IWSG & Emotional Sparks

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! 

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July 5 question - 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from?

Yikes! If I wrote from my dreams, I'd be writing horror or psychological thrillers and I'd probably never sleep again! #wimp

I don't really know...

My head is always popping with ideas, one of the advantages of having a bouncy brain. I think most of my story ideas start with an emotion. Usually, it's an emotion from the crisis scene (betrayal, fear, despair, panic...) although sometimes it's the opening scene where everything changes for the character.

The emotion comes attached to a character and then I know WHY they're feeling that emotion. Then I suddenly have backstory attached to the character.

My subconscious does a whole lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to story ideas - especially when the new character has been a secondary character in one or more stories.

For Built Of Second Chances (which just released last week!), the spark of the story was the feeling of total panic when a person who's been in witness protection for years meets up with someone who can put her at risk. But that person is someone she's always loved.

That was followed immediately by the emotion of the man who meets up with the woman he thought was dead. His emotion spark was betrayal and anger...with a bit of reluctant love tossed in.

My current WIP started with the emotion of a person grieving the death of her father and the terror of realizing his killer is after her too.

Those emotional sparks give me backstories to think about for a while and then my characters are ready to meet each other and I get to find out how they figure it all out.

How about you? Do your story ideas start with emotions, characters, settings, or plots? or something else? If you're a reader, what do you think was the spark for the author of the last great book you read?

Yikes!

So, 5 minutes ago, I was all set to start my NaNo rewrite. I opened my older file. I pulled up my outline. I even opened the vocabulary list I created to keep track of all the steampunk words I created.

I wrote my first sentence.

It wasn't my rewrite. It's not even steampunk!! It's for a story idea I had ages and ages ago. All I've got is the setting and main character and what her struggle is. Not even a name. Certainly no outline. Or anything helpful.

*Sigh*

But that's the story that popped out. *Double sigh*

So, now I have to decide. Do I work on the rewrite I've prepped for or do I go with this new story that apparently REALLY wants to get out? I hate decisions. Especially when I really didn't intend on making one. I thought I was set.


Maybe I'll work on this one tonight and see how it goes. Then I can put off that decision until tomorrow!

Have your plans ever been hijacked (or highjacked??) by a new idea? How'd it work out for you???

Deciding on the Next Project

It's coming!!! And, no, I'm not talking about Halloween. Instead I'm talking about NaNoWriMo. As most of you already know, NaNo is a writing "contest". We "compete" to see if we can write 50k words of a new wip during the month of November. Check out the nifty blog badge on the sidebar of my blog to see an example of the fantabulous "prizes". (No more quotation marks, I promise!)

I love NaNo. I had so much fun entering last year. I'm going into it this year, fully knowing my life is so crazy busy, it'll be nothing short of a miracle if I can win again. But I'm going to give it a shot.

My biggest problem is that I don't know what I'm going to write about. And the competition is sneaking up like any good Halloween ghoul.

It's not that I don't have any ideas. Rather, I have too many! I just can't choose.

Choice #1 - Steampunk YA. I've never written steampunk, I've never written YA, but this idea has wiggled its way into my brain and just won't let go. Thanks, Calista :)

Choice #2 - A (sort of) cozy mystery, with a female mc who could most definitely be a focus for a series of books.

Choice #3 - (Sort of) Paranormal mystery with a romantic twist. This idea has been pestering me for several months, but during my research for the idea, I've run into a couple of blocks as the mystery involves histories from several cultures.

There are more, but those are the top 3... at the moment. This is more proof that I'm just not built to colour within the lines all the time. My brain just doesn't work that way. But it's fun!

Do you ever have difficulties choosing your next project? How do you choose which is going to get your undivided attention?

New Ideas

I’ve been revising and editing for months and months. For the most part I enjoy both of these tasks. It’s exciting to see how each change improves the story or the flow or the characterization. But...

I’ve also got a lot of ideas for new stories rolling around in my head, trying desperately to get out. I work out parts of the story before I put anything at all down on my laptop. The first scenes I imagine are the ones at the end of the story - the culmination scenes. From there I develop the main character, then the other characters. The setting is usually interwoven throughout these scenes, but I start fine-tuning it at this point. Then I jump backwards to the beginning part of the story.

I know where the characters end up. I just need to start writing so I can find out how they get there.

So, what comes first when you get a new idea: the ending, the beginning, the setting or the characters?