Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Recently I was a guest interviewee on the popular blog, Seekerville. I love the blog’s sassy attitude, and interacting with the blog’s commenters was stimulating and fun since topics ranged from scone recipes, to dogs, to writing, to publishing.
One question I was asked that I keep going back to in my mind is whether I see the same ol’ story ideas in queries.
Indeed I do.
What, the person asked, as a followup question, can a writer do to be sure the idea he or she is passionate about is fresh and not a rehash of what keeps cropping up in my query garden?
A recent production I saw on PBS’s “Masterpiece Classic” is instructive. Entitled “Small Island,” the drama recounted the lives of Jamaicans who were sent to Great Britain during WWII and then chose to return to London at the end of the war despite the prejudice they encountered because of their skin color. Jamaican Michael had a brief affair with Londoner Queenie during the war, and she became pregnant. He was missing in action after the war. What will she do when her starched-collar husband returns from the war and Queenie delivers a black baby? Several Jamaicans are boarding at Queenie’s house, including Hortense, who loved Michael but married Gilbert because Gilbert would take her to London with him from Jamaica. The two had just met the afternoon Hortense offered to pay his passage to London on the condition he marry her. All this occurs in the first of two episodes.
What do you think happens in episode two? I had envisioned that Michael, who seemed always to stir up trouble, would return to London, discover Queenie had had his baby but that Hortense, now married but not in love with her steadfast Gilbert, was a boarder at Queenie’s house. Sparks would fly!
But the writer took the story in a different direction. Michael may have set much in motion in episode one, but the significant mover of the story turns out to be Queenie and how she responds to her husband, her boarders, and her clearly black baby. The author took the road less traveled and delivered a fresh story as a result. (If you’d like to watch “Small Island,” it’s available in streaming video here. (Some sexually suggestive scenes are in the video.)
What does that have to do with your writing? If you want to break out of the pack, it’s instructive to think about the logical, reasonable, expected direction for your fiction or nonfiction to take–and then take the reader elsewhere. Rather than having the character who is so afraid of going to war turn into a quivering mass at the bottom of a foxhole, have him discover he revels in killing. Rather than structuring your nonfiction book in a linear way; organize it in a way that surprises yet delights your reader.
Now, tell us about a book that delightfully surprised you. Or tell how you found a fresh direction for your current work.
“Delightfully surprised” doesn’t apply here simply because the experience seemed more profound, touching, and meaningful than “delightful”, but I can say Lisa Samson’s The Passion of Mary-Margaret meets every requirement for astounding, unique, and beautiful.
The ending and the story format of my second novel surprised me. 😉
Your description, Nicole, of the way a story can surprise us is so much more eloquent than mine. Thanks for saying it that way.
I haven’t read Lisa’s novel yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
My teenage son inspired the fresh direction for my most recently completed manuscript. He’s a think-outside-the-box kind of guy, so I was bouncing my plot off him:
“My heroine was devastated by the Civil War–mother died, fiance killed in battle. She tries to escape her grief by starting over in the West, meets the hero, but he turns out to be…” I was going to say “a Yankee,” but my son interrupted. “Don’t tell me–he’s…”
And then he came up with the most marvelous twist. It wasn’t what I was thinking of at all, but you can bet I quickly rewrote my plot! My son, the genius. 🙂
There is nothing that disappoints me more about a book or movie than a predictable plotline. My family despises when I blow endings by telling them what will happen at the end of TV shows after watching the first five minutes. (Of course, Dad does it anyway!)However; the fact that there are so many obvious storylines out there concerns me that this is what is commercially viable and selling with risk adverse publishers. Are our audiences hungry for fresh “E ticket” plots and characters, or is our present readership expecting to easily find the cheese?
I know this is going to make me sound like a “spiritual snob” but really, I’m not. I AM often spiritually surprised, though. It seems that, as I learn to let God “move my pen,” that my transitions and even endings often take me places completely different than I had planned. Inevitably, it turns out better than anything I could have thought up on my own.
Kinda makes me mad – if He gives a gift why must He insist on having it back in order to make it work right?????? Oh well.
Thanks for the challenge,
Becky D
I’m an accountant by day, so I must admit I love a slight semblance of predictability in a book or movie. But to Michael’s point, I’ll say this: While I want to know a romance will end with the hero and heroine together, I love surprise twists along the way. Sort of like hiking on a winding trail with secret waterfalls tucked beyond the trees versus a paved path that takes me by the drinking fountain. I get to the same final destination, but the water feature on the first path is more breathtaking.
Sarah, what a great way to describe taking a genre in which you know the ending but the journey is what gives it freshness.
Michael, to your question about whether readers are ready for “E” ticket reads, I’d say older readers probably not so much. They’re looking for cozier, safer, nicer. But those 30 and below, oh, yeah, break out of the boxes! Give them a Harry Potter or a Twilight.
(But note that the premises of what makes a great read were found in both books.)
I recently read Spell Hunter, by RJ Anderson. It is a faery book and I put it off for months because I don’t like faery books.
I’m kind of boring and don’t mind stories that go expected places, so I’m not the best judge, but I thought she had a lot of delightful surprises along the way. Her faeries were tough and deep not shallow jokesters, for starters, but most delightful, I thought, were the pictures of fallen man and God’s grace that she wove through the tale in a way that most readers would’t even be aware of.
One of the problems in going unexpected places is deciding when to tip your hand. My niece read the first couple of chapters of my last manuscript and said she didn’t need to read any more because she knew exactly what was going to happen. She saw what I wanted people to see. I wanted them to believe that a certain thing was going to happen because I wanted to give them a surprise halfway through the book. But I lost my niece because she saw no reason to waste time reading a book she’d already figured out.
I’m really glad Sally brought up what she did! I hate knowing how the story will turn out by the end of the first chapter, but people hate a bait-and-switch. They love to be delighted, but resent being tricked.
I ran into this problem with my second story. My intention was to create a love triangle, but while I mentioned the ultimate hero in the first chapter, I failed to name him. Consequently, test readers assumed the first man I named was the hero. When he turned out to be a cheat, they felt cheated, too! My heroine was disgusted, but I didn’t want my readers to be disgusted with my story.
I went back into the first chapter, gave the true hero a name, and after my heroine walked out of his life without even noticing him, I inserted a few lines as he watched her go.
Thanks for the Seekerville shout out. We loved hosting you.
Excellent advice. I keep a card on my bulletin board that says, Bait & Switch to remind me of this very thing. It’s so easy to do cliche, but thinking outside the box takes digging deep.
The road less traveled…
I love this take. Seriously love it. And while I write romance (predictable, right? HEA, formulaic, point by point…) I find life hands us unexpected twists and turns daily.
Why shouldn’t books?
Loved this, Janet, and we thoroughly enjoyed having you visit Seekerville!!! Thank you for the shout-out. 😉
The feeling is mutual.
Ruthy
I read your interview at Seekerville, Janet. Sorry to have missed it as I always come away from this blog blessed and encouraged. So much valuable information that you shared there. Thank you for the post. I can so relate to Sarah’s comment. I finished a novel that included a love triangle and was told by my critique partner that it was too predictable. I put the story aside. When I returned to it after doing more research on the time period, I saw where I could include two surprises and a twist at the end. I’m more satisfied with the story.
Pat Jeanne
Thanks for coming by Seekerville. If I remember correctly, I found them here on Between the Lines and have followed ever since!
It seems like there are ultimately only a few stories if you dig deep enough, and they’re found in the Bible in one form or fashion. (And like Becky D, I’m not trying to sound like a spiritual snob. 🙂 But, for example, who would really expect the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to actually die in our place?
As you say so well, the idea is to take the logical into a wholly different direction. Last night on Hallmark are 2 good examples. The Nanny Express is a movie we’ve watched 3 times. Meet My Mom we had figured out in the first 3-5 minutes and thus isn’t nearly as satisfying.
Since my WIP is about a K9 spy, HOPEFULLY I’m accomplishing this delicate balance of intrigue but not a true bait and switch. It’s a challenge but a truly fun one.
Thank you again for your time and expertise.
PS: Now I’m so curious about Lynn Dean’s twist! Will be looking for it!
My recent release with Desert Breeze Publishing was a surprise for me because my heroine, Daphne Dean, ended up changing her story. She’s a WWII era reporter and O.S.S. spy. I filled out a character worksheet and thought I knew her really well, but as it turned out, she was an inept spy. Daphne was thrown into the middle of things with no O.S.S. training and made a multitude of mistakes.