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

If you are a writer, chances are you know how necessary, and painful, editing your work can be.  You finish writing your newest masterwork and all you want to do is get it out to an adoring audience.  But you know that there is still work to be done and so you go through it over and over (and over again).

By the time you think it might be good enough to go to an agent or publisher you are thoroughly sick of it.  You might even be tired of writing.  Sound familiar?

But what about all those other stories flitting through your mind?  The first thing you should remember is that it isn’t the writing that you are tired of.  You are tired of being “Stuck” on one story.  You are tired of ignoring all the other ideas you have.  You need something new to get re-energized.

This was the situation I was faced with not even a month ago.  I was just finishing a multi-month, major rewrite of one of my stories and I was tired of the whole thing.  I had made myself a solemn promise not to start anything new until the rewrite was done.

The problem was, once the rewrite ended, I didn’t feel like doing ANY writing.  I didn’t want to take any of my story ideas and bring them to life.  I didn’t want to bother with query letters to agents and publishers.  In other words I needed something to get me excited again.

I knew I wanted to write a story specifically to be podcast.  I knew the premise of the story and some of the characters.  I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and started writing the new story.  That exercise of doing something new was exactly what I needed and I felt my motivation soar.

That new energy and excitement might be just what you need to find an agent or publisher (a task not quite as onerous as editing can be).  Or maybe you just need to feel like a writer again.  I know some authors do both writing and editing simultaneously to avoid burning out.  I’m not wired that way or at least, I’m not disciplined enough to do it that way yet.

Maybe one day.

All I know is I am back in the writing frame and I’m having fun.  That’s all I ever really needed.  I was getting too caught up in trying to make everything perfect.  I forgot what I love about writing which is the creative process.

Personal Update

My one story is still in front of a publisher.  The full manuscript hasn’t been there too long so I’m trying to exercise patience.  My novel rewrite is complete and I’m letting it sit for a few weeks before I do the much needed final edits then it will go off to a publisher.

I’m working on a new story that will go directly to podcast.  It is a Science Fiction comedy (at least, I hope it’s funny).  I want to write a few episodes before I start recording but I’m already happy with the direction it is going.

I also have one more completed book (a YA adventure) that I’ve got to start sending out.  I’ve been following several agents on twitter so I think I will do some studying on queries and send a few out.  I’m hoping if I follow their good advice I will get at least on interested.  It will be an interesting experiment.

Tags: discipline, editing, energy, motivation, new, story, writing