Marketing for Romance Writers Magazine April, 2019 Volume # 2, Issue # 4 | Page 17

FEBRUARY, 2019
BIRD ON THE SHOULDER—WHY DO I DO IT?
By: Alice Orr
Would you feel bet-
ter or worse if I told
you I get rejections?
In my pre-indie days,
I traditionally pub-
lished several roman-
tic suspense novels
and a nonfiction
book. One night back then, I had a
dream so vivid I woke up trembling,
short of breath and convinced the god-
dess had sent me a bestseller for sure.
I’d actually experienced An Idea
That Wasn’t A Story. Too bad I didn’t
recognize this. To my credit, I honed that
nightmare scene till the impact was razor
sharp. Too bad I didn’t have much to go
with it. I figured my boffo opener would
carry the rest. My agent disagreed, and
pointed out that, after the boffo had
passed, pacing lost steam, story urgency
waned, my heroine lacked a compelling
voice. I’d built up expectations with my
opener, then squandered them.
I’d leapfrogged over the essential
storytelling question. “What am I going
to write about?” as filmmaker David
Lynch, author and director of some of
the most imaginative screen scenarios
ever, says. “Ideas dictate everything. You
have to be true to that or you’re dead.”
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Yet, there’s always pressure to
write what will sell. I’d been piling that
pressure on myself when I conceived my
boffo opening with no follow-through. I
was writing pyrotechnics I thought might
turn my agent on, instead of seeking the
true conflicted heart of my story and let-
ting my imagination lead me onward
from that place.
I call it the Idea from Heaven.
The idea that makes the heart of a story
pound. I could have taken my nightmare
inspiration, then coaxed depth and rich-
ness from it to create an Idea from
Heaven. I forgot I possessed the power
to accomplish that. What, specifically,
should I have remembered to do?
Imagine that the imagination is a
muscle. To make and keep the imagina-
tive muscle equal to the rigors of storytel-
ling, we must give it a daily workout. If
I’d gone from terrifying dream to imagi-
nation exercise mat, instead of straight
into writing, the results would have been
very different. Here’s the five-step exer-
cise I should have done. You should do it
too.
Step 1. Find your most fertile
imagination time. For me, that’s morn-
ing, immediately after waking, close to
the state that produced my terrifying
dream. Pen and pad are ready. I believe
imagination, and writing voice, are best
accessed in longhand. BTW I used to
think night was my most imaginative
time but found that being tired encour-
aged me to natter on way too much.
Step 2. Find the idea recording
method that works best for you. Note-
book, cards, a voice recording device,
which works well for many very verbal
people. Try different possibilities.
Step 3. Pose yourself a question.
“Where does the story go from here?”
Or, “What does my main character do
next?” Fashion your most pressing ques-
tion, take your time, but don’t obsess
over it. Trust your writerly instinct to
know what your story needs. Use a cur-
rent writing project as subject ground. If
you don’t have a current writing project,
get one.
Step 4. Come up with answers to
the question you’ve posed. Never set-
tle for the first idea that comes. Keep
thinking. Push yourself to the more origi-
nal response, the less expected reaction.
Burrow deeper into the situation and the
characters. Encourage your mind to run
wild.
Continued on Page 18