Ask the Author: Ben Parris
Answered Questions (5)
Ben Parris
The terrific thing about being a writer is when someone tells you that reading your work is a good use of their time, that it made them feel something. Then you think that writing it was a good use of your time.
Even better than that is if you can make a difference in someone's life. After a rash of teen suicides in my area, I wrote a short story to illustrate the mistake they were making. A lot of teens wrote to me to say that they were going to commit suicide but changed their minds after reading my story. Then a couple of churches contacted me and asked if they could disseminate it along with some of my other work they considered uplifting. I thought that was amazing and wonderful. Most of my writing is not trying to be in this category at all, but for some reason remains popular with many people of faith.
Even better than that is if you can make a difference in someone's life. After a rash of teen suicides in my area, I wrote a short story to illustrate the mistake they were making. A lot of teens wrote to me to say that they were going to commit suicide but changed their minds after reading my story. Then a couple of churches contacted me and asked if they could disseminate it along with some of my other work they considered uplifting. I thought that was amazing and wonderful. Most of my writing is not trying to be in this category at all, but for some reason remains popular with many people of faith.
Ben Parris
There's a marvelous Irish movie, The Guard, where everything is the opposite of what you think it will be. Everyone in this profession says write for yourself and your own satisfaction and that's true, but that in itself will get you nowhere. You have to see how other people react to your writing in order to find out if you have conveyed what you intended. Give it to as many people as possible. Once you see if that's working, THEN you can write what you want.
Ben Parris
I get inspired to write by a vast amount of input: the convergence of people and events that I witness first-hand, fiction reading when my mind jumps onto a track other than what I'm seeing on the page, constant daily news gathering, and constant learning. Plus staying in motion.
Ben Parris
It depends on where I am in the story. If it's the broad strokes of plot, I write down all the possibilities I can think of no matter where it leads. If it's a scene where I wonder how the characters would naturally react to it, I write down the specific question that's in my mind. Then I take my possibilities and questions for a long walk. Most of the time this gives me my answer.
Ben Parris
The book that's coming out, Amynta of Anatolia, is book three, the third in the Wade of Aquitaine trilogy set, so of course it had to be done. The other books made this both easy and extremely difficult as they left so many unanswered questions and open-ended paths to adventure. It was a matter of gathering everything that fans told me they wanted to read about with all of the things I knew had to happen.
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