Why I Love Brainstorming

Today my guest is author Phoebe Conn. She began her writing career with Kensington in the 1980s, when historical romances were hugely popular, twice as long as they are now, and half the price! She also wrote several contemporary books with them, and futuristic books as Phoebe Conn and as Cinnamon Burke for Leisure. Phoebe is also having a giveaway to one commenter, so make sure you read through the post.

Thank you so much, Terry, for inviting me to blog.

Whenever I say I’m a writer, I’m always asked where I get my ideas. Each book has it’s own story of how it came to be, but my June Samhain romantic suspense release, WHERE DREAMS BEGIN started with a brainstorming session with a poet. On weekends, we’d often leave Los Angeles and drive up to Santa Barbara or Ojai. Resort towns are wonderful places to sit in an outdoor cafe, relax and observe people walking by. The poet looked for intriguing characters for his poems, while I made notes of people’s quirks for possible use in my books. A waitress whose ponytail sprouted from the top of her head like a volcano, for example, appears in PARADISE, a book set in Ojai. A waiter who mumbled became a pirate whose orders were unintelligible in my futuristic romance, LADY ROGUE.

We’d also spend time generating plot ideas. The park-like setting of the University of California at Riverside is perfect for brainstorming. One afternoon, we made notes for a story beginning with the protagonist at a crossroads. She’s a young widow and can’t go back to the life she loved, but what if any choice she makes creates more trouble than she’s already in? These were such fun sessions because brainstorming has only one rule: don’t evaluate ideas, simply let them flow.

Every book needs an opening that makes an emotional connection with the reader and swiftly draws them into the story. It needs tension that builds with every word to a dramatic and satisfying finish. We brainstormed dynamite openings some days. Other days, we’d work on developing one of our openings to a full story. In one possible book, we had the hero escape the men after him in a diaper service van. It was a great scene, even if it was never used. Now few people use a diaper service, so the scene wouldn’t be as easily believed.

Counting Down to Release Day

Thanks to Chris for yesterday's post. I think any writer here will agree that it's something we love, and we need to remember that. And don't forget, you have until Friday to leave a comment and be entered in the drawing for her books, so scroll down to her post.

Also, in conjunction with my generous donor of copies of What's in a Name? I'm extending my donation until Sunday, so there's still time to help cancer research. Buy links here.

The "official" release day for WHERE DANGER HIDES is May 18th, one week from today. What this means for me is that the publisher will start filling orders. Most go to libraries, but there will be some stock sent to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, based on pre-orders. Since my book isn't going to hit the shelves of your local bookstores, it's not like I'll be able to drop into any local stores and see it on the shelf.

But, if you do like to buy books "in person" rather than on line, you can go to the customer service desk and request it. If you're a library user, and I'm sure most of us are, then the best thing you can do is ask your library if they have the book in their collection, and if not, you can request they order it.

So, what do I have for you as part of the countdown celebration? How about a look back to the very beginning of the book. I don't plot much, but as I play with ideas about the book, I'll jot things down in a disjointed document. Digging back through my files, I have one for this book called, "Brainstorming." Because this was a book connected to another, there were some things that were already established. Dalton appears in When Danger Calls, but he wasn't fully fleshed out (I didn't know his first name in that one), and since I didn't know he was going to demand his own book, I didn't bother with too many details. At this phase, I do try to consider the all-important GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict, so I'll list some of those possibilities as well.

You're now invited to step inside my head and see where the book began. And, of course, if you want to see how much of this actually ended up in the book, you know where to go to find out.

Thanks to Norman Mailer

I'm subscribed to a Writing Quote of the Day list. I've never been good at plotting far in advance. It's just my process. So this quote from Norman Mailer hit home.

To know what you want to say beforehand is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you did not know you knew.

My novel had been creeping along, and I wasn't exactly sure why. I had the characters worked out, but although they were doing everything I expected of them, the story was slogging. Since my daughter had been visiting when we'd brainstormed the overall characters and their GMCs, I IM'd her (she lives in Northern Ireland) and tried to set up a convenient time to do some long-distance brainstorming.

Initially, we set up the heroine's back story and motivations, and I created a nice conflict between heroine and hero, along with his back story and motivations and conflicts. We sketched out the inciting incident, and the overall external conflict. But after 43,000 words, I hit a brick wall with the plot, because the conflicts all started being external. What I was missing was a way to connect the heroine's inner conflict to the main storyline.

Duh. Conflict 101. The heroine wants (or in this case wants to avoid) something. So, I knew I had to find a reason to make her give up what she wanted in order to solve a bigger problem. Only trouble was, I couldn't think of a logical way to connect the two. Why couldn't she solve the problem on her own, with her own resources? Why would she have to go back and ask for help?

Well, that's what the writing is all about. Answering those questions. It's sending the story along a different path, but it's a path I can see again, and one that includes all the goals and conflicts we'd started with. Knowing I had that much right, . I took the time to jot some random notes and plot points, and had the AHA! moment after two sentences.

I e-mailed my thoughts to my daughter last night. We'll see what we come up with. And what else I'll learn along the way.

(And as a follow-up to yesterday, I'm home today writing--but also waiting for the cable/tv guy. I was going half-blind trying to watch the tennis matches yesterday, so I broke down and called to complain. They have an 11-2 window for me today. This morning, the cable modem light was blinking again, despite yesterday's repairman's assurances that he'd fixed everything and it wouldn't happen again, so I spent about 20 minutes getting through to customer service to make sure whoever they sent could handle both television and internet issues. Wish me luck!)

Palate Cleansers, Brainstorming and Plotting

What I'm reading: Split Second, by David Baldacci. Also finished 2 quick reads: Fresh Disasters, by Stuart Woods, and The 6th Target, by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro.

What I'm writing - a new, as yet untitled short story that's getting longer and longer.

I finished my Dalton & Miri novel and have set it aside so I can revise it more objectively. After about 3 days, the writing itch came back, but I wasn't sure where to begin. Too many choices. A sequel to one of my other novels? If so, which one.?

I browsed my old writing exercise folders and came across a short exercise assignment: "Use the word curmudgeon in an under 2000 word story. I looked it over, along with notes from my old critique group and wondered if/how I could turn it into something to submit to The Wild Rose Press, which meant it had to be a romance. Since the story was about a reclusive author dealing with his curmudgeonly old man neighbor, the possibilities weren't promising. But, it was worth thinking about how to work a woman into the story. Since I had the framework of my male protagonist, I needed an acceptable (meaning totally opposite) female character.

On Saturday, my local crit group met. We do our basic critiques for writing glitches electronically, so our face to face meetings are for brainstorming. Thanks to our back-and-forth 'what if?' discussions, tossing all sorts of possibilities on the table, by the time we finished, I had the major plot points worked out. In a short story, there aren't that many of them!

I realize that this is also the way I plot a novel, but in a novel, I have about 100,000 words to work through everything, so I do this over and over throughout the book. For a short story, it's kind of 'one stop plotting.'

Another thing I found as I started writing was that this story, my male protagonist insists on being the sole POV character. I've written most of my short stories from a single POV, but always the female. I'm going to have to get my husband to read this one all the way through--not just the sexy stuff.

I'm having a lot of fun, and since this is a contemporary, traditional romance, not a mystery or suspense, there's not nearly as much work as far as setting up a mystery/crime and dealing with all the clues, red herrings and other twists the genre requires.

The only 'drawback' to having the story virtually plotted out in its entirety is that since I know what's going to happen, I've lost some of the excitement of discovery and have to spend more time getting from point A to point B and less deciding what point B actually is. I let the characters guide me, but unlike a novel-length work, I have to keep cutting them off. There just isn't time to show their entire life history on the page, even though they insist on telling all sorts of pesky childhood details.

My goal is to have this finished before I leave town on Monday.