Book One is finished. Still needs some polish and I still need to hear from my readers what works and doesn’t work but from my own read and from the first reviews that have come in it hangs together plot-wise and is an engaging story. If those two things didn’t work then the whole thing would be for nothing.
In a few weeks I’ll begin rewriting and preparing my cover letters and finding agents to contact and then once the first packages have been sent I’ll start writing Book Two.
Now I’ve got ideas, all manner of ideas. Ideas that have been percolating in my brain for years and ideas that are a shimmering haze on the horizon, unformed, vague, that may turn out to be mirages or may be bestsellers.
Something that has happened to me a lot throughout my life when I mention I’m writing a book or want to write a book is people say to me, ‘Oh, I have a great idea for a book’ and then they tell me the idea in a sentence or two and, mostly, they are good ideas but the trick to having a good idea is knowing how to turn a good idea into a good story.
A podcast I listen to (Writing Excuses) discussed plot and story and said that these days good/successful stories seem to be the ones that mix an original idea and a familiar one.
Inception: Familiar – Heist story, original – takes place in dreams.
Breaking Bad: Familiar – Crime show about drug dealers, original – drug dealer is a mild-mannered chemistry teacher.
Harry Potter: Familiar - Kids at school, original – everyone’s magic
For myself I currently have an idea that I’m working on that doesn’t really have a plot. There is a world, characters, a few quirky ideas but at the moment they just sit there on the page not moving forward. I’ve started thinking of plots to match up to it now. Is it a love story? A murder mystery? A heist story? At the beginning of the process I find it’s easier to take an established plot and use those beats to get the ball rolling. Once I start thinking of my idea as a murder mystery for example I may find a better plot unfolding instead. When I was writing Book One it was, at first, a coming of age story (familiar) set during the fictional election battle between Bobby Kennedy and John Wayne (original). As I was planning it I forwarded the established beats of that genre and with each beat I would ask, ‘How can I subvert that? How can I make it familiar but original?’ And sometimes I would leave it as it was and sometimes I would flip it on its head and in the end it was flipping one of the conventions on its head that made the story what it was and got me excited for writing it.
At the moment I’m letting the idea percolate and eventually I’m sure something will click into place (with this idea or a different one) and just like that I’ll have another book to write. It’s exciting. There is a world of characters sitting somewhere in the recesses of my brain just waiting to live and die and love and speak and when they’re ready they’ll introduce themselves and we’ll make something really good together.
