A Look Inside a Writer's Mind -- Working from the Middle of a Story

with Missy Tippens

Are you curious how other writers work? I always have been. So back in 2009, here on the blog, I shared one of my many charts that I create while planning a book. I shared my GMC chart (click here if you'd like to see it). Several readers found it helpful, so I thought I'd share a peek into my brain (scary, I know! :)) for the planning of my most recent book from Love Inspired. This time, instead of my GMC chart I thought I'd share the work I did using James Scott Bell's book Write Your Novel from the Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between. 

Through brainstorming, I knew the basic idea I wanted to write. I knew I wanted to write a fish out of water story about a laid back bachelor who has a baby dumped on him (by his cousin). And I wanted him to need the help of an uptight pediatrician. I had enough info to come up with the story question for my what became the book titled The Doctor's Second Chance.

Story Question:

Will Jake be able to take care of this newborn and locate his cousin before Violet gets the court involved? Can Violet fulfill her goal of helping children without falling in love with the baby…and with Jake? Or might the two of them discover that family comes in all shapes and sizes?

The beginning was easy. I pictured it like a movie in my head and had a lot of fun writing those first two or three chapters. But then I had to figure out what would happen after that! (Have you had those moments?? Where you blaze along and then suddenly come to a dead halt because you can't figure out what will happen next?)

So this was where I pulled out Jim Bell's book and got to work. He talks about a moment in the middle of the story where the characters take a hard look at themselves and figure out how they can move forward. How they must change. I thought I'd share my notes with you. The final version of the book sometimes ends up changing a little once I actually write it. But these are my thoughts (you can see it's pretty much stream of consciousness) as I dove into this story.

SPOILER ALERT! This will give away what happens in the story. :) 

Mid-point mirror moment:

Jake: Is there really such thing as a secure family…this ideal little family bubble? For me? And if so, do I dare go for it? What if it got taken away? Show him taking a risky step: asking her out on a date. It’s a concrete move toward making them a unit.

Violet: Do I deserve to be happy? Can I really move forward and let go of the past? Show her admitting some weakness to him. Maybe she shares about rift with her family (but not why), how she’s felt she has to do everything herself. And then she opens up with how she needs him somehow (maybe she needs him to support her in town, by letting people know his opinion of her has changed). [but I’d kind of like him to do this on his own, and she discovers he’s done it because he cares. So maybe she doesn’t ask him to do that. Maybe she just opens up and shares her hurts.]

In Write Your Novel from the Beginning, Bell suggests working backward from that middle point to figure out the backstory. Here are my thoughts as I worked out that part.

Pre-story psychology:

Jake: Parents died, “abandoning” him. Aunt and uncle took him in but he always felt he needed to be good for them to keep him. That “being good” alienated his cousin (Remy), so he never felt part of the family. His aunt and uncle worked a lot, and he got stuck trying to keep Remy out of trouble since he felt like her destructive behavior was probably his fault. Once she ran off, he felt a sense of relief, of freedom. Has been working hard so he can play and enjoy that freedom. Thinks he has just what he wants. The baby being dropped on him limits that freedom, and he feels that renewed sense of guilt, as if he does owe her (Remy). Plus, he’s just naturally responsible.

Violet: Parents were socialites, valued what others thought of them, worried about appearances. Were often gone, lots of baby sitters. She fell for a guy who needed her, and got pregnant. Parents insisted she give up for adoption, would not consider helping her keep baby, claiming she couldn’t give up her lifelong goal to be a doctor. But she felt they were more worried about how it would make them look. She resented them. No relationship since, even though they’ve tried and dad has apologized (mom insists it was best for everyone). She has been independent, putting herself through school and medical school. Feels she was weak and failed her child. Decided she would help other children by becoming pediatrician. Didn’t like large clinic and impersonal medicine. Bought small town clinic to be part of patients’ lives.

Another part of Writing Your Novel from the Middle has you plan how to show the characters have changed. Remember to show, not tell! Here's my work on that section of Jim's book, and you can see how I worked out my theme/premise as I was doing this section.

Transformation:

How can I show it?

Both have had ideals of the perfect family that they never had. Have to learn to let go of that. Have to accept a new picture of what family means to them now that God has brought them together, and to let go of fear of the rug being yanked out from under them. Must learn to trust God instead of themselves (what I’m learning now).

Jake: In the beginning, he’s still trying to be responsible and take care of others, finding it hard to ask for help. Connection is out of a sense of duty rather than out of love. Needs to extend love. Needs to accept love freely given. He doesn’t have to earn the right to be part of a family.

To show his transformation…He’ll ask her to be his family (scary and risky but worth it). And he’ll ask it even while she’s still acting cool toward him, so it’s even riskier. He’ll do it with God’s strength (when he is weak, God is strong).

Violet: In the beginning, she’s independent and all business, only willing to reach out for the good of the child. She feels driven to work to deserve anything good that comes to her. She’s driving herself, fighting her nature to want closeness and family. She learns she doesn’t have to work hard to earn happiness just because of her past. Needs to accept love freely given. She is worthy of love, because God loves her just as she is.

Or maybe what she thought she needed was control over her life when what she really needed was to give up control, to just accept love.

To show her transformation…she’ll sleep in past sunrise. (maybe in epilogue? On honeymoon?)

So there you have it! :) My crazy brain at work. I hope it's helpful. And if you think this type method might work for you (using it before, during or after your first draft), then give Bell's book a try. (No, I don't earn anything from recommending it.) He shows examples and goes into much more detail than this post.


And if you want to see how this plays out in the final version of my book, The Doctor's Second Chance, you can find it at most online booksellers or ask your local bookseller to order a copy.

Here's a link to Amazon.
Here's a link to B&N.
Here's a link to Christian Book.

And here's a link to the first chapter excerpt--click here

Soooo… Let's talk about the middle point of your book! What big happens? What do your characters discover about themselves? Do you think that can inform your backstory and the ending?

I'll be giving away two Kindle copies of the newly released With this Spark historical collection, four novellas from our very own Seekers! Please let me know you'd like to be entered. Winners will be announced in the Weekend Edition.


NEWS FLASH!!! Since I first prepared this post, we released our new contemporary boxed set!! Please check it out! We had so much fun with this collection and think you'll enjoy it. :) Click here.

www.missytippens.com

Can a Man Write Historical Romance? with James Scott Bell

Can a Man Write Historical Romance?

James Scott Bell

Can a man write historical romance? I sure hope so, because I've written seven of them and I'd hate to find out now that it can't be done!

It happened this way. Around 2000 or so I got an idea for a legal thriller series. It seemed like every ex-lawyer was writing legal thrillers at the time, including me. I wanted to try something different. So I thought about setting a legal thriller in a historical context. Then it became a matter of choosing which one.

Being an LA boy, third-generation, loving the history of my city, I thought back to the turn-of-the-century. Los Angeles was just coming of age back then. And there were all sorts of interesting crosscurrents in the culture. It was very much like today, with strange religious cults mixing with mainline churches, drifters and dreamers and con men and cops, and wild goings-on in the courtrooms.

I own a number of biographies of famous trial lawyers, and one of the best was a man named Earl Rogers. He practiced in Los Angeles at that time and some of his trials were amazing. He never lost a case. Oh, maybe toward the end, when the bottle got to him. But until then he was widely considered America's greatest criminal lawyer. What a great character to start with.

But that was just the setting. Now I needed a main character. And here is where the real inspiration hit. It could be a woman, a young woman who dreams of practicing law, because at that time this was virtually unheard of.

So what if this woman had a particular reason to practice? She would have to show grit and guts and determination. And what if she was a Christian? Think of all the conflict she would face––the prejudice, the challenges.

I gave her an Irish background, named her Kit Shannon, and brought her to Los Angeles with this wild dream. What if she became an assistant to Earl Rogers?

I also wanted to give Kit a love interest. What if it was a young man who is from a privileged family, but doesn't want to go into the family business? What if he wants to fly? He could get in on the ground floor of the aviation industry, which would place him around 1903. That's when I decided to set the first book.

I fleshed out this idea and pitched it to an editor at Bethany House, Mr. Steve Laube. He liked it, and so did Bethany. But they had concerns about a man writing about a woman in a historical context. They thought, What if we paired him with one of our popular authors, Tracie Peterson?

They proposed the idea to me and I was at first skeptical. But they offered to fly the two of us to Minneapolis, Bethany headquarters, so we could meet and talk. Tracie and I hit it off immediately. And we did something that many writers find they can't do—we wrote happily in collaboration.

Our system was simple. We would brainstorm a plot together, then I would write the first draft. Tracie would take over and put in her perspective on the scenes, much of which dealt with how a woman might react in certain situations, and also being aware of what women readers in the genre like to see. I would then take the manuscript through a final pass, and that was it.

Readers loved it. Our books became bestsellers and Kit Shannon is one of my all-time favorites. I enjoyed getting emails from women readers, many of them young, who said that Kit inspired them to go to law school, or to follow another dream.

Tracie and I did three Kit Shannon books together, after which I discovered something cool: I could write in the voice we had developed together. With Tracie's encouragement, I entered into a contract with Bethany to do three more Kit Shannon novels on my own. Reaction from the loyal readers was that these books were welcome additions to the series. However . . .

 . . .some readers, new ones especially, seemed a bit skeptical of book covers with a woman's face on them but a male author's name underneath it. I guess that's just the reality of marketing in certain genres.

But that was then. All six of the original Kit Shannon books are available again, as e-books. You can go here for more information (I also did a stand alone historical for Bethany called Glimpses of Paradise, which will be re-issued soon). I'd love to hear from you about the series. I might even consider doing more Kit Shannon books. My original intent was to write her up into her 80s. She would practice law throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and I would explore the changing times with her. I wanted her to be a Perry Mason type of character, going on and on.

Maybe she still can if the series catches on again . . .and if readers can accept a man writing historical romance!

JAMES SCOTT BELL is the author of the #1 bestseller for writers, Plot & Structure, and numerous thrillers, including Deceived, Don't Leave Me, Presumed Guilty, Breach of Promise, Try Dying and Watch Your Back. His novella One More Lie was the first self-published work to be nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award. He served as the fiction columnist for Writer's Digest magazine and has written highly popular craft books for Writer’s Digest Books. He lives and writes in Los Angeles.