What’s The Big Idea 4

Making It Your Very Own

Unless you’re a pure pantser – and if you are you should read my friend Kate Paulk’s Pantser’s Guide over at Mad Genius Club – and even if you are (in which case, sure as shooting you’ll need to face this when you come around to revising), sometime between first glimmer of an idea and writing that story you’ll have to admit that it’s a tale told many times.

I usually get my ideas from a character who intrudes into my mind with enough force and determination that I can’t banish him or her.  And yet as individual as that character is, it’s impossible for me, as much as I read, not to see the character’s pedigree.  Lucius in A Few Good Men obviously has a good dose of genetic material from The Count of Montecristo.  In fact, I make an allusion to it in the first chapter or so.

And it’s impossible for me to send Athena into space without knowing she has a good dose of Friday who, in turn, had a good dose of Candide, of course.

It happens with other people’s work, too.  I can’t really watch Fiddler On The Roof without thinking of Pride and Prejudice.

I’m not saying any of these books have the same plot, or even the same theme.  (I tried years ago to write a book with the revenge-plot.  It didn’t come off well.  But Lucius, like the main character of Count [I’m blanking on the name.  Live with it.  Not enough Caffeine] had years in prison to discover his true self.  And he was educated while in prison.  And while Athena finds out she’s human in the end, she didn’t know she wasn’t human at the beginning – the theme of the book being a ‘yes, but’ to Heinlein’s idea that someone raised to think of herself as not human would be flawed and need to learn the natural human.  Thena was just very badly raised, which had the effect of making her, to some extent truly not human.)

So, sooner or later you’ll find that either your character, your theme or your plot has echoes of other books.  You might be choosing a story Or you might have finished a book that looks vaguely like a cabbage – since lately I’ve done a bit of pantsing, this has happened more than once – with leaves going off in all directions, and be trying to figure out a pattern to superimpose on it in rewrite.  In which case you’ll run across the disturbing truth (A truth universally acknowledged, you might say) that there are only so many patterns.

How do you make a millionth time told tale your own?  Don’t say “you don’t” because of course people do.

Well, remember when I commented on “being yourself outloud?”   There is a post on that somewhere around here, but I can never find anything in this here place.

Taking a pattern and making it your own involves looking at the story – or the pattern – dispassionately and deciding what parts of it you like and which you don’t.  This is useful for people who get their inspiration from stories.  By which I don’t mean you read the latest short story by Big Name Author and go “I’ll write one just like it” – though you might do.  I’d think it’s silly, but you might.  It’s more taking, say, a legend or a fairytale, and saying “how could I write this as a contemporary romance with underwater adventurers?”  Or listening to a song about heartbreak and thinking “How could I write this as a story about robots?”  Or…  You see what I mean?

So, let’s say you just found a character, a story or a plot wandering about the street, lonely and forlorn.  You’ve checked the tags and it is yours to adopt.  How do you go about house breaking it, feeding it, petting it and making it your very own?

1- Take a dispassionate look at the material that your material has the DNA of.  This is kind of like looking at the parents of the puppy you want to adopt.  And you do it more or less for the same reasons.  Which characteristics do you want to keep and which do you want to change?  (If you want to keep everything, we submit you might be a copyist not a writer.  Take calligraphy lessons.)

2 – At a first cut, see which parts are yours to write.  Which parts could you write convincingly, with or without a lot of research.  Take Starship Troopers.  I could never write that book because my head doesn’t work in a military fashion.  I can write war but from the POV of a “lay” character pulled into it, only.  So, while I love the book, if I were to write something about a war against a ruthless enemy… Oh, wait, I intend to.  It’s called – dang it, it won’t let me change it – Winter Prince, and my main character, Lucky, is a prince’s bodyguard and therefore outside the chain of command.  Also, her work is more with getting the guy who CAN defend the world in place than with going out and fighting the aliens herself.  Because much as I like the other story, it’s nor mine to write.

3 – Second cut – look, really look at the story or pattern or theme or character.  Do you agree with the underlying assumptions that went into creating it?  Don’t assume you do just because you like the author or the author’s view on the world.  For instance, as much as I love Heinlein, was raised by him and feel completely weird admitting this, I have a major source of disagreement with Heinlein’s way of viewing human population as inevitably expanding.  (Looks up.  Sees no thunderbolt, lets breath out.)  Part of this si because I grew up seeing those predictions fail.  Part of it is because I don’t think that’s how HUMANS work.  Part of it is that I think an expanding population would be PREFERABLE but that’s something else.

The thing is that if you take that assumption out of his world building, you realize a lot of his future topples down, leaving a place to build a different future history.  I’m sure there are other “assumptions” built into the stories you love that you know ain’t so, not in the cool light of day.  Once you remove those and substitute your own, you’ll find things are already quite different.

4 – Third cut – if you’re going to admit to your story’s DNA you can either choose to make it as different as possible (i.e. change names, change place names, etc) or leave in allusions in names, place names and/or a reference to trained rats in the first chapter.  I find readers prefer the second approach.  IF you are taking it from a recent story, though, I’d remove anything that might be considered too close.  Partly because of course you might get sued, but more importantly because if you are too explicit, you’re comparing yourself to this author.  I don’t know about you, brother, but I ain’t no Jane Austen.

5 – Now that you’ve cut all the things you don’t agree with/can’t fit in/don’t like/aren’t yours/are too proprietary, you can start building.
The first step of the build is “what does your story necessitate by virtue of its peculiarities?”  For instance, Pride and Prejudice underwater where Mr. Darcy is the king of an underwater realm would have to overcome the fact that Lizzy can’t breathe water.  This will necessitate at least a mention, if not a whole subplot.  For them to be together, there has to be a way for her to breathe underwater.  What does achieving that entail?

6 – You meant to say something with this story.  By which I don’t mean send a “message” because then there’s Western Union.  But, just like a painting captures a certain fall of light, a story captures some element of your view/thought about the world, even if it’s just exploring True Love (and explaining that it’s Mostly Dead.)  Make sure that’s in, either in the outline or in your editing of the book.  If an important part of your theme is that kindness is a good thing, make sure your character doesn’t pull wings off flies for no reason, even if this was part of the theme you stol– used.

7 – If you’re already published and you have fans, make sure you include things you know they’ll like.  These are called in the trade “reader cookies” and they can be a certain character, or the way a character behaves (Thena and ballet, for instance.)  Or even a certain place (at this point my readers get very happy if anything is set in Goldport and the characters eat at the George, for instance.)  Sprinkle those liberally, then adjust the plot to fit.

8 – Do the final polish, either on the novel or on the outline.  Make sure that the way you altered the theme/story is still functional.  Make sure it all works together.  Call this the dress rehearsal.

9 – Proof that pudding – pass it to betas, and see if they say “I see where you got THIS.”  (A lot of my betas know when I’m walking in Heinlein’s footsteps, but they don’t accuse me of stealing, which is good as most of the time, his DNA in my stories is not conscious.)  If they don’t come back and tell you it’s too close for comfort, or even “I’ve read this somewhere before” congratulations, you’ve succeeded.  That story is now your own.

Tomorrow: Very Big And Very Small (Also Witchfinder.)