…or when you’re supposed to be writing!
When I started this blog, my intent was to share knowledge about the noveling process with my readers. I work on multiple projects at a time, so progress in any one can seem to plod. The pandemic slowed me down, particularly as I had to devote much of my personal bandwidth to my part-time job. Towards the end of the pandemic, I was also preparing to leave said job, and I wanted to leave the office in good shape.
Add to that time spent worrying over family and working on our home, and I discovered that not only was I not making much progress on writing my novels, but I was also ignoring that facet of my blog. While I’ve kept up with sharing advice and good ideas, and I’ve continued to work in INKAS, advice specifically geared towards novel-writing has been missing. What has especially been missing are posts about finding my story.
This is partly due to a reluctance on my part to share too much of the book’s content publicly, but I think it is time to do a little of that. After all, I’ve been working on this novel for nearly 15 years!
To dive right in, let me show you the ‘cover’ I created for the work-in-progress. This is not a suggestion for the real cover, but a piece of inspiration and a cover for any hardcopy draft I might maintain.
I sometimes make up book covers as inspiration to keep me writing. When I am planning on self-publishing a book, the ‘inspiration piece’ contributes to the final cover design. Since in this case I am aiming for traditional publishing, this cover won’t make it to the bookstore, but it does keep me working.
When I write, I often have a title first. It may last, it may not; it depends on how they came about. For my MackenzieWilder/ClassicBoat mysteries, I’ve tended towards titles that have a rhythmic pattern and are reminiscent of existing songs. Something no knows is that Where the Bodies Lie Buried came to me in sing-song fashion, patterned after “Home on the Range”.
C’mon, sing it to yourself, just once….
“Where the Bodies Lie Buried all day”…..
I’ll let you figure out where Sweet Corn, Fields, Forever came from; Flying Purple People Seater is obvious.
Finding Shelley’s Shoes began life as “Who’s Gonna Die?”, a reference to a group exercise Shelley uses to block out the mysteries she writes. While a recurring scene, this title didn’t have a lot to do with the overall story. As my writing progressed, the subject of where Shelley leaves her shoes becomes a sort of running theme, symbolic of the problems she faces. So the story became “Finding *insert name here*’s Shoes”. My problem was that I couldn’t decide on her name! For reasons of the story, I was locked in on certain styles of names. I made list after list of qualifying candidates before I hit on Shelley. Hedy was one, and Vivian–although I called her Vivvie. There were several others.
All of these things may feel like window dressing, and to an extent, they are. However, titles and character names should be thought out carefully, just as carefully as baby names. A lot can be conveyed by the sound of a person’s name. You want to plant the right image in your reader’s mind so that–regardless of differences in our imagining of physical characteristics–they have a feel for the character you created. Names can affect that. While a Francis might resemble a Seymour, or a John might pinch hit for a Jim, you would likely never equate a Larry with a Benedict.
By the same token, War and Peace is not the equivalent of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, nor is it The Hunger Games. [ I’ll be posting a more focused column on creating titles in “Do You Know Where YOUR Story Is?” Please stop by and check it out.]
Writing Finding Shelley’s Shoes was well underway when I attended a workshop that featured Larry Brooks, author of Story Engineering (Writer’s Digest Books, 2011). One of the items he brought up in his presentation that day was: “What is your book’s premise?”
I was flummoxed. I needed a premise? I thought I just had to write the danged thing!
Larry explained how the premise targets what the book is about in a succinct sentence or two. Its purpose is to help you pitch and discuss your manuscript in a meaningful way with other writers and publishing professionals. It also keeps your writing focused.
I devised a tentative premise and with great trepidation shared it with the group. So, here’s my first Sally Fields moment–Brooks liked it; he really liked it! Furthermore, it really worked to serve both the purposes mentioned above.
Premise for “Finding Shelley’s Shoes“
Five sisters set out on what may be their last road trip; one of them shares that she may have a serious disease, and the resultant furor unleashes a lifetime of secrets and emotion that could upend their relationships.
As my story and my characters evolved, I’ve had to struggle with keeping it all under control. Even five fictional sisters can be hard to handle at times. My critique group has caught me out at being over-descriptive, over-enthusiastic about sharing backstories, and completely confused over the proper use of en-dashes, em-dashes, and the occasional hyphen. Like everyone else, I’m learning.
At this juncture, Finding Shelley’s Shoes has been done once, then undone, and is now being redone. I have finally solved my biggest plot problem and am incorporating new scenes into the old and handling the repercussions. There is now a deadline for completion.
In future posts, I will deal with individual problems I encountered while writing this novel, and how I handled them. I’ll also post about the grant I received and how it enabled me to recreate the road trip the sisters took. The trip was an eye-opener, and it greatly affected the writing of Finding Shelley’s Shoes.
Finding Robin's Story 