Tag: diary

Diary of a New Writer 4 – Location, Location, Location!

~ Meg ~ 24 Comments

(Here are parts one, two and three, if you missed them)

*Disclaimer:  This is not an exhaustive how-to for novel writing, just a few things I learned along the way.

What does the realtor always tell you when you’re shopping for a home?  Yep.  Location, location, location!  The same is true when considering where to set your novel.  Are you a sci fi or fantasy writer?  Then you have some extensive world building to do.  Planets, terrain, space stations, artificial environments – the components of a fictional world are complex.  This is why I am greatly in awe of writers like Frank Herbert who wrote the Dune series imageand JRR Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy

World building for a contemporary romantic suspense novel, however, is not such an arduous task.  Nevertheless, there are some things to consider when deciding the location for a novel.

 

  1. How important is the location to the plot?  In other words, could this same story take place anywhere or only in the setting you’ve chosen?  For an overly obvious example, Tony Hillerman wrote about the Navajo Tribal Police on the reservation in the American Southwest.  He could not have set those novels anywhere else.  Duh.
  2. Are you very familiar with the setting you’ve chosen or not so much?  For example, if you live in Dallas, Texas and you set your story in Montreal, Canada, you better be prepared to do your homework.  Now, if you lived in Montreal in the past, you should be fine, but if you’ve never even visited, be careful!  Nothing can ruin a good story like screwing up the details.
  3. Let’s say you decide to set the story in a fictional location.  Not a bad idea.  It gives you a lot of room to get creative.  However, when constructing your locale, you need to be consistent.  You can’t say that the post office is next door to the police station in chapter 1 and then say it’s across the street from the police station in chapter 6.  Make yourself a map, keep a detailed list of the businesses and places of interest in your fictional town or city:  places like restaurants, parks, the city hall, shops and public transportation (if there is any).  image
  4. What about the time period you’re writing in?  Philadelphia in 1776 versus Philadelphia 2015?  Again, do your homework.  My worst nightmare:  having an expert read my book, find the mistakes and blab all about it in an Amazon review!  So don’t be lazy, be thorough!

There are more details to consider, of course, but that’s an overview.  In my case, I decided to go with that old epitaph, I mean adage, of ‘write what you know’ and set my story close to home.

I don’t live right in Doylestown, but I live about 20 minutes away.  D-town is a quaint/hip town with lots of great restaurants and shops.  It has train service to Philadelphia which gave me any easy way to write the city into the story, too.  I used actual businesses and made a few up.  A good rule of thumb is not to write about a real business if you don’t have something nice to say about it.  It you need a crappy restaurant or a nasty shopkeeper, create one and don’t piss off your neighbors!

Anyway, I don’t care who you are, you are not going to possess all the knowledge you’ll need to write your book.  There will be a minimum of research you will need to do.  So what about that research?  Where do you go to find stuff out?  That’s next!

Images courtesy:  wackenhutco.com, ieet.org, buzzfeed.com

Diary of a New Writer (3) Creating my characters

~ Meg ~ 21 Comments

(Images courtesy vulture.com and zap2it.com)

(To find part one, check here, for part two, check here)

Where were we? Ah, yes!  I had the idea for my basic plot and a main character whose story I wanted to tell.  I even had a good opening scene.  However, as I began writing, I realized there is more to crafting a novel, than just putting words down on the page.  As I mentioned in the last installment, my main character, Jen, had family, friends, a job, and a new man.  Where did she live?  What did she do for fun?

To get started, I wrote down the general plot outline, a quick synopsis of where I wanted the story to go.  My outline would evolve from rather basic, to more and more detailed, as I started writing and new ideas emerged.  You don’t have to have every detail of the story worked out before you start writing, but at least have a foundation on which to add layers.  Next, I started a list of all the people who would be close to Jen:  her father, their longtime housekeeper/Jen’s surrogate mother, her two best friends, her new love interest, and his family.  More would be added later.

One primary task was to give them names.  How do you choose a name for a character?  Some of my names came from deceased relatives, old family friends, and the ever useful behindthename.com website.  For whatever age your character is, you can check this website to see what names were popular the year they were “born.” For choosing surnames, I carefully watched TV show credits, paid attention to the last names of athletes, people in the news and even place names.  Then, to make sure I wasn’t using the name of someone already famous, I would google the name to see what came up.

Remember how my inspiration for Jen came from Jennifer Lawrence?  Well, I figured the same thing might be helpful to do for the other characters in the story.  Who would I cast to play Jen’s father?  Her best friends Joni and Desdemona?  The handsome Tommy Quinn?  (That’s Eddie Cahill from CSI: New York; he was just about the only reason to watch that show.)  His equally handsome brothers? (Remember Colin O’Donoghue from last week?  He’s Tommy’s brother Graham.) To keep track of them all, I started a Pinterest board  which you are welcome to check out. Having a face to associate with each character was extremely helpful to me.  I could visualize the actors in the situations I created for them.

 

The next thing I did was break out the 5×7 index cards.  I know that’s a little old school, but I also wrote most of the story in my fancy notebook, too!  Each character needed a backstory.  The backstory wasn’t necessary to the plot of the book, but it helped me determine how a character would act/react in a particular situation.  So on the index card, I wrote their age, their physical description, what they did for work, how they related to Jen.  Also what was unique about their personality?  Were they sweet and kind?  Cranky and short tempered?  Quick witted and funny?  Energetic and capable?  Athletic, artistic, shy, outgoing, confident?  Each character’s card contained their biography; the more important the character, the more detailed the biography.

The plot outline is filling in, my index cards are piling up and I’m a couple of chapters in!  The longer the story becomes, however, the harder it becomes to keep track of what happened when, who said what to whom and so forth.  I needed a way to quickly reference the flow of the story.  The solution?  A timeline spreadsheet.  I also needed to decide where my novel would be set.  A small town?  A big city?  What part of the country?  Would the location be real or imagined?  Those are the subjects for next time.

 

Diary of a New Writer – (2) I’m a writer! Now what?

~ Meg ~ 29 Comments

(Part 1 can be found here.)

It all started with a fancy notebook.  Well, not super fancy, but better than a plain-old, college-ruled, spiral-bound notebook, anyway.  Every writer keeps a notebook, right?  I had a collection of beautiful pens.  I started a secret (so my friends wouldn’t guess what I was up to) Pinterest board and pinned a bunch of writing quotes and suggestions.  I revisited my Tumblr blog, which to this point was basically:

a Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant fangirl site, and started following some actual writing blogs!  I downloaded a thesaurus app for my iPad, opened up a fresh document in Pages on my iMac.  I was ready to do this!          *crickets chirping*      Ummm….

What do I write about?  Should I start with a short story?  Practice by following some writing prompts?  There is no shortage of them floating around the blogosphere and social media.   Do I follow that old platitude of ‘write what you know?’  Meh.  I don’t want to write an autobiography.  Write what you like to read!  Better!  A mystery?  Yes!  A little romance?  Oh, yeah!  Some humor to break the tension?  Absolutely!  Ok, the ideas were starting to form!  Now, where to begin.  I decided a short story was the way to go.  I also knew this:  I wanted to write about a strong, capable, female character.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it’s a cliché, but what else would you call her?)  Next, I had to figure out what would happen to her.  Here were some of my early ideas:

  1.  She is a doctor who has volunteered with a group like Doctors Without Borders.  The doctors are sent into a war zone and captured by the rebel insurgents.  When they are finally rescued and returned home, our main character has PTSD and tries to heal and recuperate by retreating to her family’s cabin in the mountains.  She finds a home in the local community and love with another damaged soul (enter handsome male character).  Meanwhile, someone in her former group believes she was witness to a crime committed in the war zone and comes after her.  She finds herself fighting for her life once again.
  2. A burned out executive realizes that climbing the corporate ladder is not the way to happiness. She gives up her high paying, high stress job and takes a teaching job at small, rural college.  She rents a house in the village near the school and befriends her landlord, the retired police chief, who lives next door.  The current chief of police is an inept bungler and the old cop, along with our heroine, end up solving some big mystery (I never established what it was).
  3. Our heroine is a teacher who decides to escape the noise and pollution of the city for the summer and spend the break at her family’s cabin in the mountains.  (Are you sensing a theme, here?)  The property backs up to an abandoned mountain retreat built at the height of the Industrial Revolution.  During the late 1800s to early 1900s the place served as a spa, but later was turned into a mental institution for the rich who wished to lock their crazy relatives away.  It has been closed down since the 1970s.  So why can you sometimes still see lights shining through the trees?  Our heroine and her handsome neighbor must investigate!

There are more of them, but these were better developed than the rest.  I still might eventually do something with them.  By this point, half of my fancy notebook is full and I can’t make up my mind.  I re-read my Pinterest board quotes.  I gave myself a pep talk.  “Just start one of them and see where it goes.  If it sucks, move on.”  I chose option number one: my doctor story, and started my opening scene.  Dr. Lindsay and her brother and her father are unloading the car at the cabin.  Show, don’t tell, right?  Beautiful scenery, gorgeous sunset, dust motes floating in the sunbeams shining through the cabin windows…  Yawn.  I  wasn’t feeling it.  But then…

Then!  …a flash of inspiration hits you and you just have to run with it!  That is exactly what happened when I imagined Jennifer Dunne.  I saw her in my mind, cast Jennifer Lawrence to play her in the movie.

images(I actually named her Jennifer after Ms. Lawrence!  I took her last name from the Dunne department stores in Ireland. Image via vulture.com)

I had the starting point of the story in mind.  Life was about to get complicated for this young woman.  She was about to uncover a secret from her mother’s past.  What happens next?   Well, duh, she meets a hot guy.  Together, they dig into the mystery.  She becomes the target of some ruthless criminals.  How will she handle it all?  I knew how I wanted the story to end.  Secret uncovered, mystery solved, bad guys dealt with.  This was great!  This was no short story, it could be a novel!  I just need about 90,000 more words!  Hmm.  She has friends, she has a job, she has family.  All these minor characters and subplots need to be developed.  The clues to our mystery need to be slowly revealed.  Are the police involved?  What about the relationship between the young couple?  Is it smooth sailing or do problems arise?  I had some list-making and organizing to do.  That’s what I’ll tell you about next time!  Oh, and my Tumblr blog?  It’s now a Colin O’Donoghue fangirl site!  Just kidding, Colin plays a part in the next installment!