After publishing three novels now, I've heard plenty of remarks from friends and family that all practically say the same thing, "I could never just sit down and write a book." While spending hours in front of my keyboard is the only thing that puts words on the page, it's only half of the writing process. I have found and profess that writing any work takes two things: grit and divine inspiration.
Grit is the hours spent in a coffee shop or library, putting pen to the paper. It is actualizing the story into something tangible, and most importantly, readable. This is the only part of the writing process that can be measured, that can be counted by others as progress. Though, as I've said before, this only accounts for half of writing. The other half is what I have called "divine inspiration."
Divine inspiration is the gathering of ideas, the "ah-ha" moments that is required to develop the base for a story. As you could imagine, most stories start from ideas. Like a painter, there needs to be a vision for the work that is about to be created. For me, a story usually starts with a singular scene or emotion that passes through my mind. A body is found, a town is left without hope, a king is in the wilderness. Ideas come from somewhere and it doesn't matter where, what matters is where you take it. This is why sitting down and trying to come up with a story is extremely difficult. Creating outlines and forcing events on their own negates any inspiration. Ideas need to happen naturally and then they need to be explored. Stephen King talks about this in his memoir On Writing. He says he never sits down to write an outline for a story, he simply starts with an idea and keeps asking himself "what happens next?"
I think this is what marks artists and authors. Everyone gets ideas, but not everyone runs with them. It's the little investigative journalists inside that asks "why did that happen." If I run across an idea that makes me curious, it leads down a rabbit hole that will eventually lead me to report on what I have found in this fictional realm all created from one tiny spark of inspiration.
Now, the base idea for a story is always random, it always catches you off guard. But there are ways to curate more inspiration once you decide to go down that road of discovery. For me, I put the emotion or scene in a setting. Where are they? Who are they? When are they? This starts to generate the genre for my story. Is it a western or a sci-fi? Once the scene is placed in its context, then I begin burying myself in that particular genre.
This usually starts with creating music playlists to fit the mood of the story. For Clairvoyant, I listened to indie-folk. For the Western I'm currently working on, it's country-western and film scores from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Next I begin to find movies and TV shows. While writing The Port of Gold, I rewatched all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and started Black Sails. I usually visit art museums or zoos to further surround myself with the images and objects the story would include.
And of course, I read the genre as well. I read other fictional books along with doing historical research to bring in realism and to find elements that make each genre iconic. A princess needs saving, a very familiar trope, but add in the reality of medieval prisons and the story becomes fresh again. The author who did this research best is the well known Michael Crichton. In Jurassic Park, he took his time to write out lines of DNA and provide in depth details on the science that was going on, making the fictional science that much more believable.
All this listening, watching, and reading builds into the final piece of what I would call "method writing." Method actors are known for living out the roles of the characters they portray. Method writing is very similar. I spent hours practicing how to talk like a pirate while writing The Port of Gold, even trying to figure out how someone would walk on a peg leg. Does any of this pretending put words on the page? No. It does make the process a bit more enjoyable and keeps the ideas fresh and consistent with the genre. Throughout the whole process, new ideas flow in to add depth and detail of a story.
Of course, the story still needs to be written. This is why grit is in the formula for writing anything. Once ideas are floating around and the story becomes more clear, something most be done about it. It has to be written down, everything must be recorded. Hours in front of the computer must be spent. I remember a comic that was hung up in my high school art teacher's classroom. It said good artists require free spirits and belief in magic. Great artists require hard work. This process looks different for everyone and looks different with each story I write, but the foundations are always the same. Divine inspiration and grit.
Comments