I’m cracking into my new project today, so it’s the perfect time to dive into how to grow your spiffy little story idea into a hundred-thousand-ish-word effort that might stand the test of time.
This is my fave part of the process: watering the seeds of a novel, cranking tunes, drawing out mind maps, exploring a billion What-ifs?, free writing, having long conversations with ChatGPT, tearing through books, movies, plays, and TV shows, pacing back and forth while mumbling to myself, creating fresh voices, slipping into the skin of new characters—syncing my heartbeat to theirs.
Drowning in Words is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I am now Cara, a forty-two-year-old Californian with slightly anxious tendencies who has no idea how bad it’s about to get in her life. Everything she’s been hiding will be blown wide open, leaving her and her family to pick up the broken pieces a long way from what they once called home.
On the topic of character, I committed to names a couple of weeks ago for my mains: Cara, Luke, and Lainey. And I like to pair them with a face on the internet. Sometimes, it’s a random person I find while searching applicable keywords, other times I might have a famous person in mind. The bonus there is you get a sense of how they speak and move and even a glimpse into their personality.
In the early drafts, I couldn’t quite find the voice of Annalisa, the protagonist in my novel, The Singing Trees, but she suddenly came alive after I watched an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and realized they shared a similar sense of humor. As I rewrote sections of dialogue, I imagined the hilarious Mrs. Maisel speaking. Cracking that code gave Annalisa the verve she needed and created so many laugh-out-loud moments, making the writing experience intensely enjoyable. Of course, if it weren’t for me putting it out there now, no one would ever know I’d injected some of Mrs. Maisel’s DNA into Annalisa. The best artists steal anyway, right?
For my WIP, Mr. Mark Ruffalo is a sure bet for Luke. The casting decision was actually a request from the real-life person on whom Luke is loosely based. Smart, quirky, sensitive, warm. A professor type. Perhaps a bit aloof. I’m not sure on Lainey yet, but I see straight sandy blond hair that falls well past her shoulders. For some reason, I also see her wearing big headphones, hiding from the world. Note to self: I need to figure out what she’s listening to.
I’m thinking Jennifer Lawrence would play a mean Cara, but we’ll see. She’s the big one, the make-or-break hero, so I need to feel her in my bones before I get started. Later today, I’ll spend some time watching Jennifer Lawrence clips and interviews, seeing if she makes sense. Or I might start over and search images of women in their forties till a bell rings in my head, saying, “Yep, that’s her!”
Sure, these decisions might change, but I like settling on names and faces (and even voices) early on, so they can seep into my subconscious.
Another great trick for getting to know your people is to let them speak through you. I don’t necessarily work out all the details of my cast’s histories, but I like to free-write for a while in first-person from each of their perspectives, exploring their beliefs, their loves and hates, their strengths and weaknesses. Even more minor characters. It’s amazing how doing so breathes life into them, like plugging an air pump into a blow-up doll.
Before we get too carried away, let’s take a step back and consider the project from a wider purview. One call I like to make early on is my angle of attack. How am I going to let this tale unravel?
Choosing your narrative stance—the point of view and tense—is a big one. Remember, these decisions can always change; you’re not wasting your time. I wrote my first thriller, Lowcountry Punch (published under pen name Benjamin Blackmore) in third-person past, then totally rewrote it in first-person past. Guess what? It only got better, as I was forced to rethink each sentence, so don’t worry about making a bad call. Most of the time, you’ll know after a few pages if you’ve gone in the wrong direction. I like changing it up with each book, as a fresh choice brings out a different vibe. Besides, who doesn’t like compounding challenges? For some reason, I never make it easy on myself.
Yesterday, I decided to start free writing the opening scene of the book, which had come to me a few days earlier. Without any thought at all, the tale sprung from my fingers in first-person present, a narrative mode I’ve not used before. As they say, there’s a wonderful sense of immediacy, and it felt right in my bones—at least for one of the two timelines.
This one’s a dual-timeline novel, meaning it will feature two separate stories woven together across time. As I did with An Echo in Time, which was also dual timeline, I’ll use present tense for the present-day story and past tense for the earlier part. It makes the time jump easier on the reader.
My advice to you: don’t be a lunatic like me and feel like you have to go outside of your comfort zone and change it up with each book. If you’re just getting started, spin your first tale or two in third-person past and go from there. For God’s sake, don’t write dual timeline. It’s twice the work!
The other big decision that needs to be made early on is how you’re going to arrive at your plot. Maybe I’ll one day add to the robust surplus of words dedicated to plotting versus pantsing, but today, I’ll keep it rather simple.
I’ve most often been a plotter and heavy organizer. You ought to see this Excel sheet I created last year that prompts me to hash out flaws, wants, needs, wounds, motivations, etc. When you write under deadline like I do, I try to minimize the amount of words I’ll have to delete later by spreading all the pieces of the puzzle onto the table. Even when I follow an outline, I typically axe upwards of fifty thousand words during the editing process. God knows how much chopping I’d have to do if I played the discovery game like Stephen King, writing without a sense of what happens next.
That being said, each book seems to take me further from following a particular regimen. I used to be tied to the story beats of Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!, which is a distilled version of Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, which is a distilled version of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In tackling the last few novels, I’ve followed the general idea of a hero’s journey, but I’m not tied to the beats in a systematic way. As they say, you can break the rules once you know them. After publishing nearly two million words, I’d like to think I can follow my instincts more.
With this book, I have a strong urge to set myself free. In my current genre, which I like to call high-impact fiction, or upmarket fiction (others like to say book club or women’s fiction—the latter of which I really don’t like), the beauty is it’s actually genreless. There are no tropes I must follow, no guardrails keeping me on a specific track. Hell, you don’t even need clear external goals, a narrative component nearly every writing craft book out there crams down your throat as essential.
So no, I don’t need to follow a recipe. I might have one character who only has an internal goal—or none at all—and another that might switch external goals every fifty pages. It can all work!
Ultimately, my own external goal is to write a page-turner while sneaking in a few eloquent lines that might be worthy of the muck on the bottom of Pat Conroy’s loafers. Okay, I’ll never write a line that great, but I’ll keep trying. Anyway, there are infinite ways to create a page-turner. Don’t you dare let your OCD win and think that you have to follow the latest rule book.
There’s a quote that’s been knocked around for a century or more, perhaps first said by playwright George Abbott, that captures the essence of story well.
“In the first act, get your hero up a tree; in the second, throw rocks at him; in the third, get him down.”
Let’s stop overthinking things. Just do what he says! That’s my intent with this one. My simple outline will mostly consist of a bunch of rocks that I’m going to throw at Cara and the gang.
I’ll also spend some time imagining the end, see if I can get a sense of the climax—even a a few vivid images. Right now, a big part is Cara and Luke rediscovering the love they have for each other, so there will inevitably be an emotional scene when they finally break down the last wall standing between them.
Sometimes, simply by knowing our character’s flaws, we can get an idea of their ending. I’m unsure on Cara’s issues right now, but if her flaw is that she runs from everything in her life, then she’ll need to stop running and finally face her demons…or daddy issues. Having a feel for the ending can be a north star guiding you home.
To summarize, I now know my humans, how to attack them up in the tree, and how to get them back down without breaking too many bones. Now I’m ready to jump in and get going, without worrying much more about formula. I may or may not follow the outline. As I heard someone say recently, what would I have to stray from if I didn’t have an outline?
Let’s see how this goes. Like my last book, I might smack into a wall at thirty-thousand words and have to back up and get super-detailed with my preparation, re-hashing the outline and all the moving pieces in a big way. But I like the idea of going after it untethered with this one. A tiger with a laptop let out into the wild.
All these rules we study are great, and you need to know them, but at some point, we’re simply trying to write a story that snatches the reader from reality and throws them into our imaginary world in awestruck fashion. How do we do that? By letting it snatch us, the writer, away from reality first. In other words, readers won’t get chill bumps or shed tears unless you do first. Last I checked, their chill bumps and tears don’t care if your midpoint falls right at the fifty-percent mark of if your external goal isn’t tangible enough.
So put in some prep time, then turn off the critical part of your brain, slip on the skin of your character, jump into the story, and get those digits moving.
Hell, break every freaking rule out there. Write art-house anti-pop if you want. Unless you’re trying to pay the bills. I guess you need to decide that too—your end goal. What are you trying to accomplish? Is this for Mom and your crazy aunt Loopah? Or are you setting your sights on dethroning J.K. Rowling? Heeding to some sort of structure will likely make your work more appealing to the masses.
There is no right answer. That’s the concept you need to keep telling yourself. There is no one right way. Seriously, tattoo that on your flipping forehead in bright red. I wish I had early on, though my wife might not have so easily fallen into my spell. Feel free to type out a hundred-page outline or try to outdo me with an even more detailed Excel sheet, capturing every meal your hero had since birth. Or, don’t spend one second of your precious time planning. Open up a blank page and let her rip.
All I can do is share what’s working for me right now and how I got here. Now go on and start hacking away at your masterpiece.
P.S. First thing I did this morning was change the name on my Alexa from my previous protagonist, Sandy, to Cara. Now my wife has to “drop in to Cara” if she wants to speak to me. Commit, folks!
Drowning in Words is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
