dream or careful research and planning? But why is it so important? Is it because the scholars are also searching for that animating principle? In life? In fiction? Victor’s quest for the elixir of life is like our quest to understand how he did it in the book and is also like our quest to understand where the very spark of an idea for the story came from. Are we all trying to play god?