Where Do I Get My Story Ideas?

I like to answer questions about my writing. I much prefer that to the actual readings. I just realized that as I typed it, but it's true. I don't know if it's the interactivity of it or that I'm not confident that I do a good job of reading, but I do know that I like to talk about the process I go through in my writing. And that's true despite the fact that, no matter how many times I do events, I get the same few questions every time. Once in awhile, someone will surprise me, but mostly it's some combination of the same three or four questions. So I thought I would do a short series of posts in which I answer those queries. 

One thing that is almost always asked, especially at events that aren't with other authors, is where I get my story ideas. The first time I was asked that, I have to admit that I was taken aback to realize I didn't have any idea. And the reason for that is that when I first started writing Harsh Prey, my first book, it was more about the characters than the story itself. I had two people who loved each other deeply, but one of them wasn't sure if she could deal with the violent job of the other. It was almost like I had a snapshot and I built the whole story out from that still frame. It's not almost like that, actually. It's exactly like that. I had no idea where the story was going. At the beginning, I asked myself, what if she's been gone to decide if she can deal with his being a detective and she calls, only to have the violence of his job intervene? And that seemed to work, so I had to ask why the violence happened. The answer was what propelled the story. But regardless of what happened in the detective half of the books, they were, and always will be, more than half about that relationship between Harry and Dee, and now Jenn and Emma Grace too. The Shalan Adventures are, for good or bad, stories about a loving family and the things they go through together. It's almost incidental that he's a gumshoe. 

The second Shalan story, Kisses and Lies, was loosely inspired by an event in the life of the young lady upon whom I based the leggy blonde at the beginning of the book. She had gotten married--in fact, I had performed the wedding--and found that her new husband changed immediately afterward. It was nowhere near as violent as it was in my fictionalized version, but it was, as usual, this series of what-ifs. What if he had been hiding something darker? What if it got violent? What if there were a family dynamic that added a level of depth? And the story grew from there.

The next two, In the Shadow and Dawn of Grace, are really one giant story arc broken into two books. The arc actually begins at the end of Kisse and Lies when Harry finds out that Dee is pregnant. That story was always going to be primarily about them losing that baby and then getting it back. I made the story of Jenn to parallel that. The Jenn part was again inspired loosely by real life events, though no one incident in particular. I'm just exposed to and touched by stories of abuse against young people because of my job as a high school teacher. And when I started writing In the Shadow, I just chose a young lady who was my student and made her the face I saw when I imagined the story in my mind. This young lady wasn't just my student. She was one of my adopted kids, the gang who eat lunch in my room and stay after school to watch movies while I make pancakes and come see me after they graduate when they come home from college. So when I pictured someone doing terrible things to her, it helped me tap into the rage that drove Harry to do what he did at the end of the book. 

As for my current work in progress, it grew out of a scene from a classic book. I read it as part of the AP reading last summer. It was about a young lady taken in by someone purporting to be her father, but he turns out to be a very bad man. Over the course of the week of the reading, I started building a story on that concept that had nothing to do with the original book at all, but that evolved from that situation. What if a teenager had no family and suddenly someone came along saying he was her long-lost father and he wanted to take her in? So that made me ask the next question, which was how did she come to have no one? Was she always an orphan or did she have a family that she lost somehow? And what if, like in the original book, he wasn't really her father? Why would he be interested in taking her in? I knew he had to have some ulterior motive, but I really didn't want it to be anything sexual. I'd had enough of that dark realm and wanted his motivations to be evil in a completely different way. So the story built from there. 

So I guess the answer to the question of where I get my story ideas is that I start with a character or a group of characters and a beginning point--a snapshot in time--and I start asking what if. What if this happened? What if he or she reacted in that way? And once I've asked and answered enough of those what-ifs, I have a book. Piece of cake. Mmm, cake. I better wrap this up and have some breakfast. 

Next week: Where Do My Characters Come From?

My Writing Process: When The Mouse Hits a Dead End

As most writers will tell you, there really are two different types of writers: plotters and pantsers. I suppose it's possible there are some freakish hybrids out there, but I have no idea what that would look like. For those who aren't familiar with the words, the first is probably pretty self-evident. They plot out their books, and even series of books, down to the letter. They have summaries of each chapter and know going in who's going to live, who's going to die, and who the bad guy is. For them, writing is just filling in the spaces between a basically predetermined set of plot points. Pantsers, on the other hand, are flying by the seat of their pants. They are much like a mouse in a maze, trying out a route and turning around when they come to a dead end. Sometimes a route is long and circuitous, only to end up being fruitless--or cheeseless, if you want to carry on the mouse analogy.

I'm a firm pantser. To some degree or another, I am discovering the plot and characters as I write them. Author E. L. Doctorow said, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night; you can see only as far as your headlights but you can make the whole trip that way." These, my friends, are the words of a pantser. I like the analogy, but I think a more accurate comparison is that writing is like exploring a house at night with the power out. You can see only as far as the end of the flashlight beam, but you can discover every room and its contents that way. I see writing as less a trip from point A to point B than a journey of discovery. And that's why I like being a pantser. If I already knew what and who was in every room, the joy of discovery would be abated. To paraphrase my dear old friend and teaching colleague Dan Daniel, I could be a plotter if I wanted to; I just can't want to.

But that's not to say my process doesn't have pitfalls. Like the mouse hits dead ends, sometimes I'll write whole chapters only to discover that I've taken a wrong turn. The route doesn't get me where I want to go or ends up not fitting in the overall narrative I think I'm trying to achieve. Sometimes, like an instance I wrote about with my second book, Kisses and Lies, it's a matter of rewriting a character to make her more sympathetic and round. In that case, if I introduced the character badly, it wouldn't break our hearts toward the end when she dies very badly at the hands of a horrible man.

And then there are situations like the one I've put myself in with my latest work in progress. I just wrote a scene this week in which the Shalans are on vacation and they discover that the murderer they were seeking back home has somehow appeared in North Carolina where they're staying. I felt when I was writing it that it was good stuff and would make for an intriguing twist. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like it might be a blind alley, to borrow a Britishism. I'm not sure I can satisfactorily explain how in the world the villain has ended up, against all odds, in the exact same place, hundreds of miles away, as the protagonists. Yes, I could make it fit, but I'd have to change the whole arc to the ending I've envisioned. I'm close enough to the end of the story that the final solution is starting to clarify in my mind and this story-line just does doesn't fit it. The killer isn't following Harry, Dee, and Jenn and to have this person show up two states away at the exact same place would require an astounding level of coincidence or it would necessitate coming up with a reason why he or she actually is following the Shalans.

So what do I do? I have two choices. I boot the scene and go a different direction. Like a regular old mouse, I turn around and try another route in the maze. But unlike a plain mouse, I have the ability to alter the maze. I can grab a grenade and blow a hole in the dead end and keep going. If I really like the scene and want to keep it, I've found a compelling reason to adjust my plot arc.

So which is it? Reroute or readjust the arc? Regular mouse or mighty mouse? I guess you'll have to read the book to find out.

WV Book Festival

My booth on the first day

For those who are regular followers of my blog, you know this entry is a day later than usual. That's because I was at the WV Book festival this weekend and wanted to wait until it was over to write about it. Well, that and I was really busy, but mainly the first thing. I could summarize the whole event by saying that I definitely plan to go again next year.

I went in, to be honest, with extremely low expectations. The last two events I attended where there were many authors there, I sold next to no books. In point of fact, I sold exactly one at each--and one was basically an exchange with the writer at the next table. So I figured this would be a similar experience, but I wanted to go anyway in the hopes that I would add some names to my mailing list and get my face and name known a little around the state.

The amazing sign that Charlie Gesell made for me. I got
several positive comments about it.

Well, I got that and more. I actually sold several books--at least compared to the other events. I added sixteen names to my mailing list and I met some amazingly nice people. The folks in the next booth, Devin and Sue Thompson (Sue writes historical romance and Devin provides, in his words "logistical assistance"), were helpful and generous and just plain nice. They were my first sale! Additionally, I shared my booth for part of the day on Saturday with a man named Mark DeBryan, who (beyond the fact that he forced me to take money for sharing my booth) gave me some amazing pointers and ideas for increasing my sales. And he was a nice guy to boot.

As an added bonus, I got to see some old friends. I ran into some treasured former students and even some current ones. I also said hello to some authors and writing business folks I've gotten to know over the last several months since I started travelling with my books.

There were tons of activities going on beyond just the booths.
There were several big-name authors giving talks, workshops,
and even a children's area. This is the fairy tale parade. They
were moving pretty fast, so this is the best picture I got.

It was quite a positive, productive weekend. I got ideas for improving several aspects of my business and I spent time with nice folks. I'd like to thank the Kanawha County Public Library and all the people who took countless hours putting this event together. I can't think of a single thing I would change, except maybe letting the authors park for free, but that was a Civic Center thing, so it doesn't even count.

So, next year, when this comes around again, you can be sure you'll see me there--hopefully with another book or two for sale.

Stuff I Learned While Editing My Third Book

I'm getting set to head to Tamarack in the morning, so, though you can't tell it, I'm writing this on Friday. One of the joys of summer is time to get writing work done. This week, I've made some changes to both Harsh Prey and Kisses and Lies. No changes to the storylines or anything. For Harsh Prey, I updated the cover and back cover as well as fixing an alarming number of errors, proofreading and otherwise. It now has crazy stuff, like headers and page numbers and all the words are (I hope) spelled correctly. Kisses and Lies had but one typo that I could find and the cover was already amazing, so that didn't change, though I did change the back cover to include the blurb and a short bio. Both books now take up a lot less room, too. I changed both to single spaced, which did a couple things. First, it made the footprint of each book a lot smaller, which is pretty environmentally friendly. Second, it saved pretty heavily on print costs and I'll be able to pass the savings along to buyers.

But while I wasn't working on that stuff, I finally started this week with editing and revising Shalan #3, In the Shadow (Available around beginning of October). This process has taught me a few things. Here they are, in no particular order:

I like editing on paper instead of the computer. I've never done that since the olden days when I had no choice but to write and edit on paper. Since I got a word processor program for my sexy new Commodore 64, which came complete with a dot matrix printer and no hard drive, I've done all my editing right on the computer screen. This time, however, I accidentally started doing it on paper. I say accidentally because I never would have done it if I hadn't printed out a copy so my medical consultant, the real Dr. Mathur (that will make sense when you read the book) could make corrections when I butchered the medical scenes. I went through her comments and made corrections and then, before I knew it, I was editing the whole thing on paper. I found myself moving around in the text checking continuity and tweaking the storyline in ways that would be downright difficult to do on the computer. So I think it's paper editing for me from now on.

I've come a long way as a writer. Since I did an edit of HP immediately before ITS, I realize that, while I think the first book was good, I feel like the newest book is exponentially more engaging. Part of that is because I've had three books now to flesh out Harry, Dee, and Otis, making them more three-dimensional as time has gone by, but I think it's also about just honing my voice as a writer. I hope you'll agree.

I tend to be my worst critic. That's not really news, especially to my Pepper Potts, aka Maria Delgado. She and I were texting about the new book and I said something positive about it and, even through text, I could tell she was pleasantly shocked that it wasn't another critical statement about myself.

Speaking of Pepper and Dr. Mathur, this book, more than any other, reminds me that I can't do this alone. Poonam came all the way from Hershey, Pennsylvania to work with me on the medical scenes in this story. Without her, those scenes simply wouldn't have rung true. Maria reads every version of every book and, though she doesn't do a lot of editorial work, she is my own personal cheerleader. Her support is unwavering and it means the world to me.

I can make myself cry. When I wrote the first draft of this book, it was a dark time for me. The story goes into some really tragic and scary places within human nature, But I never cried. This time, though, as I reread after having put the story away for a couple months, one scene in particular brought a tear to my eye. Harry and Dee are just as real to me as if they were flesh and bone real and when a heartbreaking thing happens to them, it breaks my heart too. Yes, I made them up and I could have written them any way I wanted. But most writers will tell you that, no, I really couldn't have. It really doesn't work that way.

And finally, I discovered--okay, I really just confirmed something I already suspected--that I would love to do this stuff full time. It's summer. I could be outside. I could be traveling. I could be making money teaching summer school. What am I doing? I'm going to bed early and getting up every day and either writing, editing, or marketing. And I'm happy as a clam. I really, really hope I don't have to wait another 8 or 9 years to get to do this all the time. But I guess that's up to the book buying public.

So there they are. Six things I learned this week. That's a lot of stuff considering I only started Monday. So what did you learn this week?