This week I begin on that always fun quest, picking the next big story. Yup, that’s right. After dealing with life the past couple of years, I’m finally set to return to the keyboard in a very creative way. Just one thing is slowing me down, though….
I don’t know what I’m going to write.
I’m amazed at all these people who have all these ideas that seemingly overflow their brains and drip out their ears. In fact, many of these people have so many ideas that they never actually get to, you know, writing them. Me, I’m completely the opposite. I’m eager to write, but more often than not I struggle to find a story I can be passionate enough about that I can stick with it for the year or so it takes to complete a novel (not a draft, the whole thing). It’s actually worse now that I write novels instead of screenplays. A screenplay could be done in a month or so, and if I wasn’t passionate, so what? I’d be on the next thing soon enough.
No. I exaggerate. They are both difficult. Screenplays were tough because you have to find the correct short story length vehicle that will fit into the rather unforgiving screenplay format. Novels are nice and free-form and all, but with that freedom comes a great deal of responsibility to form a nicely intertwined structure for the plot and characters. ‘course, having spent something like fifteen years writing scripts and only a handful writing prose, I’m still not nearly as practiced with the latter as I was with the former (and I’m sure it still shows).
But the time for procrastination has ended. This week is story breakout week. I don’t know where I’m going to end up, but I’m sure it will be an interesting journey.
I don’t really have any set methodology. My preference is to talk with another writer (or similar creative individual) and see what sort of embers emerge that can be fanned into flames; hoping, then, for the flames to emerge as an inferno: a story so personally compelling that it simply MUST be written. Lacking that, I’ll either type, record, scribble, or speech recognize my own ramblings to see if something works. It’s not nearly as much fun, and I’m sure it’s limiting. Even so, it does work.
Other than that, I have no set process for creating a populated world of imagination out of thin air. Sometimes it’s the McGuffin…the thing that is important to me that is the raison d’art of the piece. Sometimes it’s characters. I’ll have in my mind a person and then I just let my imagination go wild. Sometimes it’s someone I happen to know, sometimes it’s an actor. With screenplays, this was a convenient cheat for me. At any given time there are actors on my mind that I think I would like to write for. Off the top of my head, I could see enjoyment coming from writing something for a Summer Glau, Amber Tamblyn, or even a Meredith Baxter. (Heh…every time I see Ed Asner I just twist myself in knots wishing I could adapt Stranger in a Strange Land…he’d be the perfect Jubal.) Who knows…this might be the way I go.
Sometimes I set the scene, developing the world and history. Then, and only then, do I start developing the characters that have to act within the framework of my world construct. Actually, since I turned to novels, this is becoming a more common method. Publishers tend to hold to the philosophy that an author is only good writing in one genre (or more if the genres are closely related). As a result, you pretty much have to stick to one. For me, that means science fiction (SF). Truthfully, I also narrow it down more than that. I strongly prefer to write female-led action-oriented pieces, so that gives me a starting point with my protagonist (though this generality does get violated from time-to-time).
That’s typically my beginning state of mind: whatever I develop will likely be a female-led SF piece with at least some action elements in it.
This session I’m helped by the fact that I do have two stories in various stages of development ready to be developed further. One is actually based on a short story draft I wrote many years ago and actually wrote a few chapters for a novel not long after. The other story is purposely built and has some of the setting and characters sketched. The first one will definitely be written at some point as my mind often wanders on back to it. I’m just not sure it’s the one I want to write NOW. The second has promise, but it needs a lot of work. True, it’s not at step-one, but neither is it anywhere near a point where even a short story could be written. It’s still more of an idea than a story outline.
Whatever happens, I know that I’m looking forward to the process. Except for that off-the-top-of-my-head short-short I posted this past fall, I haven’t done any real creative writing for a while. My imagination feels the need for some exercise, and I can’t hardly wait to hit the creative gym. Funny, a lot of people spend quite a lot of money trying to get the voices and visions out of their heads, me…I invite them in.
I will, of course, keep updating as events warrant.
