Lots of people have asked how we writers get our ideas for new stories, so I thought I would share the process Fall from Grace followed, from inception to planning to novel.
The first secret: I wasn’t meant to write Fall from Grace.
I think I was reading a post about alternating point of view. Or perhaps it was a review about a plot twist that took the reviewer by surprise (the good kind). Or maybe it’s just that those two things happened, and they happened close enough to get lumped in the same area of my brain. The thing is that I began to wonder at a story with two alternating POVs, each distinct, telling the same story but presenting us with constant surprises. What’s the best way to catch your reader unaware? Why, catch yourself unaware, of course.
So, how about collaborative writing? One author to develop each POV character. Both have opposing goals, or even better: they both have the same goal, and they have to trump the other character in order to get there first. There’s no villain, per se–just as there’s no villain in a company where two people are jockeying for the same management role.
Okay, I thought. I can work with that.
The second secret: I’m not that great at collaborative writing.
The thing is, when I get started, the story is mine. I can work in a shared world if I like it well enough, but it has to be a world where my characters want to live.
I once tried to do a fallen angel collab, but the other author preferred a more literary take, purely allegoric. I’m a full-on fantasy type, and I prefer the reader to take what they will from the story instead of trying to convey a particular message. In fact, I never know what message hides in my stories until after I’ve written them and people begin commenting, so obviously that project was shot before it could be born.
Another time, I tried to do a fantasy collab, but our writing schedules were off-kilter. I wrote faster. I needed my partner to write at my pace, so that our storylines moved pararel and didn’t create contradictions. Lack of feedback made me pull out my hair! So, another impossibility.
My most recent attempt started off fine, but then became a modern political thriller. I love political intrigue–pre-industrial revolution era, thank you very much. If it happened after 1750s, I probably don’t care. Yet another shot project… and I figure you can see the pattern by now.
The third secret: Curiosity kills the cat. Every. Single. Time.
Luckily, any author can tell you that characters will act as they will. Quoting Truman Capote, “you can’t blame a writer for what a character says.” Following that logic, two characters can live inside a writer’s head and tell their story. The result is a one-man collab guaranteed to land the writer (me) in a soft, padded room if it becomes a habit, but… Why, the experiment seemed worth a shot.
I began plotting. I prepared two timelines, each telling the story of one character. Each timeline took into account what happened in the other line, but only as it would affect the POV character.
It was tricky. Very, very tricky. I ended up with two separate plotlines, one for each POV charater, and a general plotline that dealt with a global problem. The separate plotlines are more personal, the general one ended up looking a lot like an oncoming apocalypse. Well… Interesting, right?
Right. Time to write!
The fourth secret: Oh, shiny!
Fall from Grace was supposed to be a experiment. It’s serialized for free, and I wasn’t banking much on the project… But then I got a cover. It was too pretty (judge by yourself)! Talking about the cover design made me more involved in the story, and the planned ending was open, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was.
So, like a bird with a glass bead, I couldn’t leave Fall from Grace alone: I had to tell everything. Cue full novel.
Then, more things happened. There were consequences, both personal and general. There were choices. There was a blurred line between good and evil. Cue a series.
The results:
Fall from Grace is still told in alternating point of view by two characters. Their storylines are separate, but intertwined. It still is serialized and can be read for free at Wattpad (free access) and at JukePop (requires an account, but registration is free)