Please, give me an idea!!

A good friend whom I met on Facebook recently asked me how I came up with ideas. She was thinking about trying her hand at paranormal writing - a genre she loves to read, but doesn't usually write. She even joked about could I help her come up with an idea. This got me thinking throughout the weekend- How do we come up with our ideas?

I've seen parody videos, I've heard other writer's accounts, but I can only speak on my own behalf. So, please, do not take this as gospel. Here's how it usually works for me:

During a nap, or at night, something will sometimes come to me in a dream. In these instances, I usually dwell on the idea that popped in. One idea I had was so good I shot straight up in bed - which sucked for my equilibrium, as I was still asleep - and grabbed the closest piece of paper and pen. I started to write the book, but decided to focus on the Hunters series for now.

Okay, so how did I come up with the Hunters series? Have you ever watched a news cast about someone who killed a friend or family member? It's always the same thing - "They were such a good person. They loved their family and would do anything for anyone. I just don't know what happened." Well, the husband and I were watching just such a story and I sarcastically replied, "Yeah, great guy. I'm sure he's possessed." That's when the bells chimed in my head. What if?

Think about it - What if someone you loved dearly was suddenly possessed by a demon? What if the only way to save their soul was by terminating their life? Could you do it? Could you thrust a sword into their body to release the demon's hold?

A majority of ideas that come to me are from dreams or what-if moments. My sister, friends, family members, etc have called or emailed me with great ideas. Problem with those is I can't "see" the characters in my head since they didn't represent themselves to me.

There's another issue: You can have a great idea, but there has to be characters to play out the scenes, as well as some great conflict and plot loops! Just because a story sounds good doesn't mean the characters want to act it out for you.

Do you write? Where do your ideas come from? Maybe you pull from the news, or maybe your own life.

You asked, I answered. This is how I write...

Dozens of people have asked me over the past year how to write a book. Normally, I say...just write. That doesn't always go over well, but I don't always know how to tell someone who's never written a short story how to write a novel. While trying to go to sleep last night, an analogy I heard once on one of the writing boards I stalk started playing through my head. I just added a little to it....

When starting a book, you have to think of Adam and Eve.

Want a bite?

 Yep, that's what I said-Adam and Eve. Everything has to start with the bones. Not everyone does this part the same, but all stories end up the same way - the skeletal form of a novel. Some choose to outline. Some choose to wing it. I'm a little of both. Sometimes I have a fabulous idea, but have to sit down and type out a few things to see if I can make it work. Other times, I outline nothing more than the character or world building. When I write a story I want to know where the characters went to school, their favorite colors, their fave food and drink, why they act the way they do, even if they've ever had an ingrown toe nail. Now, of course a majority of this never makes it into the book, but it helps me get to know the characters better.

Other times, I know what I want to happen, but I'm not sure which order, so I outline the approximate events. A lot of times this will tell me if I even want to include certain events, or eliminate them completely.

The next part is adding the meat. Obviously, we can't walk around as nothing but skeletons. It would cause mass panic, and people would try to hunt us thinking we were zombies.

Gr. I'm a zombie..

This is where after planning what I want to happen, or maybe even after doing the mad dash to get the story out of my head, I'll go back and add details. Maybe I need to add more description of the room which will play a huge part in a scene. Maybe I need to add more description to a fight scene to make it more intense. Or maybe I need to do a little more research about a certain species of creature, or illness someone is inflicted with. The story is now resembling a real novel.

Now, at times, we women (and some men) want perfection. Therefore, we have to go through the book and remove the moles, warts, blemishes, and all imperfections. Beauty marks may look good on a woman, but they don't in a novel. Well, at least not a lot of beauty marks. You don't want to send a novel into the universe covered in zits!

I'm sexy and I know it...

What I mean by imperfections is all those repeat words, the excessive 'that's, and all of those annoying adverbs! Kill them! Kill them all!!!! Okay, not all. But adverbs should be like any seasoning...used in moderation.

There. Hopefully this short description helped someone. How do you write? Do you have some advice for those who are finally sitting down to write the book they've always dreamed of?

Obsessed with my characters lately!

I've already posted two prior blogs about characters, and character building, but I got to thinking...where do they come from?

I've heard so many authors discuss this topic. Several are like myself; they let the characters tell about themselves. Well, now that sounds pretty skitzophrenic when you think about it. After all, how does an imaginary being (I say being because they're not always human) tell about themselves?

This is how it works for me.

I sit down with an idea. As Florence Fois says, an idea that pops in my head from...wherever. Sometimes I see a person and think of a what if?. Other times it may be from a dream. Either way, as Fois says, it's an idea that must be loved and cultivated.

Great, now I've got this idea for purple people eater from the city of Christy. Now what? Well, obviously, the story needs characters, not just the problem and city.

So, I start writing. At this point, I've yet to plot. I do it backwards most of the time.

The first page will usually be trashed eventually, but it gets my brain moving as to what I want to happen, and who I want it to happen to. Okay, so a strong willed, kick ass, moon eyed female will be the heroine. Great. But what about the hero? Will there be one in this story? Of course...what can I say, I'm a sucker for romance. Or maybe it's just really great sex scenes.

So, my male character turns out to be a medium height man, lean but muscular, with a bicycle mustache. How do I know this? Because when I'm writing I can picture the people.

I will literally close my eyes and see the scene play out in my head as I begin typing. The people I see in my head become my major players. When I first started twenty something years ago with just short stories, all the females resembled me, and all the males resembled a boy from New Kids on the Block. What can I say? My world hadn't quite evolved at that point in my life.

My current book started a little differently. My heroine was inspired by one of my close friends, Sharon. She's a tall, beautiful woman with long, curly red hair, and blue eyes. Now, my character is actually tiny - she's barely five foot two - but you get the gist.

Each and every single writer comes up with their characters in both a similar, yet different manor. I usually know starting the book approximately what kind of personality I want my key players to have. But, sometimes they surprise me and do something I'd never think them capable. My current heroine actually had a little meltdown recently. Being as she's hardcore and deadly with knives and swords, it kind shocked me. Guess even my characters are as flawed as myself.

Wow, that seemed a little rambling, but you get the point. Anyone want to tell us how you start with your characters? Or maybe you can explain better how the characters "tell" us about themselves.

For the love of my characters....

Going to bed last night I was bombarded with images of my various characters. Which, of course, got me thinking about the whole character building aspect of writing.

I've heard of writers basing their stories around characters, while others base them on the plot. Others will base their stories on a specific 'what-if', while others will base them on a very specific scene. I tend to combine it all.

I usually know approximately what I want to happen, whether in the middle, beginning or end. Then, I close my eyes and picture the scene, and whoever plays it out becomes my characters. Sometimes, they 'tell' me their names, while other times I have to conjure up a name, even if temporarily, to fit the need at the time.

In Repeated Life I couldn't come up with suitable names, so I just inserted generic names for the time being. By the end of the story, though, I knew exactly what their names would be. Well, great, but what about the characters themselves...not just their names? Good question.

When I'm writing a book, just like with the scenery, I close my eyes and see who pops in there. With Repeated Life, the heroine is a petite, but not short, dark haired woman, with brown eyes and lots of flaws. She's insecure, neurotic (in a good way), indecisive, emotional, and can't seem to make up her mind. The male, well, let's just say Kevin Durand. When I picture the hero in Repeated Life I picture a tall, muscular, masculine, grey eyed man. Kevin Duran continuously pops in my head when reading the scenes. In my newest book, yet to be named, a tiny, thin woman with long curly hair and blue eyes popped in my head. She's flawed, yet gifted beyond belief. Hey, how many people can feel and see people's energies and auras?! The hero, Jason, is a six foot tall Choctaw Indian man who has a secret...he's a Skinwalker.

So, there's my little blurb on my characters. How do you build yours? Do you have a pattern or a formula? Or do you, like myself, let them tell you about themselves?

Plotting 101 by Rachel Vincent

After spending hours plotting my newest WIP over the past couple days, I became curious as to how others plot. Do they use sticky notes? Is there an outline? Or do other authors wing it and let the story tell itself. My previous method was just to write down names I wanted to use, a theme, then roll with it. What happened was A LOT of rewriting! Thus the new route of plotting.

I came across this blog by Rachel Vincent at http://urbanfantasy.blogspot.com/search/label/plotting. I suggest heading over there sometime...she has a lot of useful, as well as fun information. Without further ado and tommyfoolerin, here's Ms. Vincent's blog.....



This is Why I Plot....

(Blog title is stuck in my head, being chanted to the tune of "This Is Why I'm Hot." Someone please kill the earworm!)


Yesterday, I mentioned on Twitter that my white board was covered in sticky notes, and several people asked me to either post pictures or explain how I used the board and stickies. Last year, I did a post covering this topic, so if you'd like to read that original post, click here. Or, you can scroll down and I'll explain it again in this post, referencing the novel I'm now outlining.

I have about a zillion things due in the next three months. A short story. A novella. The fifth Soul Screamers novel (IF I DIE). And the synopsis for the first book in my new adult series. (Before people start asking--again--no, I can't talk about the new series in detail yet. Not until I have permission from my editor. All I can say now is that it's paranormal (of course) and that it's currently scheduled for fall of 2011, though that could change.) And this synopsis is the most pressing of my deadlines. It's due...oh...now. Yesterday. Pronto.

But here's the thing about first books in a series: they're hard. Not that any book is really ever easy to write, but it's always harder for me with the first book in the series, because you're starting everything from scratch. The world is new, and I don't really know it. The characters are new, and I don't really know them. The conflicts are new, and I don't really know them either. Which means that at the beginning of the process (which is where I am now), I'm flying blind.

Yesterday, after weeks of brainstorming on a couple of basic ideas, world building concepts, and vague character sketches, I sat down and actually plotted the novel. This is very hard work. It requires copious amounts of caffeine and Zen-like concentration.

[Craft word, as defined by Rachel: plotting - coming up with and organizing the actual events of the novel, including the main story line, the romance arc, and the relevant bits of the series arc. This is where I do the point-by-point, linear outline. By the end, I know all the major events and motivations which will propel the story.]

What I had when I started actually plotting:

•A list of characters and their relationships

•A list of important world-building facts--the rules of the world

•A big, blank white board

•Sticky notes, in three different colors, one for each plot thread

•A fine point black pen

•Notes, taken on my laptop, my iPad, and jotted on actual paper from my white board, before I erased it.

•Coffee. Never underestimate the power of caffeine. Seriously.

[Disclaimer: The following is how Rachel plots a book. This method usually works for her, but that is no guarantee that it will work for anyone else. Nor is this post a criticism or condemnation of anyone else's plotting method.]

Step one: Assign colors to your plot threads. For this book, the green notes are the main plot thread, the pink ones are the romance plot thread (I know, it's cliche, but it's easy to remember) and yellow is the series arc. I actually am not fond of the color yellow, but that's all I had left. ;-)

Step two: write down every single event/transition/turning point you've thought of so far, each on a separate sticky note, doing your best to assign them to the proper color. (You can always re write them on a different color later, if it turns out you got that part wrong.) I always begin this part certain that I only know a few things about the book. The plot must be introduced. The characters must be introduced. Girl must meet boy, or girl #2, or whatever (or be reintroduced to boy, or girl #2, or whatever), even if your novel isn't actually a romance. If it has a romance thread, at some point, the romantic leads must meet.

But as usual, once I started jotting down all my ideas, I realized I knew a lot more than I thought I did. Some of it is backstory, which must be carefully spread out and sprinkled in small doses, only where and when it's necessary. Even more were events crucial to the central mystery, which must have been bouncing around in the back of my mind, even though I hadn't consciously agonized over them.

Regardless, by the time I'd written down everything I could think of, there were more than fifty sticky notes on my board.

(Content has been blurred to protect the innocent--which probably wasn't necessary, considering how sloppy my handwriting is.)

Step 3: Clean it up. Go through the notes and make sure that everything concerning the romance is on a pink note (or whatever color you've chosen). This is not a perfect science. Some things would fit on multiple colors, so just go with what you feel. Or your first instinct. Or whatever.

Step 4: Insert logic here. Start with the logical beginning and begin putting the notes in the order that makes most sense. This is the part where you love me for making you use notes, instead of just writing it all down on your white board. Like this, you can rearrange things until you like the story they're starting to show, without having to constantly erase and rewrite things.

At this stage, I sometimes have to trash and rewrite/rephrase some notes, to make everything fits. The notes to the side in the above picture are those that didn't make it into the plot.

Step 5: Fill in the blanks with more sticky notes. Sometimes these blanks are transitions. Sometimes they're plot elements I didn't even know I was missing until I saw gaps in my plot (literal gaping holes in my string of stickies). Sometimes the blanks are more back story elements that provide motivation or complicate relationships. And sometimes... (This part's awesome!) they're snippets of true inspiration--a Eureka! moment--formed when bits of the story fit together in ways I didn't anticipate.

Note: it's okay to leave a few gaps, or stickies that read something like, "the heroine saves the day through an amazing feat of bravery and invention, and the world falls to her feet to celebrate her." Because some details just won't come until you're actually writing the book. And I think that's a good thing. It keeps the author/book relationship alive. Preserves the chemistry, if that makes any sense.

Step 6: Write it all down. Open up a word document and begin writing down what happens in the book, going from one sticky note to the next. This is the skeletal beginnings of your synopsis. Once you flesh it out, layering in any motivation or character development you may have missed, you'll have a completely outlined novel, just waiting to be written.

This last step is what I'm working on today. The book is completely outlined, the characters, motivations, and conflicts are in place. Now I just have to write it all down and make it pretty.

Wish me luck!

I also use sticky notes, or Post-Its but I don't use a white board. I just utilized two mirrors, instead. It started out as one, but my notes and chicken scratches flowed over to my dressing mirror.
Thanks for the great info, Rachel. You're an unbelievable writer!