No quotes or great insightful notions today. Just me and my thought processes. Scary stuff.
I often have people ask me ‘how’ I do what I do? Do I have a process when I write? Yes, I do indeed.
I’ve seen how other authors outline their plots, from simple notes to full blown Gantt charts. For me, I do what I’ve always done – notes jotted down on spiral notebooks. I have 9 of them, full of outlines. Last count, there were 147 outline waiting to be written.
First, I start with an idea. Like, I’ll be driving along and <<BAM!!>> I have an epiphany! Or, perhaps I see a really hunky actor on television and I think “he’d make a really good hero”. So I give that vision, that face, a name and a history. Then I can develop a story from there. So I sit down and start outlining. Weird things are my muse, and I have many!
Every outline I have will have the following – names, people, dates, titles, a beginning, a middle, and an end. I do my historical research. More often than not, I include real historical figures in my novels. My characters interact with King John, William Marshal, Hubert de Burgh, a wide variety of queens, and so on. It makes it better and more realistic. Events are written sequentially.
So that’s kind of it – then, when I’m ready to write, I fill in the rest as I go. My strengths? Character development, dialogue, and the plot content. I type 85 WPM, so it all comes out fast and furious. Plus, it has to SING for me… if it doesn’t sing for me, then it won’t sing for you. I never put a novel out there that I believe is mediocre. Everything I publish I strongly believe in. Every novel out there that I write has something special, and has a part of me in it.
And, again, I will say that my novels, for the most part, do NOT have a reading order. There are cross over characters and there are some series, but every book I write is designed to be a stand-alone. You do NOT need to read one book in order to understand another. The most important thing is to just start reading!!
And that… is how I make the Le Veque magic……! 😉
