Inspiration & Making the Leap From Fan-Fiction

Inspiration is a bear. It’s either falling from the sky, a lightning bolt to the head that brings about a divine delivery of characters, world-building, plot and voice in a single moment. That does happen, but it’s rare. Most of the time writers are stumbling along, unsure of what happens next – or, if we know – unable to execute in just the right way.

Today I thought I’d share the inspiration for all of my books in the hopes that it will illustrate how I utilize elements from all different aspects of my life to come together and form a novel, and later on I’ll talk about how to transition from fan fiction to your own creative worlds.

Sometimes we can’t pinpoint exactly when or how an idea came to us, but for my debut novel, Not A Drop to Drink, there was a definite lightning bolt moment. In early 2010 I saw a documentary called Blue Gold: World Water Wars, all about a looming freshwater shortage for our planet. I was terrified. Shaken to my core.

We all need water to live. If we don’t have it we’ll die in about three days. Because I am the way I am, I decided to do a little research about the process of dying from dehydration and walked away from that even more disturbed. I’m a worst case scenario kind of person. In today’s world, if you don’t answer my text or call me back in about an hour, I’m going to assume you’re dead.

That’s me.

So, after watching this documentary I consoled myself with the fact that I have a pond in my back yard. Small, and with bits of fish poop and algae, but the possible desperate times might call for desperate measures, and I assured myself that if I had to, I would drink my pond. But… I’m no fool. What happens in a world where there’s a shortage of something we all need to survive? How do people behave?

I know the answer to that. Badly.

That night I dreamt that I was in my basement teaching my niece – who was about seven at the time – how to operate a high powered rifle so she could help me snipe people from the roof of the house to protect our water source. I woke up going wow – okay, bad parenting – but I also was thinking of this little girl, and her authority figure telling her that water was more important than other people’s lives, and killing was how to survive.

Out of that documentary and dream, came my debut novel.

The sequel, In A Handful of Dust came about in a little more forceful way. When we sold Not A Drop to Drink my publisher was interested in making it a two-book deal, and asked for a sequel. I had written it as a standalone on purpose – I was writing it at a time when readers were suffering from over-exposure to trilogies – and had no intention or ideas for a sequel. But a two book deal from Harper Collins has a way of making one reconsider.

I had a very short window of time to come up with a basic concept for a sequel, so I pushed my brain pretty hard. I knew my setting was used up. Not A Drop to Drink takes place over about five square miles; what did the rest of the country look like? It was a good question, and the driving force that directed the sequel, In A Handful of Dust. I knew I needed to move my characters, and in a world where other people were the danger, they would want to head west rather than east – away from larger population centers.

If they’re heading west in a lawless world what does that look like? Sounds like a western to me. I gave them horses, drove them through mountains, and relied on a lifelong love of The Oregon Trail, Little House on the Prairie and other survival stories to move my characters into an exploration of the larger world of Not A Drop to Drink.

My third novel, A Madness So Discreet, was a huge departure. I knew I needed to go somewhere else entirely. Dystopian was dead – what was next? Not only did I not know the answer to that question, I had no ideas. There was nothing floating around inside my head. But I had some time. So, I did what a lot of writers do when looking for inspiration – I read.

Like any reader, I go for books that interest me, and my own interests tend to be… dark. I’d been curious about early methods of criminal profiling after reading Patricia Cornwell’s book about Jack the Ripper, so I started looking into that subject, which led me to re-read some Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson.

Those, in turn, led me to treatment of the mentally ill in the 1800’s, which led me to lobotomies and women’s rights, and all in all, a pretty odd assortment of books on my bedside table. I was slipping into sleep one night, staring at the spines, and the thought occurred to me, “Serial killers, insane asylums, lobotomies, early criminal profiling, women’s rights… someone should write a book combining all those things. Oh – I’m a writer. Maybe I should.”

 A Madness So Discreet fell out of me pretty quickly. It’s a dark world, with darker inhabitants. It wasn’t a place I wanted to stay in long, but it was also one that required total immersion. After writing the first 10,000 words or so and waiting to see if my publisher would want it (they did), I dove in, writing the rest of the book in about… three weeks.

Yeah, I wrote the bulk of it in three weeks. I don’t recommend that, as I don’t think it was healthy mentally, physically, or emotionally speaking, but I do think that deep dive adds to the permeating darkness of the book. Also, I have no idea what happens in A Madness So Discreet. Seriously. I was pretty much in a fugue state.

I re-emerged from that place with a few months to breathe in between edits and coming up with a new idea. Remember, I was still working full time as a high school librarian during this time period, and while that might sound difficult, I actually find it energizing to be around my target audience. Other people give me my energy, and the lonely life of a writer needs a counterpoint.

I shut the book on writing for a little bit and decided to chill. Originally A Madness So Discreet was supposed to have a sequel. It was a two book deal, with the assumption that the second would be a follow up tale. I had a synopsis ready to go and planned to rest on my laurels for a little bit… but A Madness So Discreet did not sell well. Yes, it won the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and while that is the highest honor a mystery can receive, that doesn’t translate into sales.

In short, an old joke was trotted out for me. A Madness So Discreet is a historical, and those don’t sell well in YA, historically.

Ha, ha.

So – what else did I have up my sleeve to finish up this two-book contract?

Oh boy, well… I’d been planning on that sequel, and marinating it for months in my mind. Now I needed to cough up something entirely new. Or… maybe not. I had an adult manuscript sitting in a drawer that I’d given up on nearly 15 years ago. Maybe there was something there?

The Female of the Species was the first novel I ever completed, all the way back when I was in college. When I moved into my dorm room I suddenly had two things that I’d lived without my whole life – air conditioning and cable. I watched a lot of TV my freshman year.

There was a particular channel that ran a lot of true crime shows, and I had it on one evening when I caught the story of a young woman’s death in a small town. Everyone pretty much knew who did it, but they couldn’t convict him because of lack of physical evidence. The documentary crew interviewed the victim’s parents, people in town – even the purported murderer himself.

I was getting incensed while I watched, as it did seem very obvious that he was, in fact, the killer. Yet, he was walking free. The internet was new in those days, and the documentary named the town, and the man who was the supposed killer. Huh… I thought to myself, if I really wanted to, I could probably go there, find him, and kill this guy.

Then I thought, I need to lay off cable.

But, a little voice in the back of my head asked… what if someone did?

Originally The Female of the Species was an adult thriller, but when I floated the concept and the proposal of turning it into a YA to my editor, he thought it sounded like a good bet. So, I dug out the old manuscript – absolutely thrilled because – it’s already done, right? I just need to age people down. Um… no. I was 15 years a better writer, which means that I looked at that old manuscript and… flinched. Also blushed a little. It’s not false modesty when I tell you that it was terrible. Nevertheless, I had the concept, and started from scratch.

After that came Given to the Sea and Given to the Earth, my fantasy series. What can I say about these? They are bizarre, high-fantasy, with deep world building and a complex plot involving magic, war, romance, politics and trees that can kill you and cats that will eat you. Given to the Sea has four POVs and Given to the Earth boasts SIX. Where did all of this come from? Easy answer…. My brain.

Hard answer – so many different sources.

Back when I was a child I was in love with a made-for-TV movie starring Anthony Andrews and Sam Neill, which was an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. For whatever reason, my non-romantically inclined heart was drawn to the not-so-happy ending of the star-crossed lovers played by Sam Neil and Olivia Hussey. It stuck, and you might be able to see that reflected in all my writing, but most specifically in my fantasy series.

Given to the Sea and Given to the Earth draw from my interest in genetic diseases. Khosa’s urge to dance into the sea and drown herself was drawn from reading a book about Huntingdon’s disease called The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea. My interest in genetic memory greatly influenced the Indiri twins – But of course, I took it to the extreme, asking, what if we were born with fully functioning brains? What if not only that, but if we knew everything our parents knew, and their parents?

What else? My fantasy also touches upon global warming, the treatment of indigenous people, the insane, the disabled, and the generally unwanted. So many topics, so many elements of things I’m interested in became involved in this series to create a deeply layered world.

For this reason I can’t point to a single inspiration moment for my fantasy series, but rather a lifelong interest in a diversity of topics that came together to form this slightly bizarre – and I’ll admit, widely unread – series.

Lastly, my most recent release – This Darkness Mine – came about because of an internet search that wound up in weird places. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of absorbed twins. We hear about them occasionally in books, movies, and real-life stories. But the truth is that fetal absorption happens more often than you think, and generally the surviving twin isn’t even aware of it.

This concept has always been a tenant in my mind, and one evening went down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia and somehow ended up learning about mirror therapy – the process through which phantom limb syndrome (the experience of pain or itching in a lost limb – is treated using an inverted image.

Hmm…. I rolled that around a bit. What if the “missing” piece of yourself was not a limb, but something more ephemeral. A soul… or an emotional heart? I checked to see if any of these ragged edges could possibly line up with that absorbed twin story I’d always been wanting to tell, then married it to another concept I’d been mulling awhile.

I worked in a public school for fourteen years, and the black and white of what is right and wrong that is ingrained in children from a very young age doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. In many ways, the healthy experimentation that marks a transition to adulthood could be looked upon as “bad.” What happens to the child who has always strived to be good, only to be pulled off course by totally naturally urges and curiosity?

What if “being good” is the only definition they have for themselves? What if this story piece fits into a larger picture that includes mirror therapy and absorbed twins?

It did fit, and the result was This Darkness Mine, my favorite review of which simply says – what the fuck did I just read?

You can see from my sharing here that most of my stories come from my natural curiosity drawing me to topics I find interesting, then stretching them out, pushing them a little by asking a very basic question … What if?

Up next – making the leap from fan fiction to your own creative worlds.

Fan fiction is a great way for writers to stretch their legs. Beginning writers don’t have to build a world, or even create their own characters. They can slide into a pre-written place, already populated with people whose personalities are established, and simply write their own plot and dialogue. It’s a great way for new writers to learn the ropes, and I know a lot of established writers who enjoy just jumping in and writing fan fiction for the fun of it.

When I was growing up fan fiction didn’t exist… but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t writing it. If a book I read had an ending I didn’t agree with, I made up my own. If there was a character I wanted to see more of, I gave them new places and plots to explore. Sidekicks have always been a great love of mine. The hero may not hold the attraction for me that they’re supposed to, but the one-liners from a supporting character usually had my heart. Very often I took characters I greatly enjoyed that I felt deserved more development, and I did just that.

This was fan-fiction before the term existed, and yes, most of mine revolved around My Little Ponies, She-Ra, and – I’ll admit this for my fellow children of the 90s – The Young Riders.

I was acquiring skills and learning how to plot, pace, write dialogue and dip into character development all without having to touch upon one of the scariest elements of writing – world building. To my mind, fan-fiction is a wonderful way to explore all of these skills before you dive off the deep end and make your own world.

A great way to transition is to ask yourself – what is this story missing?

Here’s an example. I used to watch The Walking Dead, but I stopped around season five because it was starting to bore me. It was dark, and it was dreary and it was a brutal, harsh world… right up alley, right? Yeah, totally. Except… that’s pretty much all it was doing. I tuned in every week knowing something really depressing, horrible, and graphic was going to happen and there would also probably be a monologue about how hard the world is now, and people have got to be hard to survive in it.

All true. All valid.

Also, kind of boring after five seasons.

If you remember the show LOST, this is something they circumvented by having lighter moments. You never knew if an individual episode was going to bring you romance, death, or laughter. Even the roughest episodes would have lighter moments, usually brought about by Hurley.

The Walking Dead, to me, needed a Hurley.

For those who write fan fiction and want to know how to transition over to your own worlds, I say, ask yourself what the show you love is missing, and then provide that. Build your character – let’s say, a Hurley for The Walking Dead – put them in a few Walking Dead situations and see what they do, how the react. Learn who they are.

Then, pull them out.

Give this character their own world, and their own story, entirely independent of the initial creation that you spawned them in. Build off this person you made to create the environment around them, and a plot will come.

I can’t say that any of my own fan-fiction-spawned characters are present in any of my published works because I never wrote anything down when I was a young writer. But I can say for sure that there’s a definite impact from The Young Riders and other westerns from the 90s in my work for both Not A Drop to Drink and In A Handful of Dust.

That leap into your own new worlds is a scary one. If you do it holding the hand of a character you made, it’ll at least be a little less lonely.

London Shah on Finding Inspiration Everywhere

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest is London Shah, author of The Light At The Bottom of the World, a YA Sci-Fi, coming from Disney Hyperion in the fall of 2019.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

Most definitely! Years ago, I watched the most magical movie—Splash. I absolutely loved it. Ever since, I fantasized about human beings, not mermaids, living underwater, and every underwater image or scene I ever saw made my pulse race. With The Light At the Bottom of the World, it was incredibly important to me that I create a submerged world otherwise as similar to our current one as possible, and not either some clinical, futuristic world we experience through the lens of hard sci-fi, or an underwater utopia experienced from the point of view of fantastical beings. Despite the entire planet being deep underwater, I wanted very much to maintain the aesthetic of life on Earth as we currently know it, avoiding an “anything goes” vibe, and lack of connection to the world—both of which I feel reduce the impact of the fantastical.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

The plot grew organically once Leyla came to mind. She is, in her own way, a fish out of water so to speak, and also possesses a fear of the unknown. I always knew I wanted her to be forced to travel and explore this underwater world, and so an adventure was on the cards early on.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Oh yes—always. You can only plan so much and weaknesses in plausibility, characterizations etc are only revealed once you write that first draft. However, my general outline remains the same. It’s usually smaller detail, and most often scene structure, that I have to change.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Oh goodness . . . There are so many, many stories already in my head! Unfortunately, I am a slow writer. But yes, the ideas and possibilities are endless—and ever growing! Any time I step outside of my home, especially if it’s just rained—and even more so if it’s the evening time—all I see are endless fantastical beings everywhere I look, lurking, curious, feeling, living beside us unseen. Other times I see us in fantastical ways. So many characters, so many possibilities—so many, many worlds to create and explore. I feel I have enough ideas to last me a lifetime, truly. Again, sadly, my pace of writing means I’ll never get most of them down.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

For me, it’s exactly how Victoria Schwab describes her own process, where the ideas are all pots on a stove, simmering away. Sometimes, for me, a new pot might cook faster than one already on the stove, depending on how strong and ready my ideas and the sense of urgency to tell that story are. I always thought a certain contemporary urban fantasy would be my second story, but once the protagonist of my current WIP crashed into my head, her character, and all these ideas for a historical fantasy, were incredibly strong. I put it on the back burner along with my contemporary urban fantasy. As I worked out what I wanted for both, I realized the new idea was not only more developed, but I was suddenly more passionate about it than the urban fantasy. So it’s the Persian historical fantasy that I’ve chosen to write next and am currently drafting—while cursing and eating for England!

I have many cats and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I need absolute solace and silence when writing, as I’m distracted far too easily unfortunately. The only welcome distractions are regular pots of tea and an assortment of cakes!

Quinn Sosna-Spear On Knowing When To Shelve A Project

I'm lucky (or cunning) enough to have lured yet another successful writer over to my blog for an SAT - Successful Author Talk. SAT authors have conquered the query, slain the synopsis and attained the pinnacle of published. How'd they do it? Let's ask 'em!

Today's guest is Quinn Sosna-Spear author of The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson, which follows 12-year-old Walter’s travels in the stolen family hearse, through towns where people dress as fish, worship bees, and dig for living rocks, en route to meet the infamous inventor who mentored his father.

Are you a Planner or Pantster?

I have never heard the word “Pantster” in my life and I am living for it. On first glance I’m imagining a fierce panther wearing skin-tight Levis frolicking through the . . . jungle? (Is that where panthers live? I’m a writer, not a scientist.) All I know is that she’s a pants-wearing panther prancer and that is absolutely me.

Okay, I’ll stop babbling and actually look it up. *Old People Googling* Ohhh, “One who flies by the seat of their pants.” I’m a little of both. I’ll plan every detail of something, making sure I’ve covered every angle and spackled every crack—and then in the actual moment I inevitably panic and go off the rails. So, I do plan, I just don’t stick to my plans.

How long does it typically take you to write a novel, start to finish?

Similar to my last answer: I am both fast and slow. I’m actually known for writing quickly. On Remarkable Inventions I wrote twenty pages a day, at my fastest. Unfortunately I suffer from many conditions including “I-have-to-make-money disorder,” “Distracted-by-YouTube-enza,” and “I-don’t-feel-capable-so-I’m-going-to -lay-in-a-ball-and-pretend-to-be-a-pillbug-itis.” What I’m trying to say is that it takes a lot longer than it should. I wrote my first draft of Remarkable Inventions in a couple of months. My current book will probably take about six months.

Do you work on one project at a time, or are you a multi tasker?

Oh, I’m a multi-tasker. Unfortunately that means my tones sometimes get blended and I have trouble finishing anything, but I get too distracted by new ideas to work on one alone.

Did you have to overcome any fears that first time you sat down to write?

The first time I sat down to write—like really write—was when I was a brass-ovaried teenager who thought I was the second coming of Shakespeare (Spoiler: It turns out I was not). So, not really.

That being said, I have to overcome about a dozen fears every time I sit down to write now, and the list keeps growing. It makes me think about the Dunning-Kruger effect which essentially says that the more you know about a topic, the more you realize how little you know. I’ve come to realize that I’m not nearly as talented or knowledgeable as I would have previously thought, and the more I’m learning, the more I’m realizing how large that gap is. That intimidates me.

How many trunked books (if any) did you have before you were agented?

I didn’t have any, unfortunately. I’m sure I’d be a better writer now if I had. I began as a playwright, went to college for screenwriting, and there I wrote a number of features, one of which I adapted into my first book. So, I don’t have any trunked manuscripts, exactly, but I have plenty of trunked scripts.

Have you ever quit on an ms, and how did you know it was time?

I have (again, I’m going to count scripts here because I’ve written many more of them). Typically it’s because I came to realize that my concept or structuring was inherently flawed from the beginning. I also just lose interest in concepts. I know it’s time to trash (or at least shelf) a project when it becomes something I’d no longer enjoy as an audience.

Who is your agent and how did you get that "Yes!" out of them? 

My agent is John Cusick who is also, maybe, a superhero, or a wizard—ooh!—Or a time traveling alien! (Sorry, I’m just writing a bad fan fiction now.)

I went the traditional querying route. I knew almost nothing about publishing going into it, I made a lot of mistakes, and I was obnoxiously fortunate.

John liked my first draft, which is what I initially sent to him, but had reservations about aspects of the plot. He asked for an R&R, which took me seven million years to write. A few months after that and he signed me.

How long did you query before landing your agent?

Okay, picture this: The year is 2015. I was small bundle of dimpled dough smushed into I Love Lucy pajamas. I had just graduated college, my face was bloated due to the tears of adulthood and Taco Bell drive thru, and I spent all day writing about Japanese robots for about a Canadian penny an hour. This is not a person who should be contacting other people professionally, and yet . . .

My initial understanding of querying was a bad combination of what a professor had told me and my knowledge of film agents (who are an entirely different species than literary agents with entirely different rules). If literary agents are like regal, leaf-nibbling giant sloths, then film agents are land sharks with a constant hunger for blood (or money, or something, again, I’m not a scientist.)

I sent out a wave of sort-of-okay queries. My professor had told me that agents would usually ask for fifty pages so I only had fifty pages written. Then an agent asked me for a full and I was like, “Huh. You sure? Gimme a sec.” I ended up blasting out the rest of the book in two weeks in a haze of tacos and typos. He passed. Which was, you know, the respectable decision.

I then thought I should probably research querying more thoroughly. I took it a lot more seriously, and the first agent I found who I was like—hang on a minute, this guy might be seriously cool—was John.

He asked for a full three months after I queried and an R&R three months after that. I shelved the project for a while and came back to it about a year later. I queried him at the beginning of 2015, he offered late 2016.

Any advice to aspiring writers out there on conquering query hell?

I had a professor once tell me that you have to get through ninety-nine “nos” before you get one “yes,” and since then I’ve always thought about submissions and applications with that in mind. You need to pay the ninety-nine “no” toll before you get let in. It’s not always exactly that number, but by chipping away you will eventually get through, you know?

Also—think about querying like dating. There are BILLIONS people in the world. Most of them aren’t right for you. You do not want to work with someone who doesn’t “get” your writing, the same way that you don’t want to date someone who doesn’t make you a better person. You just have to find an agent who fits with you. So keep chipping! Or dating! Or something! My metaphors are mediocre, sorry.

How much input do you have on cover art?

I didn’t weigh in much, but that’s for the best. My taste in art falls somewhere between 1980s anime and Doritos Locos Tacos. The cover, on the other hand, turned out absolutely beautiful thanks to the work of the artist Gediminas Pranckevicius.

What's something you learned from the process that surprised you?

It’s incredibly slow. I am an impatient person and every step takes weeks or months (or years, even). Again, I come from a film background which is a much faster process. I don’t mind the wait, however, because it’s due mostly to the fact that those in publishing take their jobs and their art very seriously. What these teams of people manage to produce is amazing.

How much of your own marketing do you? 

I’m just starting marketing now. I suspect, based on what I’ve talked to other authors about, that I’ll be doing a good portion of it, and I’m prepping for that. I’ve created graphics, I work with outside artists, and I try to abuse my goodwill with family and friends as much as I can. As a totally unknown debut author, my goal right now is just to get my book out there so that teachers, librarians, and parents know it exists and is super great! (Did you hear that teachers, librarians, and parents? So great. Go tell your friends please, I love you.) I mostly do that on Twitter. I probably should have a blog, though, shouldn’t I? Someone would read it, I’m sure.

It’s my dad. That someone is my dad.

When do you build your platform? After an agent? Or should you be working before?

I mean, the responsible thing to do would be to build it before but, pshhh. Let’s be real. It probably won’t make a huge difference unless you get yourself Twitter/YouTube/MySpace famous before you query or enter submissions. I can’t imagine it hurts, but I would say spend your time making sure your manuscript is as good as it can be before worrying about your platform.

Do you think social media helps build your readership?

I’ve heard mixed things from other authors. It would seem to me that it has to help some amount. People seeing your book and recognizing your name must push the sales needle a little bit, but I imagine the quality of your book is far more important. How many books do you buy because you follow someone on Twitter? How many books do you buy because you are a fan of the author’s other work, or read a glowing review, or see an amazing cover at the bookstore complete with a HOUSE WITH CHICKEN LEGS? (Sorry, I recently bought that one because I couldn’t help myself.) I’m sure it helps and gives readers a place to appreciate writers, but I suspect the effect is limited. Then again, ask me in April.