Premise and Publish

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

This cycle at GBC, we're talking about where our premises come from and the changes in the publishing climate. Being the Type A personality I am, I figured I'd tackle both.

"Where do your ideas come from?" is one of the most frequent questions writers get asked. My typical answer is: The Idea Fairy. Seriously, though, my ideas come from everywhere: from things that happen to and around me, from the news, from things that happen to other people. Something happens and lightning strikes in the form of: "I think there's a whole novel in that!"

A few examples:

- My debut adult novel, The Thin Pink Line, 22 books ago. Finding myself pregnant after 10 married years in which I never thought I'd be pregnant, rather than writing the predictable story that you'd think would result - married woman finding herself pregnant after 10 years and what ensues, told in an earnest fashion - my crazy mind said: "I know! I'll write a dark comedy about a sociopath who fakes an entire pregancy!"

- My most recent YA novel, Little Women and Me. My daughter and her best friend had just read the original Louisa May Alcott novel and we were discussing what they thought of it. What they thought lined up with my own memories of the book: that is was great but that That Thing That Happens To Beth was upsetting and that The Boy Next Door winding up with the wrong March sister was annoying. So I decided to write a novel about a contemporary teen who time travels into the classic novel only to discover that in order to get back out again she'll need to change one of those things.

- The Sisters 8 series for young readers, which I created with my husband and daughter. We came up with the idea for this when we were snowbound in Crested Butte, Colorado, back in December 2006. Well, if you were snowbound for 10 days with no TV, what would you do? You'd probably brainstorm a nine-book series about octuplets whose parents go missing one New Year's Eve!

- Finally, there's The Bro-Magnet, the ebook I released back in December about an ultimate man's man who's been Best Man eight times when what he secretly longs to be is a groom. Here's how that one came about: My husband, Greg Logsted, is a novelist by night and a window washer by day. One day he told me about washing some guy's windows with his crew and how every time he goes to this guy's house, the guy says, "Let's go skiing sometime"; "Let's do this"; "Let's do that." It occurred to me that this was not the first time in the 28 years I've known him that I'd heard something like this: some guy, barely even knowing my husband, wanting to bond and become buddies. This particular instance happened right around the time the word "bromance" entered the lexicon strongly - you'd hear people applying it to TV shows like "House" or films like the Sherlock Holmes version Robert Downey Jr starred in. Suddenly my brain went poof! like it always does when I have an idea for a new book. Those ideas always begin with "What if...?" In this case, it was "What if there was an ultimate man's man, a guy that other guys actually fight over to get him to be Best Man at their weddings, but he secretly longs to be a groom?" And of course the hero of this book would be THE BRO-MAGNET.

So that's where the premises for a few of my books have come from.

As for the current publishing climate, the other day Joe Konrath let me take over the megaphone at his popular blog so I could talk about my experiences with e-publishing and you can find that post here.

So how about you all? Where do your premises come from and what do you think of the new publishing climate?

Be well. Don't forget to write.

Story Creation: The Sisters 8

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

I wish I could say how I create a story, that it's the same pattern each time, but it's not. With each book, it's like I'm inventing my own wheel all over again. The one exception to this is The Sisters 8, the series for readers ages six to ten that I created with my husband and daughter.

The Sisters 8 is a nine-book series about octuplets whose parents disappear one New Year's Eve leaving the girls to solve the mystery of that disappearance while keeping the household running without adult supervision. In Book 1 Annie's Adventures, a note informs them that before discovering what happened to their parents, each girl must find her power and gift. There are nine books in the series because there needs to be one for each sister and a ninth book to explain all the mysteries that develop along the way.

We write each book in pretty much the same fashion. We brainstorm the general concept for the book and then I sit down to write. After I finish a chapter, I read it to Greg and Jackie, and then we discuss what works, what doesn't work and what needs to happen next.

The Sisters 8 can be tricky. I know from experience reading to Jackie when she was younger, that most series for that age group are the same formula repeated from book to book. But The Sisters 8 is different. It's one long cycle of stories, over 1000 pages of continuing story. Yes, there are elements that are constants - in each book, the sister who is the star at the moment, has to find her power and her gift - but we like to change things up to avoid predictability. For example, in the first two books, Annie and Durinda find their powers somewhere around the middle of the story and their gifts at the very end. So what did we do with Georgia in the third book? Now that readers thought they knew what to expect, we had Georgia receive her gift in the very first chapter; of course, Georgia, being the difficult girl that she is, tells the carrier pigeon that brought her gift that it's the wrong time to be receiving it and to take it away - an impulse she later regrets.

Young readers love things like that: reversal of expectations that are still wholly fitting to the character who's doing the surprising thing.

Even though before I start writing a book in the series there's already a sheet giving me a loose idea of what will happen in each chapter, there's always room for inspiration, room to come up with things that surprise myself and the reader. Book 7 Rebecca's Rashness was published just last week. Rebecca, if you don't know, can be the most unpleasant of the Huit octuplets. Curiously, when readers take the "Which Eight Are You?" quiz at the official website, they seem to rig things so it'll turn out that they're Rebecca! If there's one thing readers can be sure of it's that when Rebecca gets her power, it will corrupt her and that it will corrupt her absolutely. So there I was, writing Book 7, trying to think of something impossibly nutty for Rebecca to do that would delight readers, and then I remembered...

Finnish Wife-Carrying!

Years ago, I was fascinated to learn from one of the morning shows about a Scandinavian sport that had previously been unknown to me: Finnish Wife-Carrying. It's basically exactly what it sounds like. Finns have these competitions where the men race through obstacle courses while carrying their wives. A fun detail: If your wife is on the heavy side or if you don't have a wife, you can borrow a neighbor's wife and carry her so long as her husband is agreeable.

Anyway, Finnish Wife-Carrying seemed to me to be exactly the kind of thing that if Rebecca had somehow learned about, she would want to try, and of course the "wife" she would choose to carry would be her sister Petal, the most fearful of the Huits. So I wrote a chapter into the story in which Rebecca sets up an obstacle course in their yard and...well, let's just say it really is nutty.

Rebecca's Rashness came out on May 2. Three days later we received our first letter about it from a fan who wrote in part: "I totally love The Sisters 8 books. My favorite one is Rebecca’s Rashness with her plans to take over the world and the Finnish Wife-Carrying races with Petal."

It's immensely gratifying to think that something that was never part of the original plan, something that just occurred to me on a whim should bring delight to readers in exactly the way I hoped it would.

Because that's the other thing about The Sisters 8. Unlike most series for young readers, which can best be described as providing an experience over and over again that is the same but different - not that there's anything wrong with that! - with The Sisters 8 we seek to constantly build on the series, build on the excitement, with each book being even *more* in some way than the books that have gone before. I hope readers will always find that to be the case.

So how about you: Do you find that when you write, even if you start with a detailed plan, some of the best ideas are those that occur to you organically?

Be well. Don't forget to write.