Award Goodness

So my friend Rena, aka the Liz with the Dragons, has nominated me for an award. Awards are fun, and I always enjoy talking about myself, so here we go!

The rules:

• paste the award badge to your blog, 
• give us 11 random facts about yourself, 
• answer the 11 questions, 
• and choose your nominees

 Since I am not sure I can think of random facts about myself everyone wants to know, we're skipping right to the questions, m'kay? M'kay.

a.        What naive misconception did you have about writing books when you started

That your "process" was a static thing. Once you found your magical process at the end of a rainbow, that was it. Just, lather rinse repeat for every single book, forever and ever.

This is so not the case. I always try new things, partially because I am always trying to find a better way to do something, and also because the same thing doesn't work for each book. Some ideas I spend a lot of time working on the character, while the next book I might not have to work hard at all. 

This isn't to say that I don't spend equal time working on character, plot, and setting, just that some things come easier than others, but what things are easy and what is hard changes with each book.  
 

b.      What is your favorite part of writing? 

That warm, bubbly feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're writing and the rest of the world disappears. Your fingertips are flying across the keyboard and the words come easy.

I also really love brainstorming new ideas.

 

c.       What is the one thing you would change about publishing and why?

Wow, what a can of worms! Most of the business practices of publishing are there because they need to be, I think (please lay down your pitchforks). But there's a lot of things that could be done far more efficiently, and I think the new computer tracking systems make it hard to build a career. 

 

d.      Do you have an inspiration list? Can you give us a sample? 

I use music and pictures to inspire me, especially during the brainstorming stage of a project.

Pinterest is excellent for the picture aspect. Here are my boards. All of them are for a book idea. Some of those ideas are really far developed (Deja Vu and Sanctuary for example), but other ideas have been really slippery, so I actually used Pinterest in attempts to brainstorm (What the Water Gave Me for example). 

As for the music aspect, that's why Job invented iTunes. I make playlists for each book idea, and I have a separate playlist called The Idea Mine that's nothing but songs I find inspiring. A few of those songs are:

"A Question of Heaven" by Iced Earth

"Snuff" by Slipknot

"What the Water Gave Me" by Florence and the Machine (if you couldn't already tell from Pinterest) ;)

"Talons" by Bloc Party

and "Daisy" by Brand New

Tangent: there is an excellent Whedonverse music video to Daisy...

 

e.       If you were a super villain, what would be your fatal flaw? 

Hubris, for that is everyone's fatal flaw.

Other than that, it would be over thinking everything. I would try to run a Xanatos Gambit, over think all the possibilities, and never get anything done. I would be the less effective supervillain ever.

f.       If you were a super hero, what would be your super power? 

I would be the superhero that pulls all the other superheros together. When the chips are down and all hope seems lost, I would be the plucky sidekick that gives a rousing speech about friendship or courage or nachos that kicks the Moody Superhero off his/her butt and saves the day.

If I was short inspiration that day, I would just crib Aragorn's speech. He wouldn't mind, I'm sure.

 

g.      If you could go on a trip to a tropical island but you didn’t get to pack anything before you left, would you go?

Yes.

If you asked the same question about the Arctic Tundra the answer would be no. I figure, a tropical island, I could just buy whatever I needed there. Arctic Tundra, not so much.

Now for the nominees:

Joe Selby
Liz Davis
Charity Bradford (who also has a book coming out soon, that you should read because it's AMAZING)

...and anyone else that wants to answer these questions. Let us know in the comments section if you're game, so we can visit and see!

Nominees, because Rena asks awesome questions, I am going to ask that you answer the same ones. :D

When Life Gives You Lemons

You often hear that writers should borrow from their personal lives (and sometimes the lives of others) to fuel their writing with a sense of reality. After all, truth is stranger than fiction. I've heard a lot of stories from people over the years, partially because I ask the right questions, and partially because most of the time people find me easy to talk to, so they are confessing things to me they say they've never told anyone before. 

I know this shared knowledge of pain, joy, anxiety, hunger, and ecstasy helps my writing. It helps me shape characters with realistic emotions and believable problems. But for me, the best occasions that I mine for emotional dept are my own experiences.

Saturday night I went to bed having some chest pain. I figured I was just sore from work, and went to sleep. When I woke up, the chest pain was still there. Worse, even. It started underneath my left breast and cut diagonally up to my left shoulder. It felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife, and I couldn't inhale deeply, cough, sneeze, or laugh without making the stabbing pain infinitely worse.

Since I am a writer, I went immediately to the worst case scenario. "I am having a heart attack. Pain in my left arm, classic heart attack. Or it's an ectopic pregnancy." (you're thinking, how can you have a normal pregnancy (where the egg is fertilized in the uterus) AND and ectopic pregnancy five months later? But my panicked brain was convinced I'd had twins and one got stuck in my fallopian tubes. It had now ruptured, and I was bleeding internally. This makes no sense, I realize that. But when you're having weird pain, your mind wanders. And in my case, sometimes knowledge just fuels the fire.).

But on the other side of the panic, was me thinking it was nothing. Pregnancy does really, really weird things to your body, and I know that. I didn't want to be one of those woman who freaks out when she has a slight twinge in her stomach. My body is doing it's werewolf impression: ligaments and muscles are stretching. I've gained weight, and I am a tiny person to begin with. So I also thought it was nothing. 

After talking to a friend of mine, I called my midwife's office. The midwife says to take some Pepsid AC and tums. Sometimes heartburn can manifest as chest pain. Heavens knows I've had some wicked heartburn lately; sometimes it feels like I've swallowed a volcano. She says wait two hours. If the chest pain hasn't gone away, then I need to go to the ER to get checked out.


See folks, chest pain is sort of a big deal in the medical community. There are plenty of normal reasons why someone might have chest pain, but there are also lots of immediately life threatening causes behind chest pain, a blood clot being at the top of the list. Especially in pregnant women, blood clots can be an issue because you literally have more blood in your system. You can increase your blood volume up to 50% of what you had prior to becoming a baby incubator.

Two hours later, it still feels like a knife has magically found it's way into my ribs. My best friend (who also happens to be a nurse, lucky me) takes me to the ER to get poked and prodded. The only upside to going to the ER is "pregnant" and "chest pain" gets you back pretty quickly. They take a bunch of blood, do a chest X ray, and then I get to sit and wait for the results. 

While we're waiting, the ER doctor comes back to tell me this blood test they've done to check the likelihood of a blood clot is almost always high in a pregnant woman, blood clot or not (it's back to that increased blood volume). In the event this test comes back positive, they will recommend a CAT scan. She then says that plenty of pregnant women who have had CAT scans give birth to healthy babies.


My brain completely stops at this point. I felt like I needed to press pause or something. Wait, what? She explains there's minimal risk to the baby, and even says she's pregnant herself. The risk of having a blood clot that will rupture and kill me is bigger than the risk of all that radiation and the dye they inject into my blood stream to see the blood vessels to the baby.

The doctor leaves and I proceed to cry. I was terrified. I was between a bottomless pit opening up to swallow me, and going numb. Suddenly I had this major decision to make. I hate making quick decisions like this, especially based on fear. How much of a risk is "minimal"? The same risk caffeine poses? Or the same risk, as say, crack cocaine? Crack addicts also give birth to perfectly healthy babies, as people like to tell me when I worry about something affecting the baby. But people, I am shooting a little higher than "baby born not addicted to crack".

I left a message with my midwife so I could find out more information, but the meantime was hell. I didn't want to hurt my baby. I also didn't want to be stupid and refuse some test that might find a blood clot. I also wondered what the chances that I actually had a blood clot versus the risk to the baby was. I would feel awful if it turned out I didn't have a blood clot, and I put the baby at risk for nothing.

It was awful to realize absolutely everything that happens to me happens to my little boy. I knew that already. It's why I am taking prenatal vitamins every though the fish oil makes my burbs taste way nasty. It's why I am avoiding tuna fish, sushi, and sweet tea. 


But those were all things I could personally control. I couldn't control these chest pains, they were just there.


Added to the confusion was my prior ER experiences. I've had great ER doctors. I also have TMJD and a few years ago when I yawned, my jaw dislocated itself (yes, that can happen. Fun thought!). I went to the ER where the doctor was CONVINCED it was a muscle spasm. No amount of me telling him I literally cannot close my jaw, and I know what a muscle spams feels like, made him believe me. He said wait three days and then see an Ears, Nose, and Throat doctor. He gave me some muscle relaxers (which did NOTHING) and some heavy narcotics for the pain (which made me hallucinate) in the meantime. So for three days, my jaw stays locked open. I go see the ENT guy who wants to know why the hell the doctor didn't send me right away, or to better yet, an oral surgeon who's job is to deal with TMJ.

So I also have this scenario playing out in my head as I weigh the risks and benefits of having a CAT scan while 5 months pregnant (for those of you wondering, the ENT doctor manually put my jaw back into place, which hurt like nothing I've ever felt before. I imagine labor will be worse, but until then...). 


The happy ending to this story is the blood test came back normal, despite my current state of baby incubating. So I didn't have to have a CAT scan. They figured I must have pulled something at work and told me to take it easy for a few days. 


It was awful to experience that sort of indecision, fear, and worry, but let me tell you, it makes great writing. You take experiences like I just had, and you give them to your character. She doesn't have to pregnant with a possible blood clot for it to work. I've never felt that mixture of protectiveness over my baby, anxiety, indecision, and fear before, but that doesn't mean a character wouldn't feel the same way when faced with a tough decision regarding her child, sister, mother, or best friend.

Likewise, you can go through your life. Did you ever make a really big, dumb mistake? How did you feel? How did you try to fix or cover that mistake? Have you gotten married? What did it feel like the exact moment you stood at the altar? Have you ever feel deeply in love with someone who didn't even like you? How did you deal with the joy of love and pain of loneliness at the same time? These are experiences that we've all felt in one way or another. You don't have to copy the exact event in your life to apply it to your character, because emotions are universal. Maybe your mistake played out okay in your life, but in the character's life it's just made everything worse.


Red Smith once said, "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein, and bleed it out drop by drop."


I feel like that's what he meant. You take your life, your happiest moments, your deepest sorrow, your greatest pain, and you put that in words on the page. If you do it well enough, your reader bleeds along with you.

Ideas Like Weeds

Are you struggling with coming up with ideas to write about?

Good, me either. 

But, if you are, I have just the thing for you. All you have to do is work on another book. It's true! It seems like some sort of sick paradox, but the longer you work on one book project, the more ideas you will get for other books. 

My muse has the attention span of a five year old hopped up on sugar and a day of non-stop TV. I seriously have been getting a new idea for a character, a scenario, or vague plot just about every single day. I am closing in on the end of the rewrite, and I think my muse is getting desperate. The rewrite is coming along nicely, but I keep getting ideas for other stuff.

Of course, I am staying the course. I will finish this rewrite if it kills me (it just might, too. You never know). I just think it's funny how when you're working diligently on another project, you get all sorts of ideas for something else. 

Maybe it's just me though. Do you guys get ideas for other books while working on something else? One or two, or have you had stretches where you've had several new ones, one right after the other?

Maybe it's just me. I would blame caffeine, but I haven't had more than a few sips of tea since I got pregnant. Sugar, I could blame the sugar. Yes, it has to be the sugar.

Brainstorming and You

Song Playing: Spark by Tori Amos

I signed up for three blogfests recently, because I am a glutton for punishment. So here they are before I get on with today’s post.

Charity Bradford is having a Baking Scene Blogfest: http://charitywrites.blogspot.com/2010/03/50-followers-baking-blogfest.html

The Write Runner, also known as Iapetus999, also known as Andrew Rosenberg is having a Bad Girl Scene blogfest, which I totally have covered:
http://blog.dawnsrise.com/2010/04/blogfest-voting-results.html

And finally, Tara is having a Bar Scene Blogfest:
http://t-fouts.blogspot.com/2010/03/announcing-bar-scene-blogfest.html

Also, the lovely Mia is having a Deleted Scene Blogfest, that I will sign up for if I can think of something! So go on, check them out. It’s fun to write a scene with a specific goal in mind. I like to use these scenes to stretch myself as a writer, so it doesn’t just have to be a distraction from your normal schedule.

***

Brainstorming. Every writer does it. Whether it’s just thinking about how the idea you’ve had can play itself out, or a more formal jotting ideas down on paper, you’ve had to brainstorm your idea every time you write a book.

Given the frequency a writer will brainstorm, I was surprised I didn’t find more information about various brainstorming methods on the Internet and in books. So I decided to post about it myself.

I have already touched on the idea of brainstorming in one of my earlier posts, “Hypnotize Yourself While Writing”, but I didn’t really expand past mentioning you need to brainstorm.

Now, you might be thinking you don’t like to brainstorm, you hated those tree diagrams and free association just isn’t for you, but like I said, my theory is EVERY writer brainstorms, it’s just a matter of how.



Let’s back up. What do I mean by brainstorming exactly? I mean when you have an idea for a book, and you think about how that idea could work itself out. Probably the idea comes to you in a piece. My ideas almost ALWAYS come as a situation between two characters.

Case in point: two nights ago I had a dream that a rich, high society girl was traveling by a large ship across freezing waters with her high society family. She snubs a soldier on the boat, but later she falls overboard, and starts to drown. Her parents are standing on the boat, crying out for her, but not doing anything to help. They assume she’s already lost because the waters are freezing, and by the time they can get a lifeboat out to her she’ll already have drowned.

The soldier guy she snubbed earlier dives into the ocean, and drags her back to the lifeboat the other soldiers have lowered into the water. The girl gets medical attention, but now has a huge dilemma. She just had literal proof her parents wouldn’t risk their lives to save her. A complete stranger—one that she had been mean to, no less—was the one to risk his life. Not her family. She had always suspected she was just an asset to her parents, but here was the ugly truth (note: I realize that not diving into the freezing ocean doesn’t necessarily mean someone doesn’t love you. But that’s how it was in my dream. ;) ).

That’s the idea. In it’s entirety. A typical idea for me, where there are two characters that are connected through a complicated, not easy to define way, and they both have to deal with internal issues.

Everything I do to develop this idea I consider brainstorming (or will do since I am just writing this idea down for later, since I have several others books already in the queue).

Let’s say you do need to do some brainstorming. If not now, in the future. How do you go about it? The neat thing is almost anything can click with you and make you see your idea in another light. Actually, I try to allow that synergy to happen as often as possible, so when I have an idea, I write down everything I know about it and then let the idea stew for a while (the above example’s idea page is longer than what I explained to you. Sometimes just the act of writing the idea down will spark more ideas, or uncover more information. Like, when I typed that up I KNEW her older sister was a rival, and her parent’s greatly favored her older sister over her).



Some people prefer to not write the idea down and let it stew, but I do my best stewing with I have something jotted down, even if it’s just a sentence. If you are passively brainstorming, you’re acting like a normal writer and observing the world around you, thinking “What if this happened?”, reading books, watching movies, watching birds, listening to people talk, thinking about the idea while driving, talking to people etc. And sometimes you see a picture or watch a movie that clicks and opens up more potential for an idea you’ve already had. Those kismet moments are what I live for as a writer (among others).

Sometimes you decide you want to do some more active brainstorming, for a variety of reasons. Here are some, according to the most common for me.

1) You are in love with an idea, it burns deep inside you, and you absolutely must work on it. Right now.

2) You already have most of the basics of the idea down. Maybe you have the characters named, you know the theme and setting. All you need now is a plot. (Because in my case, I almost NEVER had ideas that come with plots. Situations that could spin out into a plot? Yes. But not a whole lot of ideas relating to plots).

3) You are bored, feeling creative, and your mind is wandering. Out of curiosity, you what to see what comes out.

So you’ve decide to brainstorm. What next?



Brainstorming is as personal as creating characters, but here are some of the methods I have run across in my time as a writer:

1) The Free Form
This one is also called Stream of Conscious, or something along that line. Basically you sit down, and write everything that comes to mind while vaguely thinking about your plot. For my girl falling off boat idea, Free Form could look like this: boat, ocean, Titanic, life rafts, SCUBA diving…

I don’t like to do this so early on in the brainstorming process, but some people swear by it. I almost never come up with something useful when I have so little already planned.

2) The Web o’ Ideas
We all know this one. This is where you draw a circle, write the character’s name in the middle, and draw another circle. You write something in that circle, like BOAT. Maybe you have another idea related to BOAT, so you draw a circle off of BOAT and write LIFE RAFT. Or you have an idea for the character and write PARENTS USE HER. You get the picture. There’s all sorts of data why this is useful—because you’re engaging both sides of your brain, because you’re drawing, because you’re harnessing order and chaos.

I don’t really use this method a whole lot either. I don’t do well with anything resembling free form. I don’t know why. I just keep recycling the same ideas over and over. So I get frustrated, crumple it into a ball, throw it across the room, and do something more linear.

3) The List
This form of brainstorming is where you either write long hand, or type in a new document some short bullets of your idea. It’s a cousin to the Web o’ Ideas in that most of the time the bullet builds on the one that came before it. It’s different from Free Form because you normally group similar ideas together, but very similar since you are just sort of throwing ideas out there as they come. So in the continuing example, my list could look like this:

*Somehow the soldier has to function in her world, instead of going the expected route and making the parents destitute, and having to rely on him. He is granted a huge amount of land and title for saving her life?

*Her sister is the main antagonist? She’s prettier and engaged to a prince or something?

*Or war could break out where soldiers are more needed, the soldier guy gets titled, and then moves up the ranks. Leadership, where you have people under you. Grant land from a traitor and give it to the soldier?

*No one showed the soldier how to be noble. He doesn’t know how to deal with finances because he’s been a soldier his entire life. The estate has a huge upkeep, high, falling to ruin, deeply in debt, the girl helps him out of it? Mined his own land, and kept his land. Social etiquette part?

*The girl listened to all the chatter of the high society, talk about the latest fashions, runs across the soldier, so he’s a different person and has different things to talk about.

I use this one a ton, so that is a real life example from where I wrote my idea down. See how the ideas jump around a bit, but mostly stay on topic? I also have several permutations of a situation—in this case how the soldier will come into play later—and I basically think out loud.



4) The Hundred Questions
This is also called several different things, and I have also blogged about this method a little bit, in my post “From Idea to Story” when I talked about brainstorming. You sit down with a piece of paper or new word processing document, write out your basic idea, and start asking yourself all sorts of questions. Like, what if X happened? What would happen from that? How would that work out? Where would that happen? Who would do it? You could follow this train of thought as far as you want, with as many detours as you want. You could decide you didn’t like this line of thought, and go back to the start, and ask yourself the same questions.
Example:
A girl falls overboard from a huge boat, in the middle of freaking nowhere, and the water is ice cold.
What if she was really pushed overboard? What if her parents paid to have her pushed? What if she fell due to her own stupidity? What if someone saves her but now they are stuck with each other because of the customs of the land? What if she realized her parents didn’t love her because they assumed she was dead? What if she decided to sabotage her parents because of this hurt? What if she joined the mafia? What if she embezzled all her parents’ money and turned to a life of crime…

And so on. I have NO idea where the mafia thing came from, but see how I started to follow that train of thought? Initially I would say that there is no mafia where they live, so she can’t join it, but maybe I could have a criminal element? Maybe they are merchants and her father belongs to the mob in their world, and she sells him out? Maybe I keep the “stealing all her parents’ money” part and drop the mafia angle.

Maybe not, but it’s something I could keep in mind. Many times I have come up with a random thought I didn’t think fit the story at all, only to think of a way include it much to the betterment of the story later.

I really really really…REALLY like this method. I always do this as some point in time to my plots. It helps me make sure I have really found the best, most original way for the story to unfold. Usually I have one part of the idea, and then I ask myself what if over and over, and just write whatever springs to mind. Half of what I come up with is awful, but that’s not the point. The point is to think your idea through as much as you can before you actually write it. Sometimes you can spot an idea that’s going to fizzle during this stage, or a glaring problem that you’re going to need to address.

And plus, it’s loads of fun! I think writers should play “What if” at parties.

5) With a Twist!
Something you can do at any stage in any method of brainstorming is twist your idea. Take whatever you just wrote, and twist it. You can already see how I twisted an idea with the previous example. Girl falls over board, guy saves her. I decided I didn’t want to just write a damsel in distress story, so I twisted it, and started thinking of ways that she could also “save” him. And not in that sappy, “He’s a jerk, and she melts his cold heart and saves her with LOVE” *cue sappy music* sort of saving him.



Also, most people would simply have them fall in love, and then have her wealthy parents loose all their money, and it turns out that her parents rely on the soldier for food and shelter. It would turn into Romeo and Juliet Take a Chilly Cruise in a heartbeat. So I decided to head that off at the pass, and left the nature of their relationship up in the air, and twisted the idea so that the soldier would have to learn how to function in the upper class’s world. Somehow. The details are still sketchy.

Or you could use a synergy of any or all of the above. I knew a writer who used the web, but also Free Formed ideas in a sidebar on the same paper. Different forms of brainstorming might be more useful at different stages of the book for you as well. Like I said earlier, I don’t like to use the Web or Free Form early on, but once I have most of the details worked out I will sometimes do that to see what other ideas shake down from my subconscious.

To start with, I usually use a combination of the List and the Hundred Questions. You can actually see the questions buried in the bullets, where I was already asking myself why? How? What? Who? And When?

Something else to consider: put yourself into the story. No, I am not talking about making a Mary or Gary Stu. But somewhere around the stage when I am twisting and wringing the idea for all it’s worth, I start asking myself, What do I like about this idea?



That questions can save your book if you know the answer. If you get to the middle of the book and run out of steam, you can look back at the brainstorming stage and read over what made you so excited in the first place, and rekindle the book.

Finding out what you like about the idea can also keep you on track with your plot. We know that by making one decision about the plot, we also affect every other future decision we make on the plot in a chaos-butterfly effect way. Let’s look at my example. By deciding the soldier was going to have to deal with the high society, I changed a lot of the other options I had for the plot. It would probably take place in high society more now, than if I had went the “family goes bankrupt” route. Every decision takes you down a different path, and sometimes it’s hard to know which path you want to go down.

If you know why you are so excited about the idea, you can make sure your plot stays within that idea. I don’t know if you have ever had this happen, but sometimes I would either write an idea out or plot it out, and suddenly I was no longer interested in it. The book morphed at some point into a story I didn’t care about telling.

Once I started identify what caused the fires to be stoked, I never had that problem again. AND it helps while you revise the book.

This reason doesn’t have to be meaningful, or insightful, or even make sense. I like the girl falling over the boat idea so much because I love wondering how she’s going to deal with finding out her parents don’t love her. I also love the “pride comes before a fall” concept, so the girl finding out there’s more to life than fancy parties intrigues me. It’s that simple. When my plot starts to veer off course, I bring it back to: what situations would force her to come to terms with her family? How can I milk that for all it’s worth?



Some ideas I liked just because I had a great feel for the main characters. Others because I had a good sense of the world. This reason can be anything you like. Once you realize what draws you to the idea, you can also proceed to put more of what you find fascinating into the story. Why stop with just one thing?

Here is something that has really changed the way I write, and create ideas. I have noticed a huge difference in my stories after I started doing this.

Keep a file on your computer, call it whatever you think is appropriate. Mine is called “My theme” and subtitled “The Shiny”. Write in this file ideas and concepts that fascinate you. For example, I think dreams are really cool, and I want to write a story about someone controlling their dreams. Some other things I find cool to think about:

*Why is it that the things we want hurt us the most? Is it the act of wanting it? Or the thing itself? Is it us? Our choices? Something we can’t control?

*Why is it to really live sometimes you have to die? Why is it ironic, why do you have to give up your hair for a hair comb? Why?

*Forgiveness: are there some things someone can do to you that are so terrible, or just hurt you so bad that you could never really forgive them? What if this was a loved one? A family member?

Finding your themes is easy. What topics do you find yourself debating until the wee hours in the morning? What subjects are guaranteed to keep your interest? A quirky sidekick? (maybe you could write a story about a quirky sidekick, and what it’s like to play second fiddle) Angels and demons? Do you, like me, love those movies that came out in the 90’s that dealt with heaven and hell fighting each other?



I also have a list of subjects that intrigue in the same file. Here is a small sample:

survival in a dystopia
survival after an apocalypse
ghosts
zombies
angels and demons fighting, exorcism
Morpheus
Orpheus going back to the underworld
death is not the end
bouncers
serial killers
1940’s gangster
gang wars
Cyberpunk
Mental illness

I am not suggesting you write the same story over and over, but to have a place you can regularly go to for ideas that you love. In the girl falls off a boat idea, I could easily see myself asking the Forgiveness question. Could she forgive her parents? Could they make things better? Worse? How would she get over it (without whining through the entire book)?

Once you story identifying how you brainstorm best, and what excites you about a story, you can reliably create interesting ideas. I am not saying you don’t still need your muse (I would never suggest such a thing. I love my muse. He’s the greatest, bestest musing muse in the history of muses…there. I think I placated his ego enough) but when you have all the rest of this stuff in place it makes it a lot easier to start cross pollinating and getting eureka moments.

What is the best way you have found to brainstorm? What topics rabidly interest you?

(P.S. I could say I used all pictures of glasses to symbolize how brainstorming fills your creativity up, but that would be a lie. I just found those pictures aesthetically pleasing. Thank you, FreeDigitalPictures.net for the pictures)

How to Write a Novel 1: Developing Ideas

Quote: “Good ideas are common—what’s uncommon are people who’ll work had enough to bring them about.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant

Song playing: What It Is to Burn by Finch

Today I thought I would blog about something really basic, since it just might be the single most asked question of writers: Where do you get all your ideas?

But once I started writing out my thoughts, I realized that finding ideas only scratched the surface to writing a novel. So, for the first time on this blog, I bring you a post series! It’s called the How to Write a Novel, and each post will cover some aspect of writing. I will try to keep the post length manageable, and stay with my personal experiences, rather than cover every single aspect of the process. There are (wonderful) entire books written on the subject that can explain it in more detail than I can here, so this series will hopefully serve as a springboard for the newbies and maybe jog some ideas for seasoned writers.

So, without further ado, I bring you:

How to Write a Novel: Developing Ideas

See, there’s this magical land of ideas. They grow like weeds over there, and the citizens of Idea Land can’t seem to get rid of them. When you become a writer, you get a special key to unlock the doorway to this land, Narnia-style. Some people use their wardrobes, some people use their closet, mine is in the basement near the laundry room. You go to Idea Land with a basket, and pick up a bunch of ideas that seem like they would fit, but there’s a limit on how many back you are allowed to bring back with you, much like trying on clothing in a dressing room. Usually the limit is three, but when you get to be really popular/talented like Stephen King or William Faulkner, you can bring more back with you…

Just kidding. There is no such place as Idea Land, sad as that is. Or there is, but it’s actually just the plain old real world. Not quite as magical and mystical, and there is no idea limit (thank heavens, that would be more annoying than the clothing limit. You’d have to keep going between the real world and Idea Land and trying new ideas on, “No, do you have one with purple monkeys? Those hedgehogs make my butt look big,” Or “I want to write another book with Scud in it, do you have any plots that he might participate in?”).

Sometimes lightening does strike, and out of nowhere, you get an amazing idea for a plot, theme, characters, and conflict are all laid out for you on a silver platter, like an early Christmas present from your muse. But you can’t wait for that to happen, and for me personally, those moments come more frequently when I am actively pursing ideas elsewhere (yes, my muse is a little fickle, what can I say).

Ideas are all around you. I know, you’ve heard that particular chestnut before, but it’s true. For reals, guys, for reals! All you have to do is be observant of your surroundings, of the people around you, and wave the magical wand of “What if” and the magical staff of “Why?” (or “Why come?” like I asked as a child) and presto chango! you have more ideas than you can shake a kitten at.*

Let me give you some examples, which have actually happened to me. Witness a writer in her natural habitat!

I used to work at a gas station. I had a regular customer come in every Friday and buy a six-pack of cheap beer. One Friday he says, “You wanna see a picture of my daughter?”

I nod, and he whips out a battered, fake leather wallet. He opens it to a picture of a magazine clipping. It’s a pretty, young brunette, modeling a green sweater. The picture was obviously clipped out of a department store magazine, but he has it tucked into the plastic picture holders.

I smile and nod, and he leaves. Most people who are saner than I would simply shrug it off as weird, and move on with their lives, but not me. I was intrigued. My brain whirled away, wondering all sorts of things. Is that woman really his daughter, or is he stalking her? Is he mentally unstable from losing his entire family in a car wreck, saw a woman in a magazine one day who resembled his daughter, and convinced himself the young woman is his daughter? Or is that woman really his daughter, and he had a bad divorce, and his ex-wife won’t let him see her or even have a picture of her, so the only way he can see her is through her modeling career?

You see how that works? One little event, and I suddenly have all sorts of ideas. I could pick any of those questions and flesh them out into a plot. I could let it stew, and combine it with another, previously unrelated idea that together, make an amazing book.

And it doesn’t just have to be stranger’s weird little idiosyncrasies, though I once saw a checkout girl wearing white gloves. Of course I wondered why, and thought she might be afraid of germs, or have poison ivy, but again, it doesn’t just have to be when someone does something a little off. It could be a mundane situation, and you ask yourself why, and what if until you have an interesting tale.

For example, you see a mother pushing a shopping cart full of groceries and kids, but she’s dressed for a night out on the town. You could ask yourself what would prompt someone to do that. Why would she get all dressed up to go the grocery store? Is this the only time she gets out of the house, so she wants to look nice, even if it’s just to the store? Is she divorced and hoping to catch the eye of the store manager?

Conversely, you could start with a situation, and move on from there. Like, what if someone got into an accident that disfigured their face? What if that person was a movie star? What would she do then? Try to continue working? Get plastic surgery and pretend it never happened? Hunt down every picture taken with her scarred face? What if one of those photographers didn’t want to give it up? What would she do to get it back?...

You get the point. To find ideas, all you have to do is wonder what would happen if someone was put in a situation, or wonder why they are in that situation to begin with. The situation could be normal, like shopping at the store, or it could be extraordinary, like the predicaments our friend Jack Baur seems to find himself on 24.

But I am sure you’re vaguely aware of this method of Idea Hunting, so let me impart a few different ones on you.

In addition to the song-lyric method I mentioned in an earlier post, I also like to think about major figures in history. And wonder why? And what if? Like, what if a character was in a position like Judas? What would it take to betray your friend and mentor? What if in the end it wasn’t worth it, the goal you were trying to achieve failed? Would you ever forgive yourself?

Or the infamous dictators of the world. What would it take to get someone to that point? (this is assuming you want a sympathetic character, not “He’s a dictator because he loves squashing human rights, grrr!”) What if he had the best of intentions? What if because of the economic stresses of the time, he had to become stricter with the national policies? What if he honestly thought he was doing what was best for his country? What if he thought he would make the moral sacrifice for them, and become the “bad guy”, like a sin eater or Batman in the Dark Knight, in order to protect his country?
(Disclaimer: I am in no way endorsing the actions of history’s dictators (I am looking at you Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, etc) but just trying to show you how you can put a different spin on things. I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.)

Or you could look at historical events, and wonder why. Actually, history is pretty ripe for the picking as far as ideas go. If you research, say, the events that lead up to the World Wars, it could give you ideas about how seemingly unrelated events can be connected.

Most of my ideas arrive to me as a situation between two characters, or one character in a really tough spot. I find it helps develop the plot if I have a back and forth dynamic. These two characters can be lovers, friends, enemies, family members, but it usually starts with two people in a situation.

This is of course not a plot. Please don’t confuse the two. “A man loses his family and is obsessed with a magazine model that looks like his daughter” is not a plot, nor is it even a premise by some definitions (by some definitions, a premise also includes the resolution of the idea: A man loses his family and becomes obsessed with a magazine model that looks like his daughter. He stalks her until he gets thrown in jail, where he subscribes to her new magazine). A plot includes the conflict and sometimes even the theme of the book.

Once you have the idea, the premise and the plot become much easier to develop. Sometimes you think of them all at the same time, but usually one piece of the puzzle will come to you first, and it’s up to you to coax the idea into something you can write an entire novel about.

Which is what our next post is about: From Idea to Plot.

How about you? Where do you get your ideas from?

*No actual kittens were harmed during the making of this post.