After the Idea, Plot Comes Next by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #writing #plot

 

 

Once I've spend days of hours with the idea for a book, I then decide what's next. For me, that's the Plot. While there are many types of Plots, I must choose the one that's right for the book. For a fantasy story, I usuallt choose the Quest plot. This emns sending my characters out into the world in search of something. Sometimes a physical thing and sometings more of a growingup quest. These are fun to write.

The story I'm talking about today is pursuing Doctor West. This uses the chase plot. That's often the case of a romance, at least the romances I write and enjoy reading. In this story, Zelda has loved Doctor West since they were children and next door neighbors. Her attempts always seem to be futile. How can she win.  The opening scene shown him returning home as a surgeon and joining and group of doctors. He learns Zelda is the nurse manager of the surgical unit. He wants to avoid her but tha doesn't seem possible. Zelda sees him andknows what she wants. The middle of the book is the chase and her many failures to succeed. Then comes the twsit as the middle comes to an end. Zelda decides she will never succeed and she decides to leave. Suddenly the reverse happens and he decides to chase Zelda.

So having decided on the plot, I begin the process of writing which ever book I've decided to write.

A Bit of Writing Advice - First Comes The Idea #MFRWauthor #Advice #Writing

 

 

For the next who knows how many months, I’ll be sharing writing tips I’ve garnered in my 50 years of being a published author.  The Aries Libra Connection is the first book I published electronically. It’s been retitled, revised, updated and now is published by Books We Love LTD. So now onto one of the things I’ve learned about writing.

 

 

Looking at writing your story from the Idea forward. What happens once that idea forms a seed in your thoughts? The idea can be anything that triggers you to want to write a story. You could read something and decide to from your own take on what you've read. How many stories are the fairy tales we've grown up with? Take Cinderella, Snow White, and a lot of other stories you've read or had read to you. How many tales share the themes of these stories?

 

The idea could be something you see. A couple embracing. A man and a woman quarreling. A child making mischief or being sad. What you see could be something like a milling mob, a merry-go-round, a speeding car. What you see can trigger the idea.

 

What you smell. Think of how you react to cookies baking or the aroma of spicy food.  You could find the scent of a place can trigger an idea. For me this can happen when I enter a hospital. The scents bring memories of my past as a nurse and often triggers an idea for a new story.

 

The idea could spring from something you've touched. A soft fur coat, the rough fabric of jeans. A rock, a bench, a brick. Any of these things could bring an idea to the fore.

 

Taste can also trigger ideas. We've all tasted something we think of as ambrosia or something that makes you ill. So let the ideas form.

 

Sometimes something you hear can trigger a story. The wail of a train at night. The sound of footsteps on the street behind you at night. The cries, screams of someone or even their laughter can form a seed for a story. I’ve had stories that hve come from reading something. Past Betrayals, Past Loves came from two readings. The first is Anna Karenina and the story with the unhappy ending. The other grain came from something I read in a book about Ancient Egypt. In a section on the time of chaos when there was no pharaoh came these words. A battle commander wished to be pharaoh. Mermeshu was his name.

 

But we all have these events in out life and ideas may form but once the idea is there, what comes next.  In the next few weeks, I'll be looking at the elements needed to make the idea into a story. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Some people think only of the five Ws but for me, there's the How. After all, it does have a w in the word.

 

The idea takes root. For me, I take the idea and think about it while falling asleep. Sort of like a bedtime story, Usually after days of this story telling the book begins to take form.

 

I'll be sharing what I've learned and am still learning in the fifty years I've been a published writer.

 

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