By John Gilstrap
You don’t work in this business for very long before you’re hit with what I consider to be the largely unanswerable question: Where do your ideas come from? Generally, my truthful answer is, “I have no idea.” They just somehow arrive when I need one.
But with the upcoming release of Burned Bridges, the first entry in my new Irene Rivers thriller series (launched yesterday!), I finally have an answer.
But first, let me share a little bit about the premise of the series. For those who are not familiar with my Jonathan Grave series, Irene Rivers serves as the director of the FBI in each book. At the conclusion of Zero Sum, Irene torpedoes the presidential administration of Tony Darmond, a corrupt, largely incompetent criminal who uses the clout of the federal government for his own personal gain. (He’s been president since I started writing the series in 2007, so don’t read present-day politics into the narrative.) The blowback on Irene is enormous. She resigns her position and intends to escape the madness and corruption of Washington by moving to family land in Jenkins County, West Virginia.
I loved the idea when I pitched it and Kensington bought it, but then I was left with the challenge of hanging a plot onto the premise. That’s always the challenge. But while the Irene books are thrillers, they’re different than the Grave books. I didn’t want to merely create a female Jonathan Grave.
One late autumn afternoon, as I was walking around our property in West Virginia in the company of Kimber, my 22-pound protector and watchdog, I was squeezing my brain to hatch an idea that felt right. I wanted it to be West Virginia-centric, but in the way that C.J. Box’s works are Wyoming-centric.
About midway through the walk, Kimber became fascinated with one of the many limestone caves we have around here. She was pulling on her leash to go into the hole (that’s the Boston terrier in her). As I pulled her back, I said, “Whatever’s in there, you don’t want to meet it. It will ruin your day.”
Ding ding! There it was. The beginning spot to begin building my story.
It’s hard to see, but that hole is the entry to a cave that I will never explore.
Suppose one of Irene’s kids discovered the skeletal remains of a body stuffed into a cave somewhere on her property. Clearly it’s a murder victim, an adolescent male.
Who killed him? Because I write thrillers, the killer has to be someone local.
Suppose the murder happened over 30 years ago. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, so to what lengths will the murderer go to protect his secret?
Now suppose the murderer is an established member of the community–part of a family who’s lived here for hundreds of years. What will the reaction be from the locals when this interloper from Washington, DC, starts uncovering secrets that have long been buried?
Meanwhile, how about Irene’s kids? They’ve been forced to move from the bustling DC suburbs to the middle of nowhere. How are they going to take the move? One of her kids is a teen, the other a tween, and they have to make their way through new schools where most of their classmates have known each other since kindergarten. How does that go for them?
This is how I “pants” my way through the writing process. Every question needs an answer, but to keep things interesting, each answer needs to trigger a new question. I’m very excited about this book. I love the characters, and I love the twists in the plot.
So, what about you, TKZ family? Can you articulate where your ideas come from?
Reading history triggers ideas as well as news articles, a chance conversation, or sometimes just pops to mind out of the blue. Or you read some books, particularly in a certain time period or location and think, “Why doesn’t anybody ever write about…” and that can trigger ideas too.
For most books, I just start writing. The ‘brilliant’ premise for my Mapleton Mystery series was Small town reluctant chief of police faces the first homicide in the town’s collective memory. Actually, it started as small town reluctant chief of police, but then I had to give him something to do.
For one of my Blackthornes, I was looking for a setting for my opening gambit, and stumbled across an idea that totally changed the direction of the book.
Hmm…maybe I can use the premise that got axed for another book.
Premises never go away. They just step back from the front of the brain.
Congratulations on your new book’s release, John!
With my Empowered series, the idea came from an image that came to me: a young, scowling woman leaving prison, having been paroled, and being determined to start a new life. She lived in a world where a few people possessed extraordinary abilities, and she was one of them, and had been sent to prison because she had rebelled.
With my library mysteries, the idea started with mentally returning to the library I had joined back in 1987, and remembering what it was like back then. The murderers and victims each spring from an idea, but I couldn’t tell you exactly where I got them, rather, they came forth because I was paying attention.
I’m an outliner, but that process begins like your pantsing, by then asking questions and seeing where they lead.
Just started Burned Bridges, John. I was hooked from the start, from the first sentence. And now, hearing how Kimber helped crystallize the plot for you, well, that’s just very cool.
I like the What if? question. The plot for No Tomorrows came to me when I asked myself, “What if I knew today that I’d die tomorrow?”
I have a file on my laptop with a whole list of What Ifs.
Hope you have a great day!
Thanks for the kind words, Deb.
My career as a safety engineer was nothing but what-ifs.
I was on a writer’s panel on a dead Sunday morning, and the panelists and the few people who showed up talked to amuse ourselves. One topic turned into ubiquitous questions asked of writers, and the idea question came up. My favor facetious idea was one author said she bought them in bulk from a sale’s bin at the Dollar Store.
My real answer was where don’t they come from. My most successful book came from a someone else’s novel that p*ssed me off so much I switched the world-building premise on its head. No, you stupid cow, sexual slavery isn’t sexy and fun.
Marilynn, I cannot imagine which book you might be alluding to. I have a shade of an idea, but it lurks in the grey zones of my mind.
A futuristic romance of many years ago. If you are lucky, you never read it because you’d need brain bleach for the horrible writing, science so bad an elementary school student could spot it, and a misogamy against her own gender so deep it makes me ashamed.
I think I’m one of those weird people who have story ideas swirling around in my head all the time. Most are crap, a few seem to work, and even fewer might make a real story. I save them all in the form of book covers, titles, and blurbs. I do this to get them out of my head. Then I can pick the most promising one to work on.
Please don’t tell by psychiatrist about this.
I think we’re all on the spectrum of psychosis. We do, after all, play and talk with our imaginary friends.
And mine talk back.
A lot of mine come from reading the newspaper (I read the e-version to give myself the illusion that I’m reading an actual newspaper, poor reporter throwback to the smell of ink and the black on my hands that I am). The book my agent is currently shopping started when I read an article about a woman being added to the Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitive list after being on the lamb for the last 10 years. I immediately wanted to know what she’s been doing for the past 10 years & what about her family (the fugitive has 4 daughters if I remember right). It’s amazing how reading a blurb in an Amish scribes’ newspaper can turn into a 4-book series focused on Amish widows: a newlywed, a mother of 7, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. Sometimes the ideas simply float on a breeze.
It an all started when my daughter got married in a zoo. We rode out on the tram at midnight, all the lights were off for the animals, and I thought, what a great location for a murder mystery series. About that time, George Church started talking about de-extinction and making a mammoth. Then I thought, why not de-extinct a bunch of Pleistocene animals (short-faced bear, Gigantopithecus, Quinkana, wooly rhino…) and create a Pleistocene Zoo then throw in a murder or two?
BTW, Killzone is the best. Enjoy it very much.
“Writing is not thinking at all. The muse, the narrative, just comes to those in search of the ebb and flow. The plot is already there and characters emerge when they are ready. Fingers to keyboard, pen to paper, chisel to tablet, the story will come. Don’t think.
…the breath of Spirit knows infinite ways to dream. Breathe deep. Past lives, an infinite story of soul. We have been there and witnessed beauty, mystery, horror, and science fiction a story with no beginning and no end. “THE END.” No, it’s just the beginning.” 😊
D. Owen Powell 1/17/23 MyStory
I do so wish that this were true. I’ve never met a muse. My stories don’t just come to me, and my characters are engineered by me to fit my needs as a storyteller.