Wait, am I about to get all “woo-woo” on you (to borrow the term my Writer Mom Life Podcast co-host Daphne uses and which I love)?
Am I about to go on some long, poetic diatribe about how a book can only be properly written when the stars are aligned and your writing space is fengshui and The Almighty Muse is in-house and humming you soothing songs whilst rubbing your shoulders and pouring words lightning-fast into your fingers?
No.
Not at all.
BUT I AM here to tell you that I have now finally realized after all these years of word-slinging and frustration at countless unfinished stories that there is one crucial thing I need to have before I start writing a book.
Because if I start writing a book without this thing, that book will eventually fizzle out and fall flat, and I’ll lose all motivation for writing it, and I’ll flail around in circles going nowhere until this one thing is found. (It’s so much less painful to find this one thing before writing any of the book, I’ve come to find out.)
I call this one thing The Spark. I’m not the only writer this happens to, by the way. I’ve met several other writers who also say they need to find this one thing before the rest of the story will fall into place, too. Some of them also call it The Spark, or A Spark, or sometimes it’s The Click.
Because it’s what makes the rest of the story click into place. Everything falls into line once you just figure out this one thing.
Or, it’s the spark that sets the rest of the story burning in your brain. Everything suddenly makes perfect sense. Again, everything falls into place once you figure out this one thing.
Now, what this Spark is can be different for each book, and I imagine differs from writer to writer as well. Because the other thing I’ve learned after all these years of writing is that every writer is a little different. In order to become the very best writer YOU can be, you will need to figure out what works best for YOU, how YOU write best, YOUR best process, and what stories resonate most for YOU.
Once you nail these things down, it feels like the gears get a good douse of lubricant. Everything goes more smoothly. Everything is easier. Everything is cleaner. The clouds part and the sun shines brighter and the birds sing more sweetly and the heavens open and the angel chorus hums….
Or something like that. At least, that’s how it feels for me! 🙂
And I’ve noticed a pattern for me when it comes to The Spark in any given story. For me, The Spark is always something related to the central conflict of the story. The more I’ve pondered the importance of The Spark over the last few weeks, the more I’ve realized what many of my unfinished stories really lacked was a true conflict. Thus, I lost interest in them after awhile.
Sure, I could come up with some pretty kickass plots, and some crazy events that might befall my main characters, and I was always great at getting them into a whole mess of trouble.
But a kickass plot and crazy events and a mess of trouble don’t actually always equal conflict.
Which you’ve probably realized if you’ve ever gone to see one of those summer blockbuster action flicks. If the central conflict of the movie wasn’t strong enough, after awhile everything just becomes a blur of colors and motion. You don’t actually feel anything while you’re watching it.
My unfinished stories were like those movies. Shallow casings that tried to be flashy, but without any heart. And without the heart in the story, I couldn’t maintain the desire to finish them.
Sure, those action-packed flicks are fun to watch sometimes when you’re in the mood for that kind of thing. (Case in point, I thoroughly enjoyed John Wick 3. But I went into it knowing exactly what it was, and very much in the mood for the exact thing it was. There’s a time and place for those kind of stories.) But the stories that really stick with us, that are really unforgettable (and the ones that can keep us writers slogging away at them day after day after week after month, no matter what else is going on in our lives), are most often the ones that dig down deep into our hearts, our emotions, that really burrow into internal character motivations, characters’ past wounds, their worst fears and their most desperate hopes.
Because once I find that central conflict that makes up my Spark, it’s like a vortex around which the entire rest of the story revolves. It holds everything else together. And that’s why I have to know The Spark before I even start the book. These days, I don’t bother trying to write a book unless I know what that one central thing is, even if I’ve been sitting on the general idea for years and have a lot of the rest of it planned out.
I just wait, and continue to mull everything over. Because someday, something will finally click. That central conflict will suddenly become clear. And the vague story idea or awesome plot will all line up and fall into place with shocking clarity and perfect precision.
And that’s when I know I can start actually planning the story in earnest. Put it on the writing schedule, even.
Because it will finally be a book I care about. A book I really, really want to write. A book I’m excited to sit down and work on every day.
So maybe all this still sounds like a lot of “woo-woo” nonsense to you. But it really works, I swear!
To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, I have some examples from my most recent novels of how The Spark changed everything for those books! But … this post has already gotten pretty long, so I’ll save that for next time! Stay tuned!
What about you? If you write, have you had this experience yourself? And if you’re a reader, what are some books that just really, really grabbed you and wouldn’t let go? If you think about it, can you identify what that main thing was that hooked you so well?
Until next time … happy reading to you!
Leave a Reply