Jordan Castillo Price is a regular visitor to this site and every time she shows up she shares her knowledge on different topics. Today she’s talking about storytelling. Who knew that there was so much involved? I thought you could just grab ideas out of the air and massage them, but Jordan shows how complicated this writing business can turn out to be. 🙂 Here’s her newest essay:
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Storytelling is an exchange of ideas. There is craftsmanship and wordsmithing involved, but at the heart of every story is an idea. While the best 
idea in the world can be ruined by incompetent writing, even the most engaging writing technique can’t compensate for a trite, overused, underdeveloped premise. Idea and execution go hand in hand.
The mechanics of writing are learnable to an extent. A combination of practice and analysis will allow a writer to improve the wordsmithing aspect of the craft. But what about the fuel that drives the story—the inspiration? Where on earth do ideas come from?
In Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, Lawrence Block has a smartassed answer to that question: The Idea Book, a semi-monthly periodical to which writers can subscribe, and pick and choose their ideas as if they’re ordering from a catalog. Except when he referred to it, some people didn’t realize this was a smartassed answer. And no doubt even many who got the joke still thought they wouldn’t mind sneaking a peek at an issue, if such a publication actually did exist.
In my most recent novel, The Starving Years I took a different approach to idea-generation than I normally would: I opened up the selection of the genre, the plot and the characters to my newsletter subscribers. In creating the characters, I began by brainstorming a group of possible characteristics for leading men, and I allowed readers to select as many of them as they liked. Here were the results:
tortured 43.5%
confident 51.6%
skewed 21.0%
boyish 21.0%
optimistic 22.6%
pessimistic 21.0%
contrary 32.3%
naughty 43.5%
nerdy 51.6%
needy 12.9%
complicated 71.0%
hesitant 29.0%
bold 32.3%
obnoxious 8.1%
creative 56.5%
deluded 9.7%
creepy 14.5%
arrogant 21.0%
smug 17.7%
gentle 45.2%
brash 16.1%
private 40.3%
conventionally attractive 19.4%
I ended up paying particular attention to the characteristics that scored higher than 45%. Once the characteristics were chosen, I ran this poll:
Phase two of the next JCP News serialized fiction begins! This month, vote on your main characters. I took the top twelve characteristics you voted for and combined them into the following five characters. Pick your favorite guy, and the top two will star in the upcoming serial.
Nelson Oliver is an idea man—his overtaxed brain spews forth so many ideas, in fact, that he pays the price with debilitating migraines. He wouldn’t have it any other way. Headaches are transitory, he figures, but stupidity is permanent. (Creative/Bold)
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, complain. Nothing gets under Emil Brecht’s skin like a whiner. He’s positively relentless in his enthusiasm. Turn that frown upside down—or else! (Contrary/Optimistic)
There’s still good in the world—Javier de la Rosa is sure of it. Everyone has his burden to bear; some burdens are just more visible than others. He was beautiful…once. (Gentle/Tortured/Hesitant)
Why play at all if you don’t play to win? While he hopes his charisma will stand the test of time, Daniel Holiday doesn’t expect his looks to last forever, so he figures he should start gaining ground while he’s still young. (Naughty/Complicated 11.0%)
Driven. Intense. Arrogant. Tim Foster has heard it all. Ask him if he cares—he doesn’t. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket…but he’ll do his damnedest to stave off disaster. (Nerdy/Confident/Private)
Here’s how the readers voted:
Nelson Oliver 31.0%
Javier de la Rosa 27%
Tim Foster 26%
Daniel Holiday 11%
Emil Brecht 5%
Two years later, the serial has run its course and the final novel has just come out. Looking back at the story ideas’ unusual roots, I’m struck by three things.
1. I wouldn’t have been able to choose between the five characters I generated. I liked them all. If I were to take one character out of the running, it probably would have been Tim Foster, because I really didn’t see how I could make that sort of intense personality appealing. Particularly with the unexpected winning characteristic of “nerdy!” When Tim finally did make the cut, I agonized over how I could make him clearly nerdy without resorting to the cliche pair of glasses. Even though it was a challenge, I’m very pleased with the way he turned out, and he eventually became my favorite character.
2. Nelson would clearly be the protagonist, based on his score. Since Tim and Javier were within a vote of each other, I decided they both needed to be thrown into the novel. I didn’t set out to write a love triangle, but I figured it might be exciting for the readers to vote on who might finally get together…and then it turned out that I laid out such a good argument for each guy liking who he liked that nearly everybody asked for a three-way relationship.
3. I see now that despite the generative process, once I was actually writing, the weird alchemy of the needs of the plot and the needs of the storytelling took over, and I swapped characteristics with impunity. Nelson stayed true to form, but he turned out to have hidden depths. Tim, though still very determined, was also quite awkward and easy to hurt. Javier turned out to be the resentful, driven, arrogant character. I do remember struggling along until I realized that “gentle” simply wasn’t the guy who showed up to my story, despite the fact that he’d been prearranged that way. When I gave in and made Javier the proud, dominant guy he was, things flowed a lot more smoothly.
Ideas come from so many different places: hearing snippets of conversation, pondering odd images from our dreams, and even daydreaming
about how we might have ended that TV show differently had we been on the writing staff. Ideas can even come from random plot generators (my novel Zero Hour came from a randomly generated plot) or from surveys like the ones I shared above.
The idea is the easy part. Everyone is constantly flooded with ideas. Recognizing those ideas and recording them is a matter of setting your intention and following through. Determining which idea is viable is a more nebulous instinct—sometimes it almost seems like magic. And executing that idea it to its best advantage is a skill that may take an entire career to develop.
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Jordan Castillo Price is the author of the PsyCop series and the owner of JCP Books LLC. She writes paranormal, horror and thriller novels from her isolated and occasionally creepy home in rural Wisconsin. Connect with Jordan in the following places:
jordancastilloprice.com
JCP Books: Jordan’s online bookstore
JCP News: Jordan’s monthly newsletter
Facebook: Jordan’s fanpage
PsyCop fanpage
Jordan’s LiveJournal blog
Jordan will give away a copy of The Starving Years to one lucky reader who comments on this post.
Jordan I am never disappointed when I read, or listen on podcast, to your creative process. Thanks! 🙂
I’m addicted to hearing about others’ creative process too, Andi, so I’m tickled you find it helpful. Here’s a quick link to the podcast in case anyone’s curious. There’s three years’ worth of episodes to explore: http://packingheat.net
So cool Jordan. I loved that idea of letting readers choose, although characters are like people I suppose, you first think they are like X and then when you get to know them other factors show up, they really aren’t X, but a bit more Y than they appear. 🙂
I get ideas all the time, I think “Oh, that’s a cool moment” then …pppphhhttttt. Gone. LOL I did write something recently for the GR thing and included something I saw on I think it was one of those video shows, someone fell off the top of a kitchen cabinet (why they were on top of the kitchen cabinet I have no clue), I didn’t use it exactly but it involved kitchen cabinets, a cat, falling, a broken wrist and a hot ER doctor. LOL So once it a while that idea sticks in my head and makes itself known down the road.
Do you think if you had some way of capturing ideas you might remember more of them? It really vexes me when I think of something and it slips away. It’s like the potential of an idea and its “stickiness” are not necessarily correlated, and I think sometimes the good ones do get away.
Definitely, unfortunately they happen when I’m driving down the street or something like that. Maybe I need to turn into one of those crazy people muttering into a hand-held tape recorder all the time. 🙂
Sometimes I try just speaking them aloud even if there’s no recording device, in hopes of remembering later. I do think it helps some.
Fascinating, Jordan! I didn’t take part in the voting for characteristics because I wanted to wait and just read the finished book, but now I can see that I missed out on something really interesting.
I’m currently in “throwing ideas around in my head” mode for my next major project. It’s going to be interesting to see which nebulous plot wins out in the end. At the moment they’re all too hazy to tell, but I’m sure one of them will come into focus over the next month. Usually it’s just a case of waiting for that last little detail to fall into place with an “aha!” – then I can’t wait to start writing.
My hope in getting readers to vote would be that they would feel like they had stock in the story, a bit of ownership. Hard to say whether that actually happened or not.
I love the idea generation mode. I’m in the opposite camp at the moment, cleaning up the technical aspects and trying to finish a bunch of projects…and it’s making me crabby. I want to do the “fun” creative part again but I don’t have the time or the mental space until I wrap up exisiting things.
I am in total awe of anyone who can tell a good story but I honestly had no idea that so much background work was involved! Thanks for an interesting look into the creative process!
I doubt this process is typical, but I wonder if maybe an abbreviated version of narrowing down options takes place in most writers’ minds under the surface.
I love that Javier changed on you because it shows the creative process at work – you start out with a light sketch and as the characters fill out they can take you to unexpected places.
Thanks for the numbers. It’s an interesting list to ponder and I think I agree that complicated characters are much more engaging than conventionally attractive ones. Might even be true in real life.
It is interesting how “complicated” came out as the clear winner, and also how opposing characteristics often scored quite closely.
I think conventionally handsome can be a bit boring. “Charming” is a more intriguing characteristic…which I see wasn’t even on my list at all, ha ha!
Very informative post, as only a reader my imagination isn’t creative enough to even imagine all the thoughts and work that goes into the process of writing! 😕
Creativity is such a strange thing (and sometimes I wonder if we build it up to be more than it actually is.) When you break it down, it’s all just a series of choices, picking one thing over another.
Wow, that sounds like fun but I’m impressed you could give up control like that, even at the beginning of the process. (I’d have been trying to skew the vote for sure, which would defeat the purpose.)
And I have concluded they need to make a tiny voice activated recorder that a writer could clip to one’s lapel for those moments of inspiration that fade too fast while I’m driving or otherwise occupied. Waterproof, of course, for clipping to the shower curtain and sturdy enough to roll over on so one could wear it to bed. (Why do the best ideas seem to occur in direct proportion to how hard it is to get to paper and pencil right then?) But then there would be the issue of finding enough hours in the day to write them all. Maybe it’s a good thing some plot bunnies disappear before they can be preserved.
At one point I did try to “stack the deck” a bit by putting my favorite option on top, thinking that more people would imprint on it. BUT NO, that didn’t work at all!
I found that in giving up a pretty big amount of control like this, it actually helped me push my boundaries in some really fun ways. I’d hate to get stagnant.
I love this author. I blew through the Psycop series. I’m addicted like crack now.
That’s an interesting way to come up with book ideas. However it seems to be working well for you because I felt that the ideas were very fresh. They certainly weren’t things I had seen a lot before. I also think it’s neat that you use numbers and data. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through, but I’m so glad that you do.
Ooh, “fresh” is a really potent word – I love it! Yes, I think that was another reason I decided to do a vote-driven novel, aside from wanting it to be interactive. I didn’t want to get stale. (I imagine the sound of a balloon letting air out when I hear the word “stale.”)
I’m so excited to read this, I love your books so this is inspirational to me.
That’s awesome! I love reading about the writing process too so it’s gratifying to know it inspires you 🙂
Very interesting post, Jordan. The creative process is fascinating and often so surprising. It amazes me how it can feel more like discovery than ‘making things up’. I know some authors feel that they are just a conduit for the stories they write. And it’s interesting how many authors talk about their characters as if they were real and make choices independent of the author.
In a way it’s a fine line of keeping control and ceding control. I remember when I first starting writing, a friend wrote a particularly lousy thing and defended it with, “Well, it just came out that way.” I always remember that so that I try to strike a good balance between being a conduit and calling the shots!
What a fascinating way to create a story – I appreciate reading something that has been written as a “challenge” and seeing how it still becomes so individualized by the author. Thank you for sharing 🙂
There is something about the “challenge” aspect that tickles different parts of the brain, I suspect!
wow, character creation usually isn’t done by percentages. Or by community opinion. I want to see this. I’ve loved psycop, and I should start on your other stuff. ;D
My goodness, what’s it gonna take to lure you into reading my other work???
*tapdances*
Do you find that the ones that got away are truly ephemeral, or do some ideas/words/phrases come back later? Perhaps they come back in a slightly different way, but with a feeling of deja vu? (I’m not sure that makes any sense.) Are our fleeting ideas like those dream elements that seem less profound in the light of day? Maybe the important ideas find their way back to us. Wishful thinking…
I love this question, Karen. I would hope that my ideas that were really good would figure out some way to haunt me, some way to keep popping up and saying, “Hey, remember me?” But I don’t trust that they will.
I think ideas are moody and fragile. If I ignore a good one too long, it will go away–and that’s really a shame, because I usually work on several projects at once and sometimes a great idea occurs to me at the wrong time, a time when I’m working on so many other things simply don’t have the mental space to do anything about it. So I hope that writing it down will help.
In a way it’s expensive to pursue a new idea. Every new idea I pursue is an old tried-and-true idea that I’m setting aside for the moment to explore new worlds and test boundaries.
Your work is already so muti-layered I imagine this process added even more depth. Looking forward!
Thanks Alli! In a way, I think it did, because I had to figure out how to incorporate more variables in a way that felt like it added to the story rather than detracted. I didn’t want anything to feel “shoehorned” in so I often had to think pretty hard about how I was going to hit my marks without it feeling contrived.
You absolutely amaze me with your creative processes!, Cannot wait to read this book >8)
Thanks, Barb! I just love talking about creativity and inspiration. It’s…inspiring!
I did not participate in the polls but reading about the process definitely caught my attention.
I appreciate how you took the information you compiled and turned it in to what I expect is going to be an awesome read.
I’ve enjoyed your series and your stories and I’m looking forward to reading this one.
Cindy
That’s great to hear – I was hoping that even if people didn’t care to vote, the process would pique their curiosity anyway.
I think that even with certain elements determined by vote, there’s still so many other decisions to make that the vote-part turns out to be a pretty small element in the final story. Two people could write a book based on the story description and end up with something totally different.
WOW! Talk about left brain/right brain synergy when gathering and processing information…
Thoroughly fascinating info that I can use…right now, Jordan! Thanks for “sharing with the class”.
: )