Writing a Novel, Part Two: A Nugget

Last post, we pointed out that writing a novel-length work is the same thing as writing a page a day for most of a year, NOT BEING AFRAID TO PUMP OUT THE WORDS.   Bestselling author Jim Butcher would call such work Butt in the Chair time (Footnote 1).

Today I’m going to discuss the second step towards writing a novel.  Finding a story idea.

The core of your story, arguably the most important part, should be clear before you type the first word.  But having this sort of idea is not the same thing as coming up with a thirty page dossier of every twist and turn—that kind of thing is unnecessary.

It might be easier to think of a story idea as the answers to two interrelated questions:

1) Who are your central characters?

2) What is going to happen to them?

When I started writing 3 Days of Demons, I wanted my main character to start off working for some bad guys, get unceremoniously discarded, and turn against them to save his own skin.  My Who became a young demon-hunting executive named Joseph Harper and the group he coerced into helping clear his name.  My What was a straightforward extension.  Joseph and his coterie were going to tear down his old company or die trying.

What sort of story idea do you have?  Don’t worry if being put on the spot isn’t very helpful.  I can actually go a little bit further to suggest how people come up with ideas that speak to them.  One of the obvious-when-you-think-about-it secrets of fiction is that writers identify with their viewpoint characters.  Even when he’s writing as himself, Jim Butcher sounds rather like Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files. Christopher Paolini, author of the bestselling Inheritance Cycle, admits that his hero Eragon “began as me.”

If you feel inclined to rage against over-successful hacks, don’t bother.  When you can’t connect to your main characters well enough to make them come to life, you’re one step closer to writing a bad book.  I can’t speak for the entire writing community, but I believe that the best way to come up with a great story idea is to think back to some memory that really nags at you, in every sense of the word, pick a side, and embellish the drama.

Maybe that time you really didn’t want to ask for directions could turn into a story idea where your viewpoint character is trapped in a mysterious dimension and, accidentally insults the empress, and has to do penance.  Maybe that time you had a total miscommunication with your significant other could turn into the nugget of a paranormal romance where the heroine and the hero start off together, break up, and try to figure out if they really were made for each other (all while fending off possessed werewolves, of course).

The trick is to avoid becoming so invested in your plot that you accidentally write a polemic.  But as long as you make sure to let your main characters make mistakes, you probably have enough distance.

Next time: Point of View Madness!

Footnote 1: Jim Butcher’s livejournal hasn’t been updated all that much, it’s all good stuff about craft and work ethic.  Particularly notable is a post from 2006 that quotes a whole bunch of scathing reviews, which implicitly points out that even #1 New York Times bestselling authors have their own bête noirs.