Alexandra Duncan On Keeping Lists For Inspiration

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 for the WHAT is Alexandra Duncan, an author and librarian. Her YA sci-fi novels, Salvage and Sound, are available from Greenwillow Books. Her short fiction has appeared in several Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy anthologies and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her newest release, Blight, released in 2017.

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?

Blight started as a freewriting exercise way back in 2011. Two other authors and I challenged each other to write a book in the space of a summer, and the first third of Blight was what came out of it.

I had this image of a girl in a guard tower who had been trained to kill intruders choosing not to pull the trigger, which became the first scene in the novel. I also was really fascinated by the idea of the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Sweden, where they keep a library of as many of the world’s variety of food crop seeds as they can find. Some people call it the “Doomsday” vault. I couldn’t help trying to imagine what kind of scenario might cause us to need it.

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

When I start writing, I tend to have an initial idea of the central conflict and how I want the book to end, but not much in between. My books tend to be very character driven, and I can’t always plot out where the main character’s emotional arc will take them, so I usually develop that in tandem with the plot as I go.

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

Definitely. I had initially thought Blight would be much more of a road novel, perhaps with the characters literally traveling to the Svalbard seed vault and encountering different factions as they went. While some of those elements are still there, they’re only part of the whole. I realized that reaching the destination was only part of the journey. That couldn’t be the end of the book.

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

I’m always having ideas, the question is whether or not they’re good ones. Some seem really cool at first, but then later I realize they’ve cliche or already been done at first. Then there are some ideas that I love, but that I think would be better told by someone else. For example, I would love to write a YA adaptation of the story of Queen Esther, but I think a Jewish author could do that story so much more justice and bring so much more depth and meaning to it than I could. (Please, someone write this!)

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

If I’m not on a deadline, I tend to bounce back and forth between stories, depending on what I’m feeling more inspired to write that day. For example, if I’m stuck on one story, I’ll go work on another at a different stage of development. I keep an ongoing list of interesting things, so if an image or concept strikes me, I write it down to go back to later when I’m lacking inspiration.

I have 6 cats (seriously, check my Instagram feed) 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 haven’t leveled up to quite as many cats yet. I have two, along with the occasional foster cat who stays in my office while it’s recuperating from some minor illness or another. My two permanent residents like to sit near me while I’m writing, but they usually don’t interfere with the False Cat, i.e. my laptop. The only downside to writing with them is that they start looking so relaxed, they make me want to take a nap!

Courtney Brandt On Always Being Alert for Inspiration

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 for the WHAT is Courtney Brandt author of seven YA novels, including The Queen of England: Coronation. She also writes adult works under the pen name Ann Benjamin.

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?

Promise not to laugh? I was out for my birthday in 2014 and had, to put it delicately, a few too many glasses of champagne. At some point the next morning, I was having a lie in, and as my brain was wandering, it focused on the topic of British royalty (as one does) and I somehow wondered what the United Kingdom might be without Queen Victoria. I was lucky enough to hold onto that thread, and sometime later began the first draft of what would become The Queen of England: Coronation. Ideas drop in like this from time to time, it’s just important to listen and be alert.

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

The book was always going to be driven by my protagonist, Queen Juliette. Here is this poor girl, made Queen of England, with her country under attack and she really has no idea what she’s supposed to do. Juliette needed to find out who was behind the death of Victoria, and plan for her coronation. Those were the concrete plot points I had in place. From there, I was able to build in supporting characters and other plot points.

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

In this instance, I thought the coronation was going to serve as the final action in the book, only to be surprised when it ended up in the second act. How Juliette works through her ‘chaos coronation’ is the foundation for her real role as Queen. As much as I wanted to use the coronation as the grand finale, it wasn’t going to happen. In the second and third books of the trilogy, there’s been a bit of moving around, but for the most part, I’ve followed the original plot.

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

I’m fortunate in that ideas come to me all the time. I have three novels waiting to be written at the moment, and am still quite active in certain fandoms (I got my start by writing fanfiction).

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

Excellent question. For example, I usually write a novel a year, and I really thought 2018’s was going to be one I’ve had in my mind for two or three years (sorry, A.U.!). Then, out of nowhere, late last year a new, more timely idea, popped in my head and it’s going to be this year’s book. I’m looking forward to both projects, but there is something about my new novel that seems more relevant. An exception to this is when I’m working on a series…and tend to work those out before moving onto another project. However, I wrote my first series out of order, which I realize that makes almost no sense.

I have 8 cats (seriously, check my Instagram feed) 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 have an old lady cat who has a basket on my desk. I’ve written in all kinds of environments, but for now, I love my desk top and a twenty-two year old Japanese bobtail. I also have a dear author friend who lives in Texas, quite a few hours behind me in Dubai. We don’t check in every day, but we touch base when big projects are nearing completion.

Author Kerry Reed On Taking A Germ of An Idea & Building It Into A Story

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 for the WHAT is Kerry Reed, author of DREAMSCAPE. Kerry graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English and then from George Mason University with a Masters in Literature because apparently she couldn’t get enough of the books. She loves transatlantic accents, blackberry frappes, and old-school British detective novels. She writes YA Fantasy but enjoys a good story wherever she finds one.

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?

I absolutely agree that ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere. For me, the germ of an idea usually begins with one very clear scene or concept. I might not know how the story starts of where it ends but I can picture that one tiny piece in my mind and it all grows from there. For Dreamscape (I literally just opened an early draft to check) I wrote the first scene first, which for me is actually pretty rare. The story opens in Chloe’s dream, a sunlit field she remembers from childhood and a strange boy she’s never seen before. I really liked the idea of a serial dreamer so powerful she dreams an entire world into existence. The story isn’t quite like that, but that was the initial concept.   

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

Once I had this concept of Chloe’s dream-world, certain things fell into place. I wanted the magic in the story to feel like the way a dream works. This idea, that the “magic” of the dream-world mimics the fluid possibility of dreams in general, and is powerful but often unconsciously employed by the dreamer, ended up sparking the central conflict of the story. 

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

Constantly. I usually do make a basic outline after I’ve written my first few scenes but if you look back at my outlines they rarely resemble the final project. Often it’s not until I’m in the middle of something that I figure out what actually makes sense (or what doesn’t) – or I think of something (hopefully) more clever than my original plan. 

I also tend to write in circles, adding in the parts I have most clear in my mind first and then working in the rest. When I reach the end, I begin again (and so forth and so on). Since I’ve started working with a critique partner I’ve modulated this somewhat – like everything else my writing process is a work-in-progress – but if I have a scene in my mind I always find it worthwhile to put it to paper, even if I change it later.  

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

So many ideas, so little time. Right now since I only write part time, I feel like I have more ideas than I could ever actually use. Of course some of them are probably terrible… I have several abandoned drafts that didn’t quite “work” for one reason or another. And I’ve had those days where I literally cannot manage to write a single sentence and cut my losses and head to Netflix. But the idea part isn’t usually the problem.

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

For me if there’s one idea or story that I can’t not write, even if I should be working on something else, I usually end up starting with that one. At minimum I try to get down whatever part is in my head even if I do set it aside after that. If I don’t have that itch I try to focus on whichever story is closest to completion. When in doubt it’s always better to have a full draft of something than to have a million openings (or, in my case, random scenes) of promising but unfinished projects. 

I have 8 cats (seriously, check my Instagram feed) 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?

This question is making me miss my dog, who was a champion snuggler, and tempted me to write more than a few chapters on my couch. These days I do most of my writing in coffee shops and my local Panera where I have lots of stranger-writing-buddies. They don’t know me and they don’t realize it, but their imaginary judgment forces me to focus.