With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, I wanted to talk about the process where I develop my own ideas into stories. For the purpose of this I will use a sample idea and work it through.

Coming up with a story idea

This is the single easiest part of the story for me. I get story ideas from everywhere all the time. From television, movies, other books, going for walks and hearing the news. The commonly held belief among “Experts” is that there are no new idea. Just new ways to execute them. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know. I just know that I get these cool story ideas running through my head and I can’t wait to start writing.

So here goes. My story idea is as follows: A young woman decides to visit her grandmother who has been feeling poorly. She pulls on her new red cloak and grabs a basket of goodies for dear old granny.

Sounds familiar, right?

Decide on a genre/setting

Next I settle on a genre to develop the idea further. This may sound rather strange, but it is important. A different genre and/or setting will really change how everything develops including the characters.

So I decide the genre will be a Crime/Thriller. Not something I normally dabble in, but it sounds like fun. The setting will be in an all-Portuguese neighbourhood. Any particular reason? Not really, but I have Portuguese friends and I don’t want to be cliche’ with an Italian one.

Characters

I have three main characters in my little story.

There is my female lead who I will call Adriana. She isn’t your typical young woman. She spends her days hussling pool at the local pool hall. Most nights she works the docks, rolling any drunken sailers she finds for the money in their wallets. She does this because her parents each work two jobs to try and pay the bills. She had to drop out of school to earn extra money.

Then there is granny. She’s a feisty old bird who runs numbers at the local bar which she has owned and operated for more than fifty years. She hasn’t been feeling quite herself lately because a group of “Businessmen” paid her a visit to convince her that she needed “protection”.

She convinced those men to go away with a thorough beating which they won’t soon forget. Unfortunately, she threw her back out doing so and is laid up at the moment.

The last character is an eager young rookie cop who only wants to clean up his old neighbourhood. He has his nose in everything that looks dirty and is watching young Adriana as she makes her way to see granny. He stops her to question her and decides he wants to run a sting operation to shutdown some of the crime he knows is going on.

Does this still sound like the same story you might have thought of at the beginning? It certainly deviates from the idea I had originally. Now what if I changed it to be Science Fiction? How about Romance? All I did was take an old story and twist it to the point where it wasn’t quite so recognizable. What if I had removed any reference to a red cloak?

As you can see, ideas are easy. It’s what you do with them that makes them unique. So what are you going to do for NaNo?

Personal Update

One last episode of GalaxyBillies is quickly looming on the horizon. I’m about half finished writing it and I must say, I’m excited to see how it ends. Like my listeners, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Granted, I do have some idea since I’m the one writing it, but since I don’t have it all plotted out, there will still be some surprises.

I’ll be glad to get it finished. After all, I’ve been living and breathing the story for more than forty weeks now. It’s time to put it to bed for a while and get working on my other projects.

That leads me to my YA novel. I really want to get the revisions done on it. I know I haven’t had the brainpower to give it everything it deserves so that is my next priority. I also have four (or is it five?) short stories to write for various anthologies in the next two months. That’s not even talking about NaNo or a secret project that I will starting very soon. All told, the next few months are going to be VERY busy.

Tags: characterization, crime thriller, Galaxybillies, genre, ideas, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, nano, nanowrimo, plot, setting, story

Let me begin by saying this article is not going to be Michell’s whinefest. It may seem like it (at least early on) but it really isn’t.

Honest.

That old saying “There’s not enough hours in the day” is certainly feeling real to me lately. I have two big writing projects going on: editing my fantasy novel for submission and NanoWriMo. I’ve also got the podcast which takes up several hours per week (interviews, editing and mixing all take time) plus I’ve got the work and home commitments. I’ve pretty much given up on television, which makes me sad. So many great shows, no time.

What this time crunch has done for me is given me the appreciation of using priorities and the importance of goals. You all know by now how important getting my work published is to me. This book (that I’m currently editing) has taken literally hundreds of hours. I believe in the story and I have a story arc in my mind that is begging to be told. I simply cannot let it go; the characters won’t let me. That means I have become willing to forego sleep to do the editing.

If there’s one thing I don’t like giving up, it’s my sleep. Just ask my wife.

That should give you a hint as to its importance to me.

I also took on the challenge of NanoWriMo. Challenges are my lifeblood. They motivate me in ways that I cannot even explain. I’ve set myself the challenge of finishing in 3 weeks. That means approximately 2,500 words per day. I’m currently averaging 3,500 (I can type REALLY fast) words per day. If I keep up the pace I’ll be done in something like 12 days. I’m really needing to give myself a slowdown so since the pace is good, I’m going to try and finish early so I can rest a little.

Then there is the family and Scout commitments. It all takes time.

To go off on a bit of a tangent for a moment, I always wondered how actors found the time to have a life away from work. I remember reading an interview with Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) some years ago. In the interview he talked about the 16 hour days and how, when he was done on the set, he had a workout. I wondered how he could stay motivated to keep up the pace.

Now that I’ve been fighting to keep multiple  balls in the air myself I think I’m beginning to understand. These things that I’m doing are all activities that are important to me. Because they matter, I make the time to keep them going. Because I am a perfectionist, I do the very best job I can and I’ve started to let people help me when possible.

I’m sure I have a breaking point somewhere and I know I can’t keep this frenetic pace up indefinitely but it is a great thing to know I can do it in the first place. Maybe this means I CAN have a career as a writer and work during the day after all. To write the quantity of books I want to write, I’d like to turn 2 or 3 out a year. That means 200 – 300K per year. If I write 1,000 words per day (about 20 minutes effort if I know what I’m writing about) I can do it with a few days off for good behavior. If I chose to only do one book, the demands on my time are even less.

I think it’s possible. That writing a few words every day isn’t a myth. It is infinitely doable, even if you don’t average 50 words per minute like I do. Hunting a pecking a measely 10 wpm will still get you 600 words closer to completion if you dedicate 60 minutes to your craft a day.

So let me set you with a challenge (and I hope you will tell me how it goes when you’re done). For 1 week, write 30 – 60 minutes every day. It doesn’t have to be a continous 30 minutes; 5 minutes, 6 times a day will work just fine. At the end of the week, review what you’ve done and ask yourself if it’s something you can maintain.

That’s it. That is the challenge. At the end of the week I’ll let you know if I’ve managed to stay faithful to Nano and my editing.

Deal?

Personal Update

At the time of this writing I had 10,000 words in 3 days for Nano and I’m only days away from submitting my fantasy novel. A new episode of ‘Get Published’ was released on November 1st and I’m preparing for several interviews for upcoming shows.

Tags: Get Published, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, nano, nanowrimo, scouts, time management, writing