Writing Wednesdays Two

The Glimmer: Where Stories Begin

I've written over 85 books in my career. Published them with various publishers, worked with different editors, learned something new from each one. And you know what? Every single book started the same way.

With a glimmer. An idea. A maybe. A what if?

Not a fully formed plot. Not a complete character arc. Just a tiny spark that wouldn't leave me alone. A what-if that kept nagging at me while I folded laundry or drove to town. A feeling I couldn't shake.

This is the beginning a series of blog posts about writing, and I want to start here. And this post, also began, as a glimmer.

1.  What Is a Glimmer?

A glimmer is that initial spark of interest. Maybe it's a song lyric that makes you wonder about the story behind it. Maybe it's a movie scene that left you thinking, "What if that character had made a different choice?" Maybe it's a real person you met, or a photograph, or a news article, or just a random thought that popped into your head at three in the morning. Something that catches your attention and makes you think….how did this happen, why did this happen, how would I deal with it.

These are the glimmers that can grow into a story.

For one of my books, it started with a house we drove past. Those empty windows made me wonder who used to live there. What made them leave? What made them build that house?

That wondering became a story. The story shifted and changed into the story of an abandoned house started by a man whose wife died. Who couldn’t face finishing it. Until a woman wanted to buy it and she found out about his past pain.

For another, it was dealing with forgiveness. Trying to find a way to forgive someone who had wronged me and my family. Having characters deal with this issue, made it easier for me to be subjective about it. I go back to forgiveness a lot because as I grow older, I have found different ways I need to look at forgiveness and, different people I need to forgive for different things.

I just read a piece in the news about a woman born in prison and started wondering, what kind of person would you end up being? How would you deal with that? I have to set it aside for now, mostly because I have a huge cast of characters and story ideas already wandering through my head.

The glimmer doesn't have to be dramatic. It just has to be persistent.

It needs to be persistent because if you follow through you and this ‘idea’ are going to be spending a lot of time together. Wrangling words, going off in one direction, abandoning that, shifting and changing. Writing a novel is hard work. It takes months, sometimes years. You'll hit walls. You'll get stuck. You'll wonder why you ever thought this was a good idea.

The only thing that will keep you going is caring about the story you're telling. Believing the idea you started with is worth exploring.

So before you start plotting or outlining or creating character sheets, you need to figure out why this glimmer matters to you. What about this idea makes you want to spend the next six months to a year living with these people in this world?