I promised that I would talk about my creative process in my next blog post. As I wrote in my post dated December 3rd, when writing nonfiction, I’m guided by my readers. I still consider readers as I pursue my new adventure in fiction. Certainly, I want my stories to be interesting and suspenseful enough to keep them reading. I want them to like my likable characters and dislike those with less-than honorable motives. I want to move them to tears and laughter and I hope to make their reading experience a pleasant one.
I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my stories and how I can write an entire book telling a story of many twists and turns.
I understand that some authors turn to software, website prompts, their writers’ group members and other methods to come up with stories. I’ve had editorial clients tell me that this is the only story they’ll ever write—they have no more stories in them. I seem to be in a different category. I bubble over with story ideas. I’m writing book 9 of my Klepto Cat Mystery series.
For me, it’s fairly easy to come up with a them. In my book 8 (soon to be published), I took my characters (including the kleptomaniac cat) to the beach for a vacation. I brought in an old friend of the main characters and put him in peril. He’s an artist and operates a gallery in the beach community. Of course, there is an unknown escape route for the cat and he goes about his business digging up clues in new, interesting, and sometimes humorous ways.
How do I create a storyline and insert the details that make it a cozy mystery? I generally determine the shell of the story. I decide which characters will be involved in this one and I start putting it on paper (well, in the computer). As I write the first draft, I include incidents and innuendoes that hint at the mystery. But it’s during my second, third, twenty-seventh draft that I insert the scenarios that bring the mystery and the story together in a cohesive manner.
I might decide that there’s not enough action in the first 30 pages, and I go to work devising a distraction or I embellish a situation or I might create a new issue for the characters to deal with. For example, as I worked on the third or fourth draft of The Gallery Cat Caper, I realized that Rags, the cat, had been idle for too long while I introduced the story, the setting, and the new characters. So I had an unsuspecting guest let him outside and he brought back a bathing suit top. This didn’t play into the core mystery, but it reminded readers of Rags’s MO and created some interest. I hope it also made readers chuckle.
The bottom line, I think, in coming up with stories is life and living—paying attention to people and the stories they tell as well as the stories you live. In my case, I also watch my cats and often bring in antics and scenarios from their furry repertoires into my stories.
Do any of you readers write fiction? How do you come up with story ideas and how do you develop them? What is your creative process?