Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The birth of Embrace and a little about how I write

A writer can come up with an idea for a story from almost anywhere: things our kids say or do, a boarded up building, a conversation we can’t help overhearing, the lady in front of us at the grocery store, a news article. Luckily for us, the sources are endless.

As with most of my stories, my young adult novel Embrace started with a scene of a teenage girl that kept replaying itself in my head for weeks - it might have been months - and I'm not really sure why I kept seeing her. I'd imagined this girl sprinting through the halls at school trying to reach her locker before anyone saw her. The soft steady click of heels against the tiled floor wasn’t far behind her. I started to ask myself who is this girl and why is she in such a hurry. It didn’t take long for Madison to be born and I soon found myself asking more questions like how did she get to this point in her life and what is she hiding. With each set of answers came more questions until I finally sat down and started writing. Ironically, the original scene that had been percolating in my thoughts for weeks never made it into the book, but it did give birth to one of my favorite chapters.


I don’t work from a written outline, although I usually do have a beginning, middle and end in mind when I start writing a book. Embrace was an exception, though. I started in the middle of Madison’s story and worked backwards. Once I knew who she was and what was important to her, I was able to write the opening chapters. As I did, the end of the book became clear.


Where'd the idea for you latest work-in-progress come from?

9 comments:

  1. That's awesome. Love those ideas that just stay with you, the ones you just HAVE to get down =) I'm with you. I don't outline. I always try, and start one, then the characters and story take over lol. great post!

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  2. Trisha, sounds like we have similar writing styles. I've tried to create an outline on a couple of my novels, but my characters took over too.

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  3. Hi Cherie. How fun to learn what your inspiration was. I work in a similar way. Often a situation sticks in my mind, then I create a character, put him in that situation and see where the words take me.

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  4. It is fun to see where a story goes once your characters start to make decisions. I love when mine surprise me.

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  5. The idea for my WIP came to me in the middle of the night. With my last novel, it took me months to write a decent synopsis and that was after the book was written. This time, the idea strikes so hard and certain that I wake up and type out the entire synopsis in less than thirty minutes. Crazy! Glad to have found your blog btw. :)

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  6. A synopsis in thirty minutes, OMG! I wish! That's great that the idea was so strong. I have woken up with a solution to a scene I've been stuck on and I've had to get up and write my thoughts down right then and there. I love when that happens.

    And I'm glad you found me too! I've since found your blog. :)

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  7. Is it not funny how our muses "reminds" us of these noetic objects in such a vague manner that they tantilizing us to reach deeper and wade through the blind waters in desperate search for finding something you had never actually owned or witnessed to begin with? Yet when you find it, it's the exact thing you was searching for!
    It is funny.

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  8. It is funny how ideas develop into stories.

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  9. Cool, I love reading stories behind the story!

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