Writing a book is a complicated process and figuring out where to start can be confusing, especially for new authors.
Some writers start with character.
Some writers start with a theme.
Filmmaker and painter David Lynch starts with transcendental meditation!
In this episode of The Writing Coach, I describe the perfect way to begin developing a story and exactly where you should start.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:
The Writing Coach Episode #138 Show Notes
Join the Fall 2022 edition of STORY PLAN INTENSIVE: sign-up now. The program kicks-off October 3, 2022.
Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.
The Writing Coach Episode #138 Transcript
Hello, beloved listeners and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T Johns here.
One of the questions I get asked when I’m doing interviews about my novels and books is the question, where do you start? Where does the idea for a book begin? And there are a lot of different ways that a book can begin, and a lot of different writers come at it in different ways. I think for some writers, you start with an idea of a certain moment. There’s just this scene or this set piece that you have in your mind, or that you’re basing on something you’ve read in the past or seen. And then you kind of build a story around that little moment. Something I haven’t seen as much of in the clients that I work with—but that might just be because I largely work with action-type stories—is starting with character.
But I think in literary fiction, we often start with characters. Look at Mrs. Dalloway, the book is named Mrs. Dalloway, certainly starting with character is probably where Virginia Wolf started when she wrote the original, short story, Mrs. Dalloway, which ended up becoming the masterpiece novel. Another place that some people start is the concept of theme. There is some sort of thing going on in the world. That’s making you upset, or there’s some sort of message that you want to share with people. And that can be a starting point. You say, “I want to tell a story about friendship,” you know, and some theme as simple as that can be a great place to start stories.
Now, one of the reasons I had this topic of starting places in my mind is because my daughter, she’s in grade seven, and in her English class, they did a really cool project. The kids were asked to read two graphic novels. Then they were asked to create a Venn diagram, demonstrating what the two graphic novels had in common and what was different. You understand how a Venn diagram works, I’m sure. Then the teacher assigned them to take those things that cross over in the Venn diagram and write their own comic book or graphic novel based on these ideas, which I thought was a really interesting starting point to tell your own story, take a look at two things you really enjoy and maybe two things that are similar or maybe two things that are very different, do a bit of
A Venn diagram and see where things overlap and then say, Hey, can I build a story out of these elements that are in both things that I already like stories that I enjoyed? David Lynch, the filmmaker has a technique that he calls Catching the Big Fish. He has a book about it. I’ll put a link to that book in the show notes for this episode, this is episode 138 of The Writing Coach podcast. So head on over to Kevin T johns.com to check out those show notes, to get the transcript for this episode and the link to catching the big fish. But what David Lynch talks about in this, that book is how he used transcendental meditation to support his creativity and his idea creation process. And he uses this metaphor of deep inside himself or inside all of us perhaps is this river of perhaps the creative or sort of the collective unconscious or just a river of, of ideas flowing from somewhere inside of us.
And so what David Lynch does is he meditates, and he goes down within himself, and he starts fishing in that river of creativity. And he pulls out ideas and, you know, you get small little ideas and, and maybe a medium-sized idea. But what he says is he’s really looking for the big fish. He wants to catch the big idea from that river of creativity. And when he comes out of that meditative state, he comes out with this big fish of an idea, and that becomes his next film or his next painting or his next project of some kind.
I know for myself, for my first book, what I wanted to do with The Page Turner’s trilogy was to write a horror sci-fi fantasy mashup. Those are the genres I love. Those are the genres I grew up on. And I was a huge comic book fan growing up, including superhero comics.
And in those superhero comics, you see this sort of genre mash-up every day. And now that for the last decade, Marvel films have dominated the cinema. We’ve kind of, it’s much more mainstream. Now, this idea that we can have a wizard and mutant and a robot and witch and super strong guy, all, all fighting together in the same universe. But you know, when I was younger, it was really in comic books that you saw that. And so what I wanted to do with my novel series was do what they do in comic books, mash-up horror sci-fi and fantasy, and get to write all the things I love, but in, in one series, without having to do multiple series in these different genres. Now, I mentioned the word genre. It sounds perhaps fancy, right? It’s like a French word, but if you translate it, genre really just means a type of thing.
It’s just the type of something. And obviously what we do to categorize things is how we categorize art. So a painting might be a modernist painting, or an album of music might be punk rock. So modernism within the world of painting is a genre, punk rock within the world of music is a genre. Cozy mystery is a genre within the world of literature and books. And genre is really helpful for readers. If you read a romance and you really enjoy the book, you’re probably going to enjoy similar books. And so what do you do? You go to the bookstore and you look for more romance books, more books in the genre you just read. And this approach is so prevalent that it’s largely how books are categorized, both in brick-and-mortar bookstores. We, you know, whatever bookstores are still remaining out there. And obviously on Amazon, on Amazon, every book is categorized within multiple genres and subgenres.
And so genre is how a reader thinks of the type of book that they want to go purchase and read. But genre is also hugely important for the writer. The metaphor I always use is I think of genre as being like a sandbox. And by choosing to write in a certain genre, you’ve put a little border around yourself and that borders the border of the sandbox and what comes with that sandbox are all the specific toys of that specific genre. And so if you are writing a Western, what toys do you have to play with? You have sheriffs, you have bandits, you have horses, you have saloons, you have gun fights. These conventions we can call them are the tools of that particular genre. And so instead of staring off into space, trying to wait for a cool idea to hit you, or instead of doing David Lynch’s intense meditative process, what a lot of people do is say, Hey, I like mysteries.
I’m going to write a mystery. And the second you do that, you have a certain grouping of toys that you can play with. And in limiting the number of things that you play with, it actually stimulates ideas. The great filmmaker, Orson Wells said, the enemy of art is the absence of limitations. And it’s amazing how, when we place limitations on ourselves limitations like genre, it can really help stimulate the stories and the ideas that we want to tell, not simply because genre provides us with these conventions to work with, but genre often dictates other things like themes. If you are writing a war novel, there are certain themes that come along with that type of story. Often fraternity this idea of a group of soldiers coming together in the face of adversity life and death perhaps nation versus nation. These sorts of themes come along with the genre.
So not only does genre tell us what type of things we can play with in our story. It also tells us the types of topics that we might want to cover. Genre also does things like determine book length, a hard sci-fi novel might be quite long. A light chicklet book might be on the shorter side. Again, it’s not necessarily the story dictating the length of the book so much as it is the genre itself, readers of certain genres are expecting a book of a certain length. And so, because genre plays such a huge and crucial role in so many decisions that we make as writers. It’s really a great way to answer that question. Where do you start writing a book? How do you start thinking about writing a book? Thinking about genre is probably the most useful way to start thinking about a story.
And that’s why in my STORY PLAN INTENSIVE program that’s kicking off October 3, 2022, just over a week from when I recorded this, the very first module in the program is all about genre.
This program is a free four-week program where you can think of it as a challenge where I’m challenging you to complete a full outline for your book in 30 days or less.
That’s what STORY PLAN INTENSIVE is all about. As I said, it’s free. And when you sign up, you get daily training videos from me covering various aspects of writer’s craft. You get homework assignments on the Friday of each week of the program and these assignments, this isn’t high school. I’m not testing if you paid attention in the training, these homework assignments are actually meant to facilitate creative thinking about your story.
So if you’re not sure what book you wanna write, or if you aren’t sure where it should go, these homework assignments are gonna allow you to approach the thinking and the puzzle work of figuring out a story in a really quick and efficient manner. We also have a private Facebook group. So when people sign up for the program, you can join the Facebook group and get a bit of community.
This is the third time I’ve run this program. And each time we run it, there are people who post their homework in the Facebook group. Other people comment, they get ideas and they get support and they get accountability. And so I would love for you to be part of this program. If you’re thinking about writing a book, if you’ve started planning a book, but haven’t quite figured out the planning process yet, you’re not quite there.
If you are planning to do national novel writing month in November, I would say this program is absolutely key and essential to setting you up for success in November. If you’re gonna sit down in November and write 50,000 words in one month’s time, you need to know one that the story you’re telling is going to be worth it and effective that all of the energy and time and effort you’re putting into writing a book in November, isn’t just gonna go in the trunk at the end of the month that you are putting that effort, atop a foundation that is going to set you up for success.
It’s also going to ensure that when you sit down to write each day, you’re not wasting time thinking about all these things. We’re gonna have done all the thinking ahead of time so that when you sit down to write and that’s whether you’re writing in November or whether you are, you know, writing over several months or, or a year, which you know, some people do with their books, the point is you’re gonna sit down, and you’re going to write with confidence because you’re gonna have done the work ahead of time to set yourself up for success with that first draft of your book. All right? So to get involved in STORY PLAN INTENSIVE, to get signed up, head on over to www.kevintjohns.com. That’s my website, and go to the show notes for this episode. This is episode 138 of the writing coach podcast.
I will have a link in there where you can join the story STORY PLAN INTENSIVE program. As I said, it’s a month’s worth of training and home work and you finish it with an incredible rock, solid outline for your book. Having done this a few times now, I’ve got to tell you, it’s amazing to see the type of progress people make when they do the homework. When they commit to the challenge, say, I’m going to do this in a month’s time. It’s just amazing to watch these stories come together. And I wanna watch your story come together. I wanna see your novel, have an outline. That’s going to set you up for success when you sit down to start drafting and typing in those words. So www.kevintjohns.com episode 138 of the writing coach podcast. And you can get signed up for STORY PLAN INTENSIVE. I will see you inside of that program. Can’t wait to work with you.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I will see you on the next episode of The Writing Coach.
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