Story creation

There are as many ways to write a story as there are writers. I'll go a step further and say there are as many ways to write stories as there are stories. No two of my stories, short or novel length are written the same way. Some are written to demand -- a call goes out about, say, surfing, and I start by conjuring images of sexy men, wild waves and hot sex. And a short story grows -- Surfing Boneyard. Other times I hear a call but my efforts fail. There's no story there for me. Not this time.

My novels have ranged from plot and character driven, like L.A. Heat, recently re-released by MLR Press where I built character arcs and knew where I was going, to an entire novel written spur of the moment with nothing more than a name and a stark image of a man rolling over in bed and finding himself lying next to a dead man. In Geography of Murder, also from MLR Press later this year, that was all I had. That and the knowledge that the world of BDSM would be involved. The story itself, the other characters, all came as I wrote, literally on the fly. I've allso started stories with a single title, a characters name, even a piece of dialog.

In Geography of Murder I had no idea who the dead man was. He had no name or even a reason to be dead. I didn't know who the main cop would be, only that he was slightly shady and he was into BDSM as a dom. How shady changed in the course of the story - he started out much darker and more crooked than he ended up. Along the way he also acqired a name: Alexander Spider, Santa Barbara police detective.

The original character started with the name Jason Aaron Zachary and I was going to have him called JaZy until it was pointed out that was the name of a big rapper, so he became simply Jason.

I wrote the first draft in 3 weeks and spent another month or so polishing it and getting feedback which included learning more about BDSM and Santa Barbara. The novel grew and morphed until it became the novel that MLR is publishing.

I've met writers who meticulously outline everything right down to individual chapters, leaving nothing to chance. I've met others who outline nothing. Stephen King in his book On Writing, claims that he doesn't outline or chart his books at all. He knows nothing about the story, nothing about his characters or the plot. He excavates his novels, much like Michaelangelo uncovered the figure of David from the block of marble it was hidden inside. I like the imagery of that. I do what the story demands and each one is unique. So my advise to new writers unsure about how to approach a book: try different methods. Don't get locked into one model. Don't listen to the experts -- they only know what works for them. You have to find your own way. You may find, like me, that there is really no one way to create a story.

Find out more about all my available and upcoming books on my web site: P.A.Brown's site