The Book Without a Name (And How It Was Created)

When stories pick you . . .

People often tell me their ideas for a novel, with the offer to split royalties if I'll write it for them. The truth is, I believe that if a story comes to you, it's meant for you to write. Even if I liked the idea, I have enough stories in me to write for well beyond the rest of my life, including the last of a trilogy and a seven-book series that are currently in the queue for publishing.

So it was a bit jarring when I decided to go to the apprenticeship program in hopes of improving my business and book launches and one of the requirements was that we were not allowed to work on any existing books, even outside of class. But we also had to write a novella while we were there: something that we had never written any extensive scenes for. I have written quite a lot of scenes as they come for future novels and with so many characters clamoring in my head, this proved to be quite a challenge.

How I write.

I understood the reasoning for it: the program had a set template for novels. Six specific types of characters had to be in there, and certain plot points must be met. Most of my novels wouldn't fit within those parameters. I've never been the type of author who chooses what my characters do. I'm more of a reporter running behind them, jotting down their lives as we go, then coming back later to package it in a neater way for public consumption.

Every novel comes to me a bit differently: with Between it was a sudden glimpse of a girl watching a boy sitting on the floor who was watching a younger boy who laying on the bed watching TV, and no one seemed to realize the other was there. Across the Distance began as an idea for a homemade movie with my best friend. Swing grew out of a series of ballroom dance classes.

So when we had to present not one, but three ideas of potential stories that we hadn't written or developed extensively, I was left with a challenge. Most of my stories exist in partially-written formats or extensive mental development. And my characters are like raising toddlers: they do what they want and trying to force them to follow directions often brings the story flow to a screeching halt. Most of the time when I get stuck in my novels, I can back it up to the moment I tried to manipulate the storyline or the timeline.

Herding Cats…

It's hard to explain this to non-writers but my characters feel like real people. Some, like Tehveor, require several drafts before they finally admit they've hidden half of their life from you and are really the leader of a secret sect working on restoring a forgotten kingdom. Some, like Cippy, just show up and start telling you their story without waiting for you to finish your current novel, and they know exactly what happened to them and how it all went down. If you don't recognize these names, it's because their stories are in the publishing/writing queue.

Three Ideas

I racked my brain and presented three story ideas I hoped I could fit into the constrained word count of a 30,000 novella:

1. A mash-up of fairytale characters in a reimagining story of Cinderella.

2. That random scene I had seen and jotted an opening for years ago about a girl following a couple into a house and their teenage son shaking his head at her before the doors shut and lock from the outside.

3. The dystopian tale of a woman from a post-blackout area of Texas whose fiancé takes a job in the city and doesn't return when he should. She follows to find him, accepts a job to support herself while she searches, and reunites with him . . . in the depths of modern-day slavery.

Our instructor was intrigued by all three but surprised me with the challenge: Write #2 but put it in the dystopian world of #3.

And that's how my novella happened. It was the first book I ever wrote that I finished without figuring out a title and therefore is simply called, "Novella." Overall, I was happy with the completed draft, though the ending veered from where I wanted it to go, and I had to wrap up the story at an earlier point and a different way than I had planned. Still, I thought with an added chapter at the beginning and reworked ending, I think the story works.

Why I decided to share it with you.

The manuscript’s just sitting on my drive, waiting indefinitely because I have ended my time at the school and turned back to the projects I was working on before I went. If I ever publish it as a book, it would be decades from now: so I have decided to share it here, rather than letting it languish. I will be lightly rewriting the existing text and perhaps inserting the chapters and story events I originally wanted to, but I'm going to release it chapter by chapter each week for you guys to enjoy while you wait for me to get Carter's story in book form.

Who knows? Perhaps you can help me find a suitable title for it.

So Dear Reader, I present to you the opening of the story I wrote last year. So far, only one person has ever read it, Alli, from the school who gave me some good feedback before I left. So thanks, Alli, for your help. Everyone else, enjoy and let me know if you'd like the idea of a weekly serial.

P. S. My novels normally carry the storyline in dialogue. I decided to keep that at minimum in this book and focus on building my description skills. So this novella is purposefully written out of my normal style. But I hope you like it anyway and would love to hear your thoughts on it, good or bad, as we go along. Ready for the opening? I thought you'd never ask.

Novella By Lindsey Renee Backen

 

Her steps betrayed her with a sucking noise as she peeled her sweaty heels from the white stone tile. The LED lights of the clock read 11:29 AM. Her eyes darted toward the couch, glimpsed the man’s chest rising and falling with the slow breath of sleep, then returned to the steel square at the bottom of the front door.

Her fingers tightened against the folded square of paper. She winced as it crinkled. Twelve steps would carry her to the delivery door, their sound covered by the mechanical grind of the gears as the door turned into a shelf and lowered with the bag of groceries. It would deposit them with one parallel turn and push the bag forward as the shelf realigned with the door, sealing the house for another week.

She rehearsed the process as she stepped through the arched entryway, expecting a two-second window when she could drop the message onto the moving shelf without it sliding into the grocery sack. Two seconds to tell a stranger that she was here. Two seconds to escape to freedom. And if she failed . . .

(Copyright 2023 Lindsey Renee Backen)