Sparking a Book Idea: Part III

CONTINUATION FEOM PART II, IN WHICH THE IDEA THAT SPARKED THE STORY ENDED UP PLAYING NO ROLE IN THE ACTUAL STORY AT ALL!

At this point in the process of planning out my book, I had begun with the idea-spark of writing a book about a girl whose family is involved in some way with a Museum of Losers, based on a real-life museum of this name I had discovered in Kansas on a road trip. But as I probed further, the project became a book about a girl who idolizes her father and then learns some dark secret from his past, with the Museum of Losers totally dropped from the story. 

I don't think I can bear to tell you what the dark secret is, because this is truly the only time in my forty-year career that I have ever had such a big OMG moment in one of my books, or really any OMG moment at all. Even though there is close to a zero chance that a single reader of this post will (a) go on to read the book when it's published years from now; and (b) remember details from this post, it seems a shame to give away my one big thrilling plot turn, so here I will just give dark little hints....

I knew the book had to have some fun in it - some lightheartedness and laughter. I knew that my protagonist, Clover, had to DO SOMETHING to drive the story. In the course of DOING this thing (the emphasis here courtesy of editor Cheryl Klein, who in her book The Magic Words insists that characters have to DO THINGS, all-caps), she will discover the dark secret about her dad. I was also wedded to the idea that this girl would have some very confident opinion that she would have to rethink. Another brilliant guru for writing advice, the incomparable Kathi Appelt, calls this the protagonist's "controlling belief," which will be tested at the moment of climax in what Appelt calls "a crisis of faith." 

I decided that this would be what Clover DOES: she starts a dog-walking business with her two best friends, Quinn and Adalee. Adalee is a chronic complainer, a gloom-and-doom Cassandra whose many dire predictions add humor to the book, but also a sense of (I hope!) delicious foreboding. Quinn is a quiet, capable, somewhat nerdy boy, whom I didn't know much about yet; I figured I'd get to know him better when he would emerge on the page. I knew something bad would happen to one of the dogs on one of the walks, and Clover would respond with rage against the person responsible; she would express this rage in a letter to the newspaper, and the publication of this letter would trigger the revelation about her dad. 

I had a plan! I loved this plan!! I loved it so much! 

I followed my usual practice of writing the first page of a new book somewhere special, by sitting with my pad of paper and favorite pen on this bench at the Denver Botanic Gardens. 

But as I wrote the first twenty or thirty pages, I kept wondering what real purpose Quinn served in the story. I had a good sense of Adalee (I think she ended up being my favorite character), but why did I even need quiet, fairly unobtrusive Quinn? Should I just get rid of him? My choice as an author was: either eliminate Quinn or have him play a more significant role in the unfolding events. I rejected the first option: I didn't want to eliminate Quinn because I wanted a boy character in the book, plus a more positive friend to balance Adalee's comic negativity. Hmmm.... what should I do with Quinn?? 

So I sat down, pen in hand, to add to my growing stack of musings, in the form of notes to myself: "What is Quinn's role? in the [dog-walking business] and in the book?"

It was in trying to find an important role for Quinn to play that I came up with an additional plot twist that became, in my view, the best element of the book. This element of the story, which I introduced ONLY to give this secondary character more of a role, ended up giving my protagonist so much more depth, because now (it turns out) SHE herself is in part responsible for what happens to the dog, and she has painful questions about her own wrongdoing to address.

I love how attention to some structural requirement of a book - here, ensuring that every character actually plays a significant role in the story - can lead to uncovering a powerful and deep truth for the story to convey to readers. Oh, Quinn, if I hadn't realized how badly I was neglecting you, how much poorer this story have been!

Of course, however we spark ideas, and however those sparks catch fire in our feverish plotting brains, we still have to WRITE THE BOOK. In the final installment of this blog-post series, I will share the hour-a-day system that led to my writing a full draft of this book from first line on Friday, August 28, to last line on Monday, November 9.

TO BE CONTINUED!