I first realized that I wanted to be a writer back in the
second grade. It took over twenty years for me to actually get started. Part of
that was, of course, learning the basic language and grammar skills necessary
to produce work ready for publication, but part of my delay was from not
knowing how to get started. Sure, I had a computer, word processing software,
and even if I hadn't had these things I would have had pen and paper, but what
should a prospective author write about? How much time each day should you spend
writing? What should you do if you get "writer's block?" How do you
keep yourself motivated through all the pages and words and revisions? I didn't
know the answers to these things, and I allowed them to delay my entrance into
writing for far too long. Some sort of an easily accessible guide would have
been invaluable back then, but the Internet was in its infancy during my
teenage years of navigating basic bulletin boards using 28k modems that tied up
our house land-lines, and the idea of surfing the web for information was still
unknown to me; I considered it a triumph that I could reserve books at the
local library online!
Today there are lots of sources of information for
prospective writers. Visit almost any author or literary agent's website or
blog, and you'll discover articles providing tips to new writers. This isn't a
coincidence. Writers want to help their fellows tell their stories and improve
their craft. Sure, it helps create competition, but if you love books that
isn't a bad thing; you get to read the new stories other authors produce, and
maybe you'll see something that sparks a new idea for you, a different take on
a scene that spins a whole new story. Maybe you simply get to read an awesome
book. That's a treasure all on its own.
But there's another reason writers write about their craft.
It gives us an opportunity to examine what our techniques and methods are, to
think about why we do things the way
that we do. If someone else benefits from our introspection, that's well and
good too.
This isn't the one and true way to do things. It isn't even
necessarily the best way to go about things, but it is the way that I do things. My style. My method. If
this helps someone who is trying to get started, wonderful. At the very least,
I hope that this article is interesting to read.
Where Do The Ideas Come From?
Let me paint a scene for you. You're seated at your
workspace; the dining room table, a desk, your bedroom dresser… wherever.
You've got your computer booted up in front of you, the word processing
software of your choice loaded, a fresh document waiting for you on the screen,
cursor blinking. There are a couple of pencils neatly lined up beside you next
to a legal pad so you can jot notes to yourself down as you write. A fresh mug
of coffee wafts its delightful aroma into your nostrils, or perhaps a cool
glass of iced tea sparkles tantalizingly nearby. You're seated comfortably, and
all of those distractions are put away or turned off. You crack your neck from
side to side, enjoying the satisfying pops
as you work the kinks out. You lace your fingers together over your head,
stretching your back while cracking your knuckles. You're all ready to go. This
is the day. Today, you start your first novel. You lower your hands so that the
pads of your fingers gently rest on the home row of your keyboard…
Then you stare at the blank screen, waiting. And waiting.
After yet more waiting, there's still nothing. Your fingers aren't magically auto-typing
words onto the page like some sort of digital-age Ouija board. Your story isn't
spewing forth from the nether recesses of your brain. You've got bupkis. Jack. Holy shit, you're screwed.
Sound familiar? Teeth clenched tight as you remember living
a scene very much like the one above? Me too. I think that everyone who writes
experiences this at some point. We want to write, and it doesn't sound like such
hard work when you get started… but it is. It takes effort, and thought, and at
least some small degree of planning. Ideas don't come from nothing, no matter
how many times we say "It just came to me one day!" It didn't. There
was an origin. Maybe you didn't realize it at the time; your subconscious was
crunching the numbers and putting things together for you, but didn't clue you
in until the idea was formed. Maybe you know the source. It was that old couple
you saw sitting in the park, clearly upset with each other after some kind of
argument, but unconsciously holding hands because that's what they've done for
the last forty years. Maybe it was something you heard on the news the other
day. There are story-worthy events all the time in the news. Three women were
recently rescued from a house in Cleveland; you think that no one is getting
inspiration from their story? Heck, it's not my sort of genre, and even I'm getting ideas!
So where do our ideas come from? Where do we get our
inspiration? The answer is that it all comes from the world around us. We can't
control it. We can't help it. If a storyteller hears about an interesting
story, they want to tell it. It's who are, you know?
So if we can't force ideas, what can we do when faced with
that blinking curser that refuses to form letters behind it? Are we stuck,
finished, doomed? Of course not. We just need to go back to basics.
Basics
First thing's first: Do you know what kind of genre you want
to write in? That might seem like an obvious duh of a question, but anyone who has worked tech support for
computers know that the first questions you want to ask are whether all the
cords are plugged in, especially that damn power cord. So have you thought
about it at all? If you haven't, and nothing comes to mind right away, consider
this: What do you like to read? Good
authors don't just write stories in their preferred genre(s). They read those
genres. They love those genres. They can tell you the names of other authors in
that genre.
Why?
If you can't stand fantasy, how are you going to enjoy
writing it? If you don't enjoy writing it, how will you make your reader enjoy
it? No matter what you think, no matter how formulaic you find a genre, you
need to enjoy the genre to treat it well. I'm not a fan of mysteries. I solve
them quickly but spend half the book hoping that I was wrong. After going
through this a few times, and feeling like I'd cracked a special
"code" I gave up on the genre completely. Not my cup of tea.
I'm reasonably certain that if I wrote a straight mystery
thriller, it would be crap.
Another reason to pick a genre is that genre will provide
you with some conventions and common elements to get started. If it's fantasy,
there are probably guys running around with swords at some point. Western
family probably bears a passing resemblance at medieval Europe. Maybe there's
magic. That's something to start with, right? Now think about the fantasy you
love; did it have those common elements? Were there any plot hooks the author
left dangling and never came back to that can give you a start for your own
ideas? It isn't stealing, it's borrowing,
and don't worry – you'll make it your own soon enough.
Sometimes looking at genre can display things you don't like,
things you wish wasn't in every novel of that genre. Maybe you think your
favorite genre would be better with elements from another genre blended in?
Have you ever read Alloy of Law, by
Brandon Sanderson? The book is fantasy, but it has a sort of steampunk vibe to
it, mixed with a little western. There's magic (Sanderson has some awesome
creativity when it comes to magic systems), guns, outlaws, nobles, high
society, and a fight on a train. There's some genre-blending going on there!
The best part? It's a sequel to Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy, a series that was
spawned by Sanderson wanting to write an Oceans Eleven-type crime story, but
blending it with fantasy. Heh. There's a lot of twists to those stories, and
they're great for it.
Sanderson's books prove how you don't need to feel limited
by your genre, but you can use them
as a framework to get started. Learn from that example.
An Exercise
Here's an exercise for you. I'm borrowing it from Donald
Maass, a distinguished literary agent who has some writing credentials of his
own. In his book, Writing the Breakout
Novel, Maass presents an exercise that I happen to love. Take a moment to
think of the books you've read, and pick your top three. You know the ones.
You've read them countless times. Maybe you've had to buy them again because
you ruined the bindings on your originals, or they got lost in a move and you
couldn't bear the thought of being without them. You can probably quote lines
form them. Yeah, those three. Got more than three? Limit it down to just that.
We don't want too many books at the moment.
Now go get them. Lay them down in front of you. Now think
about them. What are they about, who are the characters, where or when do they
take place, why do you love them so much? After you've thought about each one,
start looking at the ways in which they are similar.
You might be protesting: "But, Grant, Eat, Pray, Love is nothing like The Hobbit! And neither one is The Stand!" I'll give you that. On
the surface, the story of one woman's inner journey from a loveless life with a
career she no longer felt fulfilling to a place where she discovers the joy of
living life and finds true love doesn't sound much like the story of man who
protests the call of adventure as a wizard and a group of dwarves recruit him
to be a thief for them as they attempt to reclaim their home from a dragon. A
post-apocalyptic struggle between God and the Devil doesn't fit with those
books either. But these are your favorites,
the books you love best in all the world. Don't just look at the surface! Dig
deep! Think about the characters and their qualities. Are there any in common?
What about themes, setting, verbage… the list goes on and on. Maybe the
elements of the books don't have anything you can codify so neatly, but
certainly the books elicited a type of reaction from you. Did they draw you
into the world? Make you care about the characters' conflicts? Did they make
you laugh? Cry? Cause a variety of emotional responses within you? What
triggered these responses? Those are the things you should be paying attention
to.
Take some time. This isn't something that should come all at
once. This is preparatory work for your idea, your inspiration, to spring forth.
You laying some groundwork to build the foundation of your story.
An Example
I did the above exercise when I first read Writing the Breakout Novel (Maass goes
into further, wonderful detail about it in the actual book, which I highly
recommend you read). Here were my three: The
Belgariad, by David Eddings (Yes, I know that The Belgariad is a series, but I read it in compilation editions
rather than the individual books, so I don't tend to think of the series in
terms of five books); Dune, by
Frank Herbert; and The Eye of the World,
by Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time I do
think of in terms of separate books, and the Eye of the World is my favorite,
though Sanderson's books are running close seconds).
My three picks might seem pretty easy compared to the
examples I listed above. I'm a fantasy/sci-fi boy through and through, and
always have been, so my favorites do happen to come from similar genres.
However, it's what I drew from them that is important.
The Belgariad is a series focused around a young farm boy named
Garon, who turns out to have destiny far greater than his humble upbringing
would imply. He is the many-times-great-grandson of the first sorcerer,
Belgarath, and is a sorcerer himself. Further, he is the Rivan King, leader of
the western world. He is destined to face the god Kal Torak, and defeat him as
the battle between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark continues as it has
throughout the ages.
Dune is the first book in a classic sci-fi series which has
spawned video games, a movie, television mini-serieses, and prequels and
sequels galore, long after the death of Frank Herbert. It is the story of Paul
Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides. Paul learns that his mother, the concubine
Jessica, was never meant to give the Duke any sons, only daughters who could
have been married to further a genetic program that has been going on for
generations. An anomaly, Paul has the potential to be the Kiswatz Haderach, a messiah and superbeing whose coming is foretold
in the Bene Gesserit prophecies. Politcal maneuvers work to eliminate House
Atreides, propelling Paul into his role and leading him to overthrow the
Emperor of the Known Universe.
The Eye of the World is the first book in Robert Jordan's Wheel
of Time series. It tells of three young men from the village of Emmond's Field,
whose lives are upturned when the forces of the Dark One attack their village
in search of one or all of them. One of the young men, Rand al'Thor, is the
figure of prophecy known as the Dragon Reborn, a man able to channel the one
power in a world where all such men go mad. The Dragon Reborn will save the
world… or he will break it completely. The three young men must survive a
harrowing journey from their homeland, diverting north to the Blight to stop
the Dark One's minions from obtaining the power of The Eye of the World, and
consequently revealing Rand's destiny… whether Rand wants to be the Dragon Reborn
or not!
Each of these books has a fantasy theme that is fairly
important to the book. Yes, Dune is
technically science fiction, but let's be honest for a moment: If you're
familiar with the Dune franchise than
you recognize that there are strong fantasy themes running throughout it. Knife
fighting, "magic" (more oracular ability than anything else, but some
of what Paul manages at the end is definitely magical), the fantastic locations,
and a feudal nobility system. It might be sci-fi, but it has strong fantasy
elements within it as well. So, clearly, fantasy is the genre that appeals most
to me. Not a surprise, so let's look a little more closely.
Did you notice how all of the main characters have certain
similarities? Each harbors magical power that they are unaware of at the
beginning of the book. Each has a potent destiny that they must face no matter
how much they resist. As they pursue their destinies, they rise socially through
their setting (you can argue that Paul descends when his House is destroyed,
but I think his ascension through Fremen society more than makes up for that). So
clearly one of the things that appeals to me is a main character with a
destiny, who discovers hidden magical potential even as he struggles against
his destiny.
What we have there is the kernel of a story premise. Now we
just need to build on it, which is what we'll do next time.
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