Writing Mondays: Formulating an Idea
When I meet readers at book signings and during book club chats, one of the questions I get most often is, “How do you actually go about writing a book?” So I figured I’d begin sharing some basic tips on Mondays on my blog.
If you’re interested in a more intensive education, I’m currently teaching eight-week online “How To Write A Women’s Fiction Novel” classes through Mediabistro, so feel free to sign up for my next session, beginning Feb. 19. (I also have another class beginning April 29.)
But for now, let’s begin at the beginning:
Step 1: Coming Up With a Basic Idea
Ideas can come from anywhere, and for me, they often do. My first novel, How to Sleep With a Movie Star, was largely drawn from my experiences as a celebrity magazine reporter (although for the record, I have not, in fact, slept with any movie stars!). My second, The Blonde Theory, stemmed from conversations I’d had with my friends about how it was sometimes difficult to date if you were a strong, successful, intimidating woman. The idea for writing The Sweetness of Forgetting, which of course centers around the Holocaust, stems both from my own childhood (during which I was enamored with The Diary of Anne Frank) and from an article I wrote a decade ago about the founder of the charity Give Kids The World, who also happens to be a Holocaust survivor.
So if you want to write a novel, get used to thinking like a novelist. That means filing every conversation and experience you have into that little closet in the back of your brain where ideas take shape. When I talk to a friend, I’m never consciously thinking, “Hmm, this idea could lead to a novel one day.” But I try to think long and hard about the things that are bothering people, the things people are wrestling with, the issues that keep coming up again and again. If an idea keeps resurfacing, or if you find yourself thinking a year later about a conversation you had with a friend, it’s worth jotting down. I keep an “Ideas File” on my computer for just that purpose.
Other novelists often draw ideas from newspaper and magazine articles, or from things they see on the news. So read often, and stay up to date on what’s going on in the world. You never know what will trigger an idea that stays with you.
But books are more than just basic ideas. Once you have the seed, you have to water your garden and wait for it to grow. Sometimes an idea you jot down won’t stick around in your head for long. That’s okay; if it vanishes, it wasn’t meant to be the basis for your book. But other ideas stay with you and haunt you. They’re the ones that keep you up at night. They’re the ones that you think about while you drive, while you’re in the shower, while you do your dishes. Those are the ideas that are meant to become something. But in order for them to become something, you have to begin to focus on them. Think about them consciously all the time. Think about what kind of story you frame around a central idea.
Eventually, your idea should turn into a “What if.”
What if a magazine reporter like me got involved in a situation in which the whole world thought that she was having an affair with one of the Hollywood stars she’d interviewed, whereas in reality, her love life was a complete disaster? (This became How to Sleep With a Movie Star.)
What if a strong, successful attorney decided to try to change her dating luck by pretending to be a dumb blonde, with the help of her friends? (This became The Blonde Theory.)
What if a woman who lost everyone in the Holocaust began remembering things seventy years later, as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and those memories changed everything? (This became The Sweetness of Forgetting.)
This is how books are born. In the next “Writing Mondays” segment, we’ll talk about how to turn those ideas into the solid concept for a book. Happy writing!
