Sparking a Book Idea: Part II

CONTINUATION OF PART I, IN WHICH I GET THE FIRST STORY-SPARK FOR A BOOK!

So I had the teensiest spark of a book idea: I would write a book, a verse novel, about a girl whose family is in some way connected with a Museum of Losers like the one I had discovered in a tiny town along Route 36, which traverses the northern edge of Kansas. I knew that I couldn't write a book about a Museum of Losers without thinking hard about the back story of someone who would create such a museum. What had that person lost that might lead them to empathize with losers?

But before I tackled those questions directly, I started thinking about what my protagonist was like. Because my previous book had been a verse novel, and I was already repeating myself by choosing that same form two books in a row, I wanted to make sure that the girl in this book was very different from the girl in the previous one. That girl was introspective and reflective (qualities that work well for the narrator of a novel in verse), but she was also very passive: dominated by her charismatic but controlling best friend and her charismatic but controlling mother. The book is the story of how she comes into her own. 

I decided that the heroine of this new book, by contrast, would drive most of the plot, something that is widely viewed as essential in a book for young readers, in any case. In her wonderful book on writing for children and young adults, The Magic Words, editor Cheryl Klein uses all-caps each time she reminds aspiring authors that their main character needs to DO THINGS. The character in my new book was going to DO lots of things. Of course, the girl in the previous book DID THINGS, too, but the things she did were small... small but deeply significant... which is actually my favorite kind of thing for a character to do. But this new character would be much more strong and assertive. On my pad of notes, I scribbled as a possible aspect of her character: "someone confident in her opinions who learns to problematize them." 

Also, as the previous book focused on Betsy's relationship with her mother, this book would focus on Clover's relationship with her father, and one of her confident but reevaluated opinions would have to do with him. Maybe Clover would idolize her father and then learn something dark about his past. Ooh! 

But then I needed to figure out: What would that thing be? Hmm.....

Also, where is the mother? Why didn't she tell Clover about whatever-this-thing-is? Is she dead? Are the parents divorced? Did the mother abandon the family (perhaps because of this thing)? Or is she alive and present, but just fiercely protective of her husband? 

And what is the girl herself going to be DOING, this girl who is NOT going to be passive and dominated? What does SHE want, and why does she want it? And how does her pursuit of this thing, whatever it is, lead her to discover the dark secret about her dad? 

I ended up with a sizeable sheaf of narrow-ruled pages of handwritten notes in my tiny, cramped writing.

I kept asking more questions; I kept offering more answers. By the time the full shape of the story had begun to emerge - this is the crucial part - I HAD DROPPED THE WHOLE IDEA OF THE MUSEUM OF LOSERS!

I dropped it partly because I was uneasy that there was a real-life Museum of Losers, and my fictional museum couldn't be held hostage to the actual facts about the museum off Route 36 in Kansas, though I supposed I could include an author's note saying that my fiction museum was "inspired" by the real one. But I just felt guilty about lifting the idea of this real-life museum into my book. I had also gotten discouraged when I started looking up all the losing presidential candidates, thinking I might pepper the story with facts about this gallery of failed presidential hopefuls. They all seemed so boring! Would kids really want to read about why Lewis Cass lost to Zachary Taylor? Or why Samuel J. Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes? 

The original snippet-of-an-idea that had sparked the story was snuffed out entirely! But it had done what I needed it to do. The musings it launched took their own form and led to their own story - a story that would prove to have further surprises in store for me, its creator. 

TO BE CONTINUED!