How do you come up with your stories? Guest post by YA sci-fi author Deborah Rix
* * *
I have heard other authors say that they 'hear voices in their head' and
that is how they write their books: the characters are telling their stories.
Not being a writer myself, that concept has always intrigued me.
Well, Susan, sometimes there are voices in my head. Just a moment ago it was my own, wondering how you can possibly follow hundreds of blogs about books and still have time to read any actual books. Do library associates in South Dakota have some secret powers around the reading of books? Hmm.
I started writing in
an attempt to gain control over some part of my life, because most of it was
wrapped up in red tape from the building department at City Hall. You can’t
tell building permit issuers what to do, they won’t listen. I needed my
characters so that I could tell someone exactly what to do, and they’d do it.
While I pretended at control in a delusional act of self-preservation, my
characters ended up telling me exactly what they were going to do and I’d
better not try to stop them.
I’ve heard other
writers describe this, but I was still completely astonished when my fingers
seemed to be typing of their own volition. My daughter heard me gasp as I
stared at something I’d just written and wanted to know what was wrong. “You
won’t believe what Charlie just did!” was my answer. True story. I found that dialogue
became easier as I went along, because what came out was them “talking in my
head.” Not as if they were beaming in
from outer space and I needed to wear a tin foil helmet to stop the mind
control, that would be crazy. I would imagine the character, as though I was in
conversation with them, and watch their face and body language. And then they
would speak and I would write down what they said. That’s not mind control, not
at all.
----------------------------
Deborah Rix’s favourite position for reading a book is head almost
hanging off the couch and feet up in the air with legs against the back
of the couch. She’s been reading too much from Scientific American for
research and ideas and needs to get back to some fiction. She has a long
standing love of science fiction, some of her favourite authors include
William Gibson, Philip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Douglas Adams, Iain M
Banks. A bit old school.
Deborah enjoyed a successful career in entertainment publicity, live music promotion and event management. Which means she slogged through muddy fields for music festivals, was crammed into concert halls with too many sweaty teenage boys and got to go to Tuktoyaktuk (that’s in the Arctic Circle) for a Metallica concert. She lives with her family in Toronto, Canada, where she is the proprietor of The Lucky Penny, a neighborhood joint in Trinity-Bellwoods.
External Forces is her first novel.
Visit her website at www.DeborahRix.com.
Leave a Comment