As a mystery novelist, I often contemplate the writing process. Which is in itself a damned perplexing mystery.
Where do ideas come from? How do writers turn their ideas into short stories, novels, scripts and screenplays? There’s a more practical question, too: Is there some shortcut to avoid what’s otherwise a long slog?
Take it from me, it’s an occupational hazard. Everyone who takes writing the least bit seriously does it. We ask other writers about it as if it’s a pick-up line in a bar: So, what’s your process? We read books on the subject, hopeful we’ll glean something — anything — that improves our own processes. Or at least makes them less vexing.
Here’s the problem. The writing process is different for every writer, as unique as their fingerprints. What succeeds magnificently for one writer fails miserably for another.
Yet, there’s no shortage of general advice from writers about the writing process.
Anne Lamont emphasizes persistence over perfection. How do you tackle an overwhelming project — one involving birds, for example? One step at a time. Bird by bird. In other words: Butts in chairs and hands on keyboards. And don’t worry too much about what Lamont describes unapologetically as “shitty” first drafts. They become better second drafts.
Then again, a quote attributed to sportswriter Red Smith described the process this way: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter, open a vein and bleed.”
Even a novelist as successful and prolific as Stephen King admits he doesn’t understand the writing process. King recalled in the afterword of one of his recent collections of short stories how his tales sometime rush into his mind fully formed. “Why this process works, or how it works, is a complete mystery to me.”
I’m no more an authority on writing than anyone else. I believe nonetheless every story, every novel, every fabrication of fiction begins with the same two words arranged as a question: What if? Not literally, of course. But as the origin of the premise.
King answers a lot of what if questions in his novels. What if vampires invade a small New England town? What if a rabid St. Bernard traps a mother and her young son in a stalled car? What if someone travels back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK?
I consider in my novels what happens if a workaholic reporter laid off at a Denver newspaper settles for a job as editor of a small town weekly in the remote northwest corner of Colorado. What if that man meets a brilliant and beautiful history professor searching for a cache of loot hidden by the outlaw Butch Cassidy? What if, two years later, the same couple is scuba diving in a mountain lake in search of treasure and finds instead a ghastly corpse tied to a rock?
What if constitutes only the start of stories. It’s up to writers to explain what follows. Why their characters react the way they do and how they change as a result.
Some writers — call them “plotters” — carefully plan their next steps. They craft outlines, arrange notecards and compile detailed information about their characters and settings. You could call me a “pantser,” someone who writes by the seat of his pants. I prefer the term “discovery writer.” In proceeding without a plan, I’m free to discover where my characters lead me as the plot unfolds. I’m not only surprised by what they do, but also grateful since it’s usually more compelling than anything I could have imagined.
But that’s a story for another time. One that undoubtedly begins with two words. What if?