Ditching the bad

What bad habits have you ditched to make yourself a better writer? What good habits have you picked up?

By Dietrich

Writing’s as much about what you don’t do as what you do. Kick the bad habits and keep the words flowing and the stories humming.

One of the worst habits I had was overthinking and fretting about the first draft. There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank page and trying to craft the perfect opening line and second-guessing every word. Over time, it got easier as I gained confidence and kept at it — finding a rhythm to the words. 

 

Another habit I ditched was writing at the wrong time. I used to figure I should just power through, put in as many hours a day as I could. Nope. What I found was there’s a best-time for me to be writing — and that turned out to be early mornings for me. There’s never been a set number of hours, I write while the muse is with me, then I’m happy to leave it till the next day. 

I got some good advice from a pro early on: Don’t chase trends. Don’t be the guy trying to write what’s in instead of what’s me. It’s a fast track to a hollow story. I took that to heart, and I’ve never tried to fit in whatever seems hot — no vampires, dystopias, no whatever. Plus, it wouldn’t work for me anyway. I’m sure readers would spot that kind of inauthenticity from a mile away.

I’ve built some good habits too — like writing every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s five hundred words or just fifty — as long as they’re good words.  And sitting at my desk every day keeps the story rolling and it builds momentum. Even a page a day turns into a novel faster than you’d think. I don’t have a word count, but then I don’t sit staring at a blank page anymore either.

I get the bones of the story down, even though the characters may not be fully fleshed out and storyline might be a bit messy at this point. The polish comes later. First drafts are supposed to be raw.

I’ve gotten into the habit of trusting the story’s chaos. I don’t outline much and my novels usually start with a single scene or idea, and I let it grow from there. That looseness keeps the writing fresh and lets the characters surprise me. And if I’m surprised, chances are the reader will be too.

It’s not as much about trying to get the words perfect, it’s about making them sound real.

Another good habit is reading and I do that a lot. I’ve always loved books, so that’s an easy one. I’m both entertained and inspired by the masters. Take Elmore Leonard’s dialogue, Patricia Highsmith’s tension, James Ellroy’s punchy rhythm. Every time I read a really good book, I gain some inspiration and insights from diverse perspectives.

Ditch Those Bad Habits!

 

Terry here, with our question of the week:

What bad habits have you ditched to make yourself a better writer? What good habits have you picked up? 

 These questions bring up other questions: 

 1) Am I better writer that I was? 

 2) Do I have good habits? 

 3) Where did I get them? 

 So, let’s get started. Number one. Am I a better writer? I think so. I just decided to go through some manuscripts that I abandoned for one reason or another, with the idea of sprucing them up and moving forward. I started reading a few pages of one and my immediate thought was, “Did I write that? It’s pretty damn good.” So I read on. And then, I came to the part where I digressed. Yep. I wandered away from the subject and included things that didn’t really need to be there. Obviously, when I wrote this first draft, I didn’t know how to edit it. 

 The fact that I recognized those lines as being unnecessary tells me that yeah, maybe I have improved as a writer. The old manuscripts have some raw power, but they need a lot of work. I once attended a writer’s conference at which one of the stars was E.L. Doctorow. He told us he was going to read from the first draft of the book he was working on. I was dazzled. I later joked to him that I thought he was showing off, that what he’d read was wonderful. He gravely told me that the sentences may have been good, but that they didn’t work toward what he intended. I later read the book, Loon Lake, and was astonished to discover that only the slightest bit of his first draft made the cut. He had been trying to teach us budding writers that we needed to really pay attention to our intentions about what we were working on. Extraneous sentences had to be cut, no matter how “golden” they were. 

 I remember reading Cormac McCarthy’s first book and thinking, “Wow! What a great writer.” And then reading his later books and understanding that although his first book had some amazing writing, his later books were more polished. 

 So addressing the second questions, do I have better habits? I always had some good writing habits—an ability to concentrate deeply when I’m writing. When I’m working on a book I write most every day. I set goals and I intend to meet my goals.

But when I was a fledgling writer, I had some habits that didn’t work so well: 

 I’m sure many writers are familiar with the problem of getting to a sticky part of the manuscript, and suddenly having a much more brilliant idea for another book! A wonderful book! A book that will be a best-seller! A book that will have none of the deficiencies of the one I’ve been working on! 

 For many years, I’d allow that second, new, shiny idea to divert my attention. I had many half-written manuscripts lying around moldering. Somehow, along the line, I learned not to be diverted by that siren song. I don’t even bother to write down the shiny new idea anymore, because I know it’s ephemeral. It has no substance. It’s just my brain balking at doing the hard work of finishing what I’m working on. 

But how did I learn this? I’m not sure, but I think it had to do with the fact that when I started my Samuel Craddock series, I was writing from my heart, and that I was onto something important for me. How many times did I have to hear the advice, “ Write something only you can write,” before I finally understood what it meant. And that’s when I was able to ignore the muse’s teasing. 

 And then there was the bad habit of listening to every person in my critique groups, and in the end writing “by committee.” I didn’t have enough confidence in my work to sift information for what could really be useful. Learning to trust yourself is tricky. If you go too far down that path, you maybe be unable to hear good advice. What you have to learn is how to tell the useful advice from the suggestions that don't work toward your goal. 

 Another bad habit was thinking “good enough” was good enough. I sent in too many manuscripts that were not ready for publication, thinking, “It’s good enough. A good editor will make it shine.” Good enough is never good enough. It has to be better. Every line has to matter. The manuscript has to be edited again and again, until you're sure it's perfect. (It won't be, but it might finally, really be "good enough.") One of my all-time favorite lines from a reviewer was, “There’s not one wasted word.” It took me a while to get there, and it's a lesson that has to be learned more than once. 

 How did I learn better habits? By reading advice from writers I admired. By attending conferences and listening to experienced writers talk about what they had to learn. Going back to E.L. Doctorow’s teaching, I learned that you have to be true to your vision of the book you’re working on. That doesn’t mean you can’t address revisions that a good editor suggests. It means that while you are working on your book, you keep in mind what story you want to tell people. And you keep at it.

Changing Those Bad Writing Habits

What bad habits have you ditched to make yourself a better writer? What good habits have you picked up?

Brenda here.

If we're talking bad writing work habits, lately, I've become somewhat more organized in how I deal with a manuscript. After many rounds of editing manuscripts for books and short stories, I've learned more of my tendencies with every project. When writing, I'll change details about characters or mix up what happened when or who said what to whom. I used to mix up at least one name in every book. So, how to combat this?

I've begun jotting down the key plot points, including the day and weather for each chapter, on post-it notes. This time around, I'm also making notes of which characters are in each chapter - saves me having to search through the book to find one of them.  It gives me a panoramic view of the plot, and boy, does this help with the editing!

I've even begun using different colours for different days...

In this regard, I'm more dedicated and thorough about the entire editing process. I now look for things that bother me with a more critical eye, for example, the same word reused closely together in a paragraph. I've also become aware of the same word used often in the entire manuscript, because let's face it, we all have our favourite words and phrases.

I used to write when the spirit moved me (luckily quite often) but with the last two manuscripts, I've given myself a 500-word daily minimum. While I still will take the odd day off, I've been holding true to my new goal for the most part.

An American author Debbi Mack interviewed my a few weeks ago on Crime Cafe, and asked questions about my writing process. You can watch the Youtube video here (I come in at about the 3-minute mark).

These are my main bad writing habits ... very happy the question didn't include bad life habits, or this would be a much longer post :-)

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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Read, Write, Read, Repeat by Poppy Gee

Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Current read: The Bluff by Joanna Jenkins. Previous read: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.

I read more crime novels now that I've been published as a crime fiction writer. Before I wrote crime, I used to read mainly literary fiction. But I always liked scary movies, especially dark psychological thrillers. My favourite movie as a kid was the Freddy Krueger series: a monster who appears in your dreams and kills you while you’re asleep is so perfectly, deliciously, terribly awful.

The turning point for me as a reader was when I was writing my debut novel, Bay of Fires. My mentor at the time, author Venero Armanno, observed that everything interesting in my manuscript revolved around one mysterious death. He suggested I read one of Garry Disher's well-crafted crime novels. I did, and I was hooked on the genre.

I've just finished reading Liz Moore’s excellent mystery novel The God of the Woods. I especially liked the nostalgia of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the portrayal of an American summer camp, the lives of rich people in contrast with those of the working class, the multiple points of view, and the complex way the plot weaves between the different timelines. This was one of those books that each time I put it down, I couldn’t wait to get back to it. But as well as enjoying it, I was thinking about how I could incorporate the complex plot idea into a new writing project I'm working on.

Reading with an analytic mind is part of the writer’s life. For me, this could be in the form of preparing manuscript appraisals on other writers’ works-in-progress. It might be preparing to host book conversations, reading the work and jotting down possible lines of questioning as I go. If I am reviewing or blurbing a book, I am constantly thinking about what I like, and what I might say about it, as I read.

That's one reason that makes me turn to non-fiction – and it's usually history. I don’t place any pressure on myself to respond to it other than my own emotional or intellectual response; in some ways that's a relief as a reader. That's the whole point of reading, is to absorb and think, rather than respond and repackage the ideas for a sort of re-consumption.  

However, if a non-fiction book is particularly compelling, I can’t help wanting to share it. I just finished reading One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. He reflects not just on the genocide in Palestine, but also on the way we use language – who has the power to tell certain stories in certain ways? Every reader, and especially every writer, should read this book.

Another non-fiction book I appreciated recently was Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia by Santilla Chingaipe. This book shocked me. Growing up in Tasmania, a state that was settled as a penal colony by the British in 1803, I had no idea that many people of African descent were transported to Tasmania as convicts. The reason not many people know about this is due to what historian Chingaipe describes as the ‘silence of the archives’ – again, this reveals who has/had the power to record the facts of peoples’ lives.

I’m about to dive into a writing-craft book written by Australian playwright Anthony Mullins. I attended his workshop recently and it changed the way I think about writing characters. I always thought a good character arc was about change. However, Anthony presents an alternative to that. He argues that the so-called ‘hero’s journey’ character trajectory is limiting. He uses examples from film to show six other character trajectories. Hearing him talk about this was like getting a cold drink of water after wandering thirsty in the desert. It’s good to get a fresh, rigorous perspective on writing. His book is called Beyond the Hero's Journey: A screenwriting guide for when you've got a different story to tell.

My next read is The Bluff, the second crime novel by Joanna Jenkins who I will be interviewing in a few weeks. I read an early draft and I can’t wait to see the big changes she’s made to the story since then. It’s going to be a fun conversation - she’s become a good friend and she's got a gorgeously vibrant personality so the challenge will be keeping it professional! She’s a great writer so I will be reading for pure enjoyment.  

THE EDINBURGH MURDERS by Catriona

 Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now? 

Today it has! Reviews!

Just kidding. I never read reviews. But what I'm trying to say is that my new book is out today. In the UK only, mind you. But keep reading if you're in the US and you're interested. 

Buy links

Isn't it lovely? I'm very verbal but even I've got enough visual literacy to know that that is a great jacket. Edinburgh purists will wince, because it doesn't depict an actual street in the city; it's three building from different bits of the Fountainbridge ward smooshed together - Smiths from the main road at one end, a tenement from a side street at the other, and in the middle the building that was still an abattoir when Helen Crowther was crossing the cobbles in such a pensive mood. By the time I was living nearby, the abattoir was a nightclub - Fat Sam's - and the joke was that there had been less carnage back when ...

Why am I so sure I'll get letters about these three buildings appearing together? Usually, as long as you do it with confidence, you can make up quite a lot of stuff without anyone minding, maybe without anyone noticing. There are three exceptions to this, mind you: guns, trains and birds. 

I stay away from guns, in every possible sense.

Trains, I try to get right. But once when I had Dandy Gilver get on a train at a real station, at the right time - I checked the timetable for August 1923, and see out of the window what she would have seen out of the window, I got a complaint anyway. I'd made her enter the train, walk along the corridor and choose a carriage. And the trains on that line at that date had carriages you entered directly from the platform. My correspondent wondered why I didn't let her drive if I wasn't going to bother to get the train right.

Bird experts are different from train experts. They want to help, rather than scold, so I've got warm feelings towards them. I hope no serious birders are watching The Residence on Netflix. They'll be curled up in foetal position if Cordelia Cupp keeps looking into the pitch black night and claiming to see Eastern Meadow Larks. Unless that's a clue . . .

So you might be wondering how many architectural historians of Edinburgh are going to read The Edinburgh Murders and be upset enough to get in touch. We all survived Trainspotting, where Renton would disappear round a corner in Edinburgh and emerge on a street in Glasgow. We knew it wasn't a documentary.

But the thing is, you don't need to be an architecture buff to know about Edinburgh's built history. It's the flip side of how come it's so easy to do the research about 1948. Simply, everything's made of stone so it's all still there.

The novel opens at the public baths on Caledonian Crescent, where Helen (a medical social worker) is helping the quite large Mrs Hogg have a good scrub. Here it is:

Helen doesn't think much of the tiles in the baths. They're clean but the colour choice doesn't say "hygiene" to her. Or to me. What do you think?

Anyway, by the time she gets home that night, she's seen the dead body of a boiled man, caught her own parents out in a lie and is all set for another adventure. Even her couthy wee upstairs cottage can't quite soothe her:

But she know that the next morning, when she goes to work at the surgery on Gardener's Crescent, both Doctor Strassers will be able and willing to help:

I've loved sending her all over the city again: to a chop house at Tollcross; to the private room of a sex-worker at the foot of Gorgie Road; to the Saturday night frolics at the Haymarket pub; to an attic bolthole above the King's Theatre; and more than once to the mortuary, by the back door. Only the mortuary is different now from how it would have been in Helen's day and I'm glad. I'm far too chicken to request a research visit, more than happy to make up everything from the ironing-boardy legs on the pull-out body shelves, to the smell of stewed tea, stale buns, milk on the turn and that subtle hint of formaldehyde, in the mortuary assistants' staffroom.

If any of that sounds like your cup of stewed tea and blue milk, with or without sugar from a crusty spoon left in the bag . . . I'm doing a giveaway.

Comment here, on my Facebook page, or on Bluesky - whichever's easiest - to be entered into the draw. I'm offering one signed hardback for the US, and one for the UK. Canada will go in with the UK. I don't think they'll mind that. I'll draw names tomorrow. And this is the pic you're looking for if you find yourself scrolling

Cx

 

How I read by Eric Beetner

 Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

I’d like to think I read the same way as I did before I became a published author. I think reading “like a writer” is something that lives inside those of us who decide to take the plunge, even from a young age. 

It is similar to the way I watched films in my youth. The difference I saw in people like me who chose to attend film school, is that we saw beyond the light and shadow on the screen. I wanted to know the mechanism behind it all. I noticed camera movement, framing choices, editing styles. Most people sit and let themselves be entertained, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some just want to know how the clockwork fits together. 

I always knew the students who wouldn’t make it to graduation without switching majors. We’d watch a film and they’d have an opinion, sure, but it was binary. That was good or that was bad. But when asked to explain WHY something worked or didn’t work for them, they came up blank.

I think that dividing line stands for any art.

Writers who are readers can come across a great plot twist and marvel at how it was done. They can file away the lesson for later. A great sentence or word choice, a brilliant metaphor or smilie can inspire a writer to think differently. It’s not plagiarism, but every writer takes inspiration. As they quote from T.S. Eliot goes: “Good writers borrow, great writers steal.”

It’s a misnomer to think that writers can’t “enjoy” a book the same way if we are analyzing it the whole time. Quite the opposite. When a great story sweeps us away, we get taken as much as anyone else. But we want to know why it works when we get to the end. Conversely, if something isn’t doing it for me, I start to break down what it is I don’t like about it and make a note to avoid that in my own writing. Something that takes too long to get started. A big info dump. A reaction or dialogue that feels unnatural from the characters. I strongly feel we learn more from the stuff that doesn’t work than we do from the brilliant stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to break down the magic of a great story. But if there is an obvious flaw in a plot or a character’s action, they stand out and are great lessons to be learned.

And I know I am always trying to learn. I find as much to learn in books now and I did 30 years ago, long before I ever wrote a book.

Right now I’m reading a vintage novel. Well, vintage from 1960, which still sounds like it wasn’t that long ago but my kids feel differently. It’s called Hit and Run by Richard Deming. It’s my first Deming book and he came recommended to me by another pulp fiction fan as someone who was highly underrated. It’s true, I hadn’t heard of him before, and it’s also true that the book is great. It’s tight, pulpy, has all the hallmarks of a great Noir story. Right in my wheelhouse.

And yes, I’m taking note of every great plot twist. The way Deming withholds information from the reader to build suspense and drop a few shock moments. I’ll probably finish that one today and move on to something contemporary. And hopefully, I’ll learn something new.

Reader, Writer, Writer, Reader

 

Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Familiar with the image of the snake eating its own tail?

 

It’s called the ouroboros, and it’s also a concise metaphor for neurosis and obsession. A Hungarian scientist named August Kekulé saw the mythological creature in a dream, and it inspired his model of benzene. Instead of a linear chain of carbon atoms, Kekulé imagined a circle, and dashes around the hexagon indicated the type of bonds between the atoms. The next breakthrough in organic chemistry would come from George Olah who would prove that those carbon bonds were positively charged, but I digress.

 

Read. Write. Write. Read. 

To eat or not to eat your own tail, that is the question if you’re a writer.

Reader. Writer,. Writer. Reader.

 

I can’t speak for other writers, but I started out as a Reader, and Writer came much later in my life. Some of my peers inhaled M&Ms, and wrote their first novel with a crayon. That wasn’t me.

 

I read for pleasure, for escape, and entertainment. I was an omnivore, and that’s because I was curious and I didn’t know genre and marketing. I was young and free, untainted by the family business we call publishing. I was lucky that school had not turned me off of reading. My teachers taught me a vocabulary, such as Irony, Symbolism, Theme, and critical theory. Creativity I developed,

 

I could have remained linear: become versions of me growing old as a Reader inside my own Matrix.

 

Or I could choose to become ouroboros, and be both: Reader and Writer. I could Read and Enjoy for its own sake, or Read and feed my own creativity. Whatever I decided, I knew that I needed to stabilize the bonds, find a balance between Pleasure and Work.

 

I learned two things.

 

What you enjoy is unique to you, for whatever reason, be it personality, psychology, or heritage.

 

You are influenced by everything you read; it’s subliminal and impossible to avoid. Our eyes see images; our mind makes metaphors. We need to understand the world around us. Awareness is what keeps us safe and engaged, so what I am saying that we read ALL THE TIME whether it’s a book, the billboard, or the sketchy dude across the street. What we do with what feeds our eyes is intellectual, a study of our own thoughts.

 

My unsolicited advice to the Writer is this:

Appreciate the writers you enjoy, analyze what they do well, but transform it.

Turn off Analytical Mode. Don’t read as if you’re a competitor. It’s one thing for the snake to eat its own tail, another to choke on it.

Instead of seeing circularity as repetition and a torment, find that Stability between reading as a Reader, and writing as a Writer. You are both at once.

 

And to the question about change: you are a different person from the person who started reading this page, a different reader than you were as a kid; and you’re a better writer today than yesterday or last year. To quote Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

 

What am I reading now?

Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There.

 

 

I could read for hours...

 

Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Books are a magic portal. I read that somewhere, I can’t say where. Probably a meme. But it’s true. I learned this as a little girl growing up in the inner city of Cleveland, Ohio where things were so tough outside my window, but everything I ever dared to dream in between the pages of a good book.  I’ve come to rely on their magic my whole life. For escapism, for learning, and sometimes as my only friend (high school was tough).

If I were trapped on desert island and given a choice of one luxury item to bring, it would have to be a book. A big one, like maybe the Stand, Insomnia, or It, by Stephen King. That man knows how to write a big book. Something with at least a thousand pages or more. I feel like if I can fall into a good story, any other thing is manageable.

While being a writer has changed how I read, it has not changed what I read. I still like my reading the way I like my music, boundless, as long as it touches me in some way. Whether it’s just a fun story filled with adventure, car chases, and fight scenes. Or sappy love stories that make me want to fall in love. Or a dark thriller, the kind that keeps you up at night side-eyeing that open closet door. I’m all in.

As a writer, it’s hard not be in editor mode when reading, especially if the book is not the best. I’m rewriting scenes, rearranging paragraphs, wondering if the writer has a writer’s group, and trying not give up on the story.  My writer brain always has questions, or suggestions. Like, why did they do that? Or was it really necessary to describe that tree, again? Or, my favorite, how did they come up with that description? It’s so good, I shouldn’t even bother to write anymore. Just joking, kind of

I’ve never accomplished the art of the do not finish (DNF). I can’t. I don’t know if it’s because I’m afraid I’m going to miss something or optimism that the writer will somehow turn it around, or fear that the anxiety of not knowing how the story ends would simply drive me insane. But once started this train does not stop. Yes, I do know about skimming, or skipping to the end. And, yes, I’ve tried that. But I’ve learned that it’s pointless for me. I still end up backtracking to see how the writer mucked it up so bad anyway. So, I persist to the bitter end.

 Great writing often equals inspiration, but as writers we must be careful not to be too inspired, if you know what I mean. For that reason, I try to stay away from reading books too close to my current work-in-progress.

 

Currently, I’m working on the sequel to my debut novel, Hurt Mountain. So, it’s a great time to read one of my favorite authors, Delia Pitts, mystery, Trouble in Queenstown. A story that I know will inspire me with its greatness, in all the best ways possible.

 

                                                               

 

Do you have an idea? I have twenty. On inspiration and crankiness, by Harini Nagendra

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

One of the professors in the institution where I did my PhD - the Indian Institute of Science - was infamous for his habit of deflating students, puncturing their excitement and generally running them down. 

"XXX!" one of his students was said to have shouted, running towards him down the long stone corridors at top speed, waving his hands. "I have an idea." 

XXX sneered at him. "One idea? I have twenty." 

It's easy to get ideas, he meant. Converting them into reality is hard.

Is that true? Perhaps. But in fiction writing, it's different. At times I find it very hard to get the ideas going, and at other times they come thick and fast. 

Kaveri Murthy, the main character in my Bangalore Detectives Club series, parachuted into my mind fully formed. Where did she come from? Who knows. I didn't really have a clear image of what she looked like, but I knew her mind - how she thought, what she wanted, how she would behave in any given situation. Several of the other characters in my books walked onto the page - like Mala, the beautiful young woman forced into relationships with other men by a notorious local pimp - or gentle but incisively brilliant Inspector Ismail.  

Dialogue is harder than characters, but I take my inspiration from fragments, overheard conversations. One woman was talking to another as I walked past - mimicking her neighbour who spoke non-stop, "going wata wata wata." That grabbed me, and I instantly put it into my book.   

Plots are the most difficult. I comb newspapers and old books - memoirs of travelers, policemen's autobiographies, cases written up in old magazines - and then pick the ones I like. Or I go down research rabbit holes, reading compulsively about fox hunts in Bangalore, foreign magicians who dressed up in blackface as Indian fakirs, and women wrestlers who joined the Bombay circus. The words I read linger in my mind, simmer on long walks, cook slowly during weekends spent doing other things - and suddenly, in the mysterious way plots do, they morph and twist and twine and intersplice - and then I have a plot. 

Or - equally likely - I read about interesting ideas, but they stubbornly refuse to transform into anything. I stare at the wall, fretting in impatience at plot holes - and then plod away stodgily at my writing.

I've now written four non-fiction books and four fiction books. Writing non-fiction is so much easier - making things up is hard. But it's so much fun when it suddenly clicks, and a new plot comes together...

Which reminds me, time to get started on book 5 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series... 

 

How Now from James W. Ziskin

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

Boko, thinking up ideas over tea

Ideas come, ideas go 

But HOW they do it I don’t know

They pop up here, they turn up there 

They seem to spring up everywhere

While we’re at home, at work, in bed

Or idling at a light that’s red

They often take us by surprise

In stealthy mode and in disguise

But HOW they do it none can tell

Which may in fact be just as well

For when we try to understand

The secret of some sleight of hand

The magic’s lost, ideas die

So maybe just don’t wonder why

flkjsd;fj

Peeking into the Process

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

by Dietrich

There’s no single way — ideas come from images or memories, and sometimes they come from eavesdropping on conversations.

My novel Zero Avenue began with a single scene in mind: a young woman with an electric guitar slung over her shoulder, standing in the dim light of Vancouver’s punk scene in the late ’70s. I put myself back in that time and dusted off the old Ramones albums and got into the spirit. I didn’t know the character’s name yet, Frankie del Rey came later, but I pictured her, and I knew she had a story to tell. From there, it was a matter of asking the right questions: Who is she? What’s she running from? What does she want? The rest just grew around that opening scene.

It’s doesn’t always start with a character. Sometimes it’s a place or a moment. In Call Down the Thunder, I pictured a lone figure splitting firewood in a dusty Kansas yard during the Dirty Thirties. Looming in the background was a sky heavy with an approaching dust storm. I felt that sense of doom and isolation as I started writing, and Sonny and Clara, the couple at the heart of that story, emerged from that single frame. Images like that make great starting blocks —they’re vivid, sensory, and they start me writing.

Imagination is the engine, and sometimes a news article or something online sparks it. The narco sub scene in Triggerfish came that way. I read about these subs built in secret jungle locations, loaded with cocaine and moving underwater and undetected up the coast from Mexico. I pictured a couple on a pleasure boat making out, a nice quiet evening in a West Coast cove with nobody else around. They’re just getting into the wine and making out when up pops the telescope of the narco sub, bringing its load into Canadian waters.

Memories can play a role, although I don’t write about my life in any literal sense, sometimes fragments of it can sneak into the picture. And I’ve known interesting people who I’ve based loosely characters on. A mix of fact and fiction and I come up with imaginary folk who live on the edge, some who bend the rules, and especially the ones who live to break them. 

Certain impressions stick with me too. Back when pot was still illegal in Canada, I read something about the billion-dollar weed industry here in British Columbia. It reminded me of a true story I once heard about a guy who robbed a pot field and got chased off by the farmer blasting a shotgun, the guy getting away with nothing but a backside of rock salt. As well as inspiring a scene for The Deadbeat Club, it gave me insight into the why behind it, the human impulse that makes someone take a dumb risk.

Then there’s eavesdropping — okay, I admit I’m not above leaning a little closer to catch something juicy I can use. There’s raw honesty in the way people speak to each other, especially when they think no one’s listening. Dialogue often starts from fragments like that. It gets polished and handed to characters and they make it their own.

Beyond images, memories, and overheard scraps, there’s something else: the “what if.” It can come from something small like a headline, a random fact or a fleeting thought — just an idea that grows. It’s a game of being curious and twisting facts around into something I can use. “What if” they get away? What if they double down? “What if it all works out?”

So, ideas are a mash-up of images, memories, conversations, and questions that want answers. It’s all fuel for a writer. I collect the bits and pieces and look for ways to click them into place. It starts with a simple idea for a scene. I drop in the characters and let them figure it out, allowing the story to flow scene by scene, letting it build and seeing where it leads.