Current Project: HIS BABY
Status: Page 90
We've talked about where we get our ideas before. Most of the time, however, we speak in generalities. We say we listen to music or see something inspiring or hear something interesting. We join a piece of an old article tucked away in out files together with the memory of an old love or we read something and then overhear a conversation and then listen to the radio…
Today, as I watched Eli's wonderful trailer for her coming release, Stolen Heat, I wondered about the defining moment of the conception for her idea. Every book has one, that original spark, that moment when you started spinning the what-ifs in your head, the moment you set the first brick or dug the first hole or climbed the first step.
I know you all have projects going but I can't say as I know where any of your ideas came from. I admit that sometimes the origins are not that clear, that it seems to be such a conglomeration of this and that it's almost impossible to define the original spark. If that's the case for your current WIP, then think back to a former book or forward to an idea whose conception you recall.
Specifically, what lit the match? Was it a character in need of a story? Was it a story in need of a character? Was it a beginning scene or a situation?
The book I am currently writing started a year ago. The dh and I were driving to the coast. I was daydreaming as I looked out the window. I thought of a car careening off the road into the tangled underbrush through which we were passing. An accident. Wait, the car gets into the accident because the passenger is being abducted and she is trying to gain control of the car. But it's a terrible accident and she ends up with injuries. The abductor is relatively unhurt, but the heroine can't remember who she is and that means that anything the abductor tells her and the authorities will be accepted if 1.) he has the same last name and claims he's her husband and 2.) no one knows she's missing.
At the time I could see no way to make this fit my current market and thus I shelved it. Eventually it morphed into the book I just sold and am currently writing. And it all started by looking out the window as we drove along a road.
I would really love to know where all your current idea came from, the more specific the starting point, the better. Even if you are writing a series, there has to be something that inspired the current book. That moment when your pulse quickened is the very essence of storytelling. Share it.
19 comments:
Interesting blog, Alice!
My current WIP was sparked by 1) I knew the next book had to have a doctor as the heroine and 2) there was an explosion in the mine in book three.
As I wrote the scene for that book there was only one person who could be in the mine beside the hero and heroine, so he was the next brother who would get his book. His character in book three didn't really make him a good choice for a hero, but by humbling him with his injury, he became a sympathetic hero.
The flu bug hit me hard last night and my daughter and grandkids headed to the zoo without me today. She was meeting her best friend so she would have help with the kids. I'm sitting on the couch feeling puny and wishing I could have gone with them. Next to a library or book store the zoo is my next choice to spend a day!
Thanks for being so specific, Paty. It's neat the way the explosion in one book fed into developing the characters for the next.
Sorry about the flu. Ick. (Crossing fingers in a stay away pose, no time for flu here!) I hope you feel better soon and that your daughter gets back to your place safe and healthy so she can make you hot soup.
I don't have a WIP yet (it's not soup yet, ha!), but the idea for it was sparked by watching video clips on Stumble. I was feeling lazy one day last winter and just picked the dance category, watching whatever Stumble picked out. There were these beautiful performances of pole dancers that amazed me. I'd always associated pole dancing with stripping, so it surprised me to see it as an art form. That's when I started thinking about an aging dancer picking up the art later in life, though that's really just the backdrop for the rest of the book. Pole dancing is something she aspires to, and the story will cover her journey getting there and the hurdles she encounters with friends and family along the way.
That's neat, Karen. I've never thought of pole dancing as an art form, either.
Would you mind telling me where the idea for Mystic Taxi came from? That's one of yours that really intrigues me.
Ah, Mystic Taxi. At first I was thinking of writing about a taxi driver and his passengers, how each one could have a different story with a mutual connection. I first thought about making him a manipulative anti-hero, but Henry had other ideas. The taxi being possessed came from an old idea I had for a short story about used cars possessed by the ghosts of their former owners. The steampunk angle came from a blog I landed on from a link in something I was reading. It was love at first sight. I teamed Henry up with Wanda because of my fascination with male/female partner based television shows that I enjoy watching. Making them total opposites, a demon and an exorcist working toward a common goal, just fit. So Mystic Taxi started out nothing like how it ended up. Which is kind of why I don't care for plotting. My stories evolve organically from a seed of an idea. I'm always surprised by what they grow into.
My idea for my current project evolved from an article about a kidnapping involving an entire school bus of children. I can't remember the when or where. I started to wonder what would happen if the bus was found after twenty years. What if one child escaped back then but had no memory of the incident? Or was that just the story he told the police? Why would a child do that?
Karen -- Is this the book that also had a beginning idea of a gatekeeper for hell or better, border patrol for hell?
I love how it all came about.
Kendra -- I remember that incident. What a great idea! What you described is exactly how I've started stories, too. This book sounds like a total winner and you'll forgive me if I continue plotting it in the back of my mind....
Isn't the phrase "What if?" just about the best ever?
Yep, Alice, this is the one with hell's gatekeeper.
Alice, just remember you asked for this. LOL
First, a couple of disclaimers: I'm not a physicist, nor do I claim to have a significant understanding of quantum physics. I also don't write hard SF, though I do enjoy reading it.
That said, quantum physics fascinates me. I can easily get sucked into reading things that are way over my head -- mostly for the big ol' "What if?"s that jump out at me every time. The link with my current WIP is a bit convoluted. I was looking for some information on tachyon particles* for another story with a time travel bent I was kicking around. That search sent me in different directions, culminating in reading the book "About Time" by Paul Davies.
While alternate universes have been used in fiction many times, this book gave me the quote that made the idea catch fire in my brain:
When it comes to the universe as a whole, there is no outside observer, because the universe is all that there is, so quantum cosmology runs up against a major problem of interpretation. The favored way out is to assume that all the contending quantum realities enjoy equal status. They are not mere "phantom worlds," or "potential realities," but "really real" -- all of them. Each reality corresponds to an entire universe, complete with its own space and time. These many universes are not connected through space and time, but are somehow "parallel," existing alongside each other.I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it, though, until I found two characters who demanded I tell their story. So I started playing the what if? game and came up with the concept I'm loosely describing as Alias meets Sliders. That doesn't exactly describe my story, but it's the best I can come up with. My two characters are on opposite sides (though only one of them knows the truth) in a race to recover bits of "Rambaldi-esque" knowledge and devices before they fall into the "wrong" hands. The story isn't hard SF -- I guess I'd describe it as more fantasy? paranormal? /romance than anything else, really.
I just hope I can pull this off.
* tachyon = a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light
Side note: Tachyon particles were first described by Arnold Sommerfeld, a German theoretical physicist who never won the Nobel Prize, though he was nominated 81 times -- more than any other physicist.
PS: I may still write that time travel book some day.
Whoa, Debbie, another book I can't wait to read (along with my trusty dictionary.) I knew about tachyon particles -- you can't watch Star Trek for as many years as I have and not pick that up -- but the rest ruffled the top of my hair as it whizzed by. Though I may have an underdeveloped sense of physics, let alone quantum physics, I love stuff like this and it's fascinating how your ideas just leap frogged.
Look how many of us came up with ideas while searching and reading with a whole other idea in mind.
Neat.
Alice, I love reading all the various ways that we've come to our stories. The brain is a marvelous and mysterious thing!
This reminds me of a series called Connections that was on PBS several years ago. The host would show the connections between inventions and ideas through history that you'd swear just couldn't be connected.
I love reading about all these sparks! And Alice, it's sweet to know my trailer piqued your curiosity.
STOLEN HEAT is a connected book, and the idea for it came about the second Pete (hero in HEAT) came on the page in FURY. He is a very shady character from the get-go. As soon as he popped up, I wondered about him. About what made him who he is today, and who he had been before. I knew I needed to write his story. And even before the plot of his book came to me, I knew it had to be a reunion story. From there...it was a matter of character. He's an antiquities dealer (questionable, remember). Egypt is an historically rich culture, and it made perfect sense that his ex was an Egyptologist. They met, had a hot love affair, then something happened to tear them apart. What was that? Like everyone else I played the what-if game. And a whole host of ideas and conflicts popped up with that pairing.
As for the paranormals...the idea for the first book came froma blog I read. One of the commenters said, "I wish someone would write a book about the heroes from Greek myth. Now those would be some hot guys." I'd already been tossing an idea around about a man who has to retrieve a woman to save someone else's life, even knowing doing so would kill the woman, but the minute I read that blog, the entire book's plot popped into my head.
The second para is part of a continuing series, so it was spawned from the first. I have several of the books in the series loosely plotted in my head and the plots all stem from the villain - what she's doing and how to get to her ultimate goal.
Thanks, Eli. I remember Pete from your first book and I remembered you mentioning you had a hero named Pete so I was prepared for him to have his own book and that made reading his scenes in the first book a lot of fun. I love the idea for your paranormal.
Side note: Since my mother responds well to stories and it's one thing I can give her we both enjoy, I picked up some YA Greek mythology books at the library the other day. My plan is to read them then paraphrase them to my mom. I think we'll enjoy them over and over ... and over.
Character and plot, they dance around each other, don't they. I've loved reading all these beginnings and hope more people chime in. I'd love to know what prompted Wavy's new YA story, for instance, and how did Genene first come up with her series? And what about Lisa? What was her original idea for a book with such a tantalizing title (Shaving Your Legs Can Be Dangerous)?
Any spark a visitor or member wants to share is appreciated.
I've loved reading everyone's responses.
My Current WIP came to me with the title (and I'm a little too in love with it to share it publicly right now). I was driving to work, and Tom Petty's Good Girl and that country song about how ladies love cowboys were playing in my head and I was thinking about my OTHER WIP when BAM! the title hit me and then I instantly knew it was a YA. And I knew the book would revolve around a guy who is sick of always being the good guy and watching perfectly nice girls fall for bad guys. So he decides to become a bad boy.
The OTHER WIP is the one I emailed you about Alice. The idea of a trio of romances about female medical students came to me years and years ago. Long before Grey's Anatomy and House and the current wave of medical shows. It's possible that I was back in high school when this one first came to me and I've nursed each of the books along over the years in my head. But it started as a simple what if: "What if a doctor fell in love with a construction worker?" And of course, since then I've learned about pesky little things like conflict. And plot. But this particular trio has been begging for my attention for years.
Debbie, I don't even read much SF, but your idea sounds KILLER. I can't wait to read it! Write like the wind!
Lots of creativity in this topic!
The idea for my nine-book series took a circuitous route. The main characters in the first book came out of deleted scenes in FEATHERS ON THE FLOOR. They still appear in FEATHERS, but in smaller roles.
It quickly became obvious that they needed their own story.
And since the heroine had seven brothers, of course they each needed a story of their own.
And since they were all adopted, their connection was their adoptive parents, who had their own story.
And what if that story that wasn't as it seemed in the beginning and the real story is revealed as each of the siblings' stories are told.
That question "what if" really got a workout in coming up with the ideas for these stories!
Great post, Alice, and great sparks from everyone!
Wavy -- I love that idea! I can totally see how a young guy would decide it's true that the bad guys get the girls and decide to remake himself. I bet there are any number of young men who have actually tried to do this. Can't wait to see the mess your poor kid makes of things!
So, we can extrapolate that 2 songs+ 1 title = Plot for YA!
You know what's obvious after reading all these sparks is that if you're a writer, your mind just works this way. It might be one of the most defining characteristics of our profession...
Genene -- It's like a staircase or a ladder, isn't it? If this happens then what happens next, then what happens...
I am still in total awe of keeping the characters and their relationships straight in nine interconnected books. Good thing you are a chart whiz. Better stock up on colored pens.
Thanks everyone!
Post a Comment