500 Words- Day 20 (Innocence)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     The theme of the story is the truth that if proves. Even fiction proves some kind of truth. It can be something as simple as “good triumphs over evil” or “love conquers all”. When I am serious about writing something, I want to have a theme. When it was time to start developing my novel for this November, before I thought too much about what it would be about, before I even really tried to think of an ending, I felt I needed to know what I wanted to say. I needed my theme. And from what I had of the story, the theme revealed itself, innocence.

     The theme of The Snowdrop Princess is going to be preservation versus loss of innocence. The little girl in the story, from the beginning I have now, is innocent to anything in the world. She will be brought up by holograms, probably run by some central computer system. She will have one hologram, maybe created especially for her that will be her best friend. That best friend hologram will be The Snowdrop Princess, representing innocence.

     But what if prisoners of the state are incarcerated at this fortress? The government thinks that it’s empty of real people. They don’t know there’s a single little girl living there who was mysteriously dropped off as a young toddler, who spends her days running and playing with a hologram resembling a girl her age. I see conflict.

     For the past two days I’ve alluded to something else. Several years ago, I had a vision of a little girl, perhaps school-age, wandering around a smoke-swept battlefield littered with bodies. The girl isn’t disturbed by death. She closes the eyes of some fallen soldiers and searches them for any provisions. So I sat down and wrote something, first just pen and paper, where the girl is finally frightened off by wolves. Then I took a few days to sit and type up what I could.

It was an exploration. The girl was looking for food, but I learned that it was to take back to someone. Someone was holding her father hostage, compelling this girl to go and search dead soldiers on the battlefield. My story began the day she found a handgun. Acting on her father’s instructions, the girl took a single bullet and filed it down near the primer. (I asked an ex-policeman if this would happen). The girl took food and the gun back to where her father was being held prisoner by another man. This “bad man” as the girl thought of him, seemed to me some fugitive from the war, desperate enough to hold a father and daughter. The father was injured, sick and dying. The girl gave the pistol to the desperate fugitive, and later provoked him into shooting it. With the altered bullet, the handgun misfired, seriously injuring this bad man. He soon dies of blood loss. The  father also passes away. The girl, on her own in some dystopian wilderness, moves on.

That snippet came to me the other night. What if I could incorporate that into my story? I’ve been keeping it on hold for years, it’s not like I’m desperate to use it soon, ideas don’t really expire. But will this idea work for The Snowdrop Princess? Who is this girl? She’s too old to be the one dropped off at the fortress unless I change things up. Does she make it to the fortress years or decades earlier only to live and die and eventually be resurrected as a hologram?

Is she one of the criminals who is sentenced to the fortress?

There’s lots to think about and ponder. I’ve got just under two weeks to figure at least a few things out. There’s a chance this November novel could be little more than a convoluted mess. But with enough thought and planning, I might create something that shines.    

  

500 Words- Day 19 (Keeping a Theme)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     I get asked questions like this sometimes: What makes a book great? What’s the most important thing for a fiction book to have?

     I will see plenty of answers, some are obvious, like a good plot. Other answers say good characters. I try to always answer the same thing. What makes a story great is when the author believes in their theme. The theme is the truth that’s proved by the story. To me, the writer has to passionately believe in that truth. If they do, everything else should follow. They will take the time and make the effort to develop life-like characters and an engaging conflict to drive the plot. How this conflict is resolved says everything about who the writer is.

     The best stories that I have written are the ones that have a theme I believe in. I don’t always start with the theme, but I keep it in mind when I’m plotting. Whenever I am faced with a choice of how the story will go, I refer to the story’s theme for direction.

     I have a story idea for my November novel. A little girl is left at a mountain fortress to be raised by holograms. Okay, I had a premise and a title, The Snowdrop Princess. But what was actually going to happen in the story? How much of this was going to be based on the story I told my kids years ago? I needed a theme.

     I had some ideas for what would happen in the story. God forgive me for jumping on the dystopian genre bandwagon, but the story is in a future where the government is rebuilding after a collapse of civilization. This government wants to create a prison that’s humane, but safe. Why not have it guarded by holograms? In fact, history shows that there is a mountain fortress populated by nothing but holograms.

     I can see a complicated conflict here. It needs a lot of development still. And my theme, what truth do I believe in that I want this story to prove? What will be the DNA of this story’s structure?

     It’s times like this I wish I could take a sabbatical like last year, where I went out to the desert, scores of miles away from another human being. I had notebooks and pens and I sat and worked on Sidewinder. That turned into a pretty good first draft and it’s on its way to becoming a good novel. Is there magic in a sabbatical?

     Well, yes. But it’s just not possible this year. And while there is mojo in a sabbatical, I can dig it up elsewhere. And I did. I know my theme.

Like I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s writing, I had a story opening in mind that led me to want to write The Snowdrop Princess as my November novel. Then, two nights ago, something came to me, and now I’ve got a choice to make. I thought of a story opening I wrote a few years ago, not knowing where to take it. I thought someday I would use it for a November novel. And the other night I realized it keeps with my theme more than the other idea I had.

On a different note to anyone who reads this: Thank you for indulging me these “cliffhangers” as I end uncertainly like this so often. It’s not to draw readers back. It’s to draw me back to writing tomorrow. And thank you, too, for reading. Your support is encouraging.

  

500 Words- Day 18 (Story Development)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     I rarely rely on dreams to inspire me for stories to write, at least not my own. I have created a few stories from Prajna’s dreams, hers are awesome and she tells them in a way that inspires me. But earlier this year I woke up with an idea. It actually may not have been a dream. Rather, the idea was with me like a leg cramp first thing in the morning. But I was finally prepared and I wrote down what I had. It went something like this:

     Two figures are struggling to make their way up a mountain during a ferocious blizzard. One of them finally stops, unable to go on any further. The second one tries to stay, but is implored to go on, and finally he does. After more perilous traveling, he finally arrives at his destination. It’s really there. He goes to the door of the mountain fortress and someone comes out to him. They try to bring him in, but he refuses. Instead, he hands over what he has, and they take the child from him. Further urging to come in to the fortress, get warm, rest, are ignored. He must go back for who he left. He turns and disappears back into the storm and is never seen again.

     After I wrote that down, I was intrigued and grateful. Here was the start of a story. Here, perhaps could be my next November novel. So I did what I usually do, I went to work. I mean I literally went to work. My job is custodial and maintenance. I work alone most of the time setting and breaking down rooms and cleaning buildings. I listen to music, podcasts and audiobooks all the time while working and I turn ideas over in my head. I thought about the idea I had written down. Who the people were didn’t seem as important as where they arrived. What was it?

     I don’t know where I came up with the idea for holograms. I don’t usually like technology playing a big role in my stories. I think I actually had the idea of this child, a little girl, being dropped off at a fortress that had once been populated with people. Whenever someone died, and left their personality programmed in the databanks of a great computer. Eventually everyone died. There was nothing there but holograms. And this is where the child was dropped off.

I don’t know the order that things happened after that. But I was speculating about what would happen if people had the technology to build a prison that had no guards, only holograms. Holograms couldn’t be overpowered or bribed. It would be a humane alternative to solitary confinement. What if the powers that be remembered a fortress populated by what they thought were only holograms, and they decided to turn it into a prison for enemies of the state?

The ideas started to bounce around in my head like moths on a porch light. But there was still a lot of thinking and planning to do, much of it I haven’t done yet.

Then, last night, another idea came to me.

  

500 Words-Day 17 (The Snowdrop Princess)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     Yesterday, I told about the birth of a story idea. After telling the story to Naomi one traumatic night, then trying to write it a few years later, it sat dormant for another year or so. Then came a time when I worked construction and Prajna wasn’t home in the evenings. I had no trouble putting the kids to bed and one of my favorite things was to read to them in the evening. Even though I loved the picture books and would read at least three at bedtime, I wanted to do more. So I started making up a story to tell them each night.

     I was a land surveyor by day, and the construction site I worked at had scrapers, huge, yellow machines with twin engines that would drive in circles picking up dirt and then putting it back somewhere else. I had noticed how anthropomorphic they were, bending at the mid-section to turn and when they got stuck. I imagined great dinosaur-like creatures running in circles, first eating, then voiding. And that became part of my story.

     I don’t remember a whole lot more of that story I told. Aside from the yellow dinosaurs, there was a pirate ship, and all the water in the world was invisible. The ship seemed to float on nothing and the kid hero was able to walk on ice that he couldn’t see when he had enough faith. My kids loved the story and I loved telling it. It took a week or so to tell, and when it was done, I promised them another story.

     I thought about the story I had told Naomi a few years back. I wanted to resurrect that. There would be a castle with spires that reached the clouds and a little girl that lived there. I don’t know where the title came from, but it rose to the surface of my consciousness. I told my kids that the next night I would begin to tell them the story of The Snowdrop Princess.

     A little girl named Kalista, who was a princess, had to move with her family from the seashore to the mountains. Before she left, she collected seawater and sand in a jar to take with her. Their new home was a great castle set into the hills with towers that disappeared into the sky. Kalista spent her days exploring the castle, but was lonely. The paintings on the wall seemed to be so lifelike, especially one of a little girl about her age.

     From what I remember of the story, the paintings came to life. The little girl in the painting was The Snowdrop Princess, and they became best friends. Kalista had adventures in the castle, but there was some kind of monster, I don’t remember what. Kalista finally vanquished it by throwing her jar of sand and seawater at it.

     The story took a few weeks to tell. When it was done, I was very pleased and the kids had loved it. I told them the next story was called The Space Kids. I started it, but for some reason, never got more than a few installments in and it never came to life like the first two stories.

     I had a fondness for those stories that I had basically made up as I went. I should have taken the time to write them down, at least some outlines, but I didn’t. I was in one of the dark times of my life.

     Moving forward in time again, I finally got back into writing. As I wrote, more story ideas came. I completed NaNoWriMo two years in a row and at the end of last year, began to ponder what to do next. I had about three ideas I was working around, none were what I ended up fixing on. Something happened in the middle of the year that inspired me.