Black Gate

(I passed the 50,000-word mark in National Novel Writing Month yesterday, at Day 14. Last year I achieved this at Day 13—I must be getting slow.)

I have started to view Frederick Faust as something of my writing mentor. He wasn’t a public figure, instead disguised behind “Max Brand” and his many other pseudonyms, but his excellent storytelling skill is a good teacher all on its own. However, in his letters he left behind some excellent advice about how he developed his ideas. Considering his productivity, which shames about every author in history through its sheer volume, he must have got his ideas fast.

It is easy to call Frederick Faust and other writers with enormous bibliographies to their credit (Andre Norton comes to mind immediately within speculative fiction) as “natural storytellers.” But I wonder how much that takes away from their efforts. Faust’s own notes about his writing indicate a man always on the search for “story,” and not simply plunking down in front of the typewriter and trusting to luck. Early in his career, Faust was constantly worried that each idea he had would be the last one he would ever find—and I think most writers would admit to a similar fear. But Faust discovered, “You spot stories in the air, flying out of conversations, out of books.”

Here’s a remarkable piece of advice I discovered in one of Faust’s letters, which offers an interesting writing exercise: “When you read a story, pause halfway through; finish the story in detail in your imagination; write it down in brief notes. Then read the story through to the end. Often you find that you have a totally new final half of a story. Fit in a new beginning and there you are.”

That so simple it’s beautiful. I’ve tried it a number of times, usually on modern works, and always come up with a sketch of something completely new. So far, I’ve never used one of these outlines to complete a full story, but a few other ideas have come out of this brainstorming.

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Five years ago, my first novel, Poison Study was published. It came out in hardback with a beautiful red and gold cover that was loosely based on Vermeer’s painting The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

The cover model was from Russia, which was perfect since my main character’s name was Yelena, which is a popular name in Russia.

Too bad she returned to her homeland before the cover shoot for Magic Study. But that’s another story. And no, I’m not dredging up those painful memories, thank you very much.

Since 2005, Poison Study has had two more covers, has been published around the world and has won multiple awards.

Who da thunk it! Not me. Let’s go all the way back to 1995 (and don’t you dare tell me that was before you were born or I’ll smack you upside the head).

Back in 1995, I’m reading Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy – because I had written a bunch of short stories that were all soundly rejected and I was thinking perhaps I needed a few pointers (no comments on still having my short stories rejected).

Card talked about characters and how writers should avoid making the King or Duke or Prince or their female counterparts their main protagonist. He mentioned that people around the seat of power had more freedom to get into trouble.

And Zing! I sparked on the idea of having a main character be the King’s poison taster.

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