Getting Started Telling Your Stories By CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret.)
The Great American Novel - Nuts and Bolts
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n our last issue of Rotor Review, I teed up a piece entitled “The Great American Novel.” That title was a bit tonguein-cheek, because if you cycle back to that piece in Rotor Review, I didn’t talk about anything so lofty, but rather about thrillers: novels where ordnance gets fired, things blow up, there are heroes and villains and where the good guys typically win.
Ideas Can Be a Plot On the same day, in six different years, the Time Patrol must keep the Shadow from changing our timeline. This is the plot of Time Patrol. Ideas Can Be a Character A housewife and female assassin must uncover the truth of the men in their lives in order to uncover their destiny. This is the character-focused thriller, Bodyguard of Lies.
I focused on thrillers not only because that is my gig, but because a number of other helo bubbas I mentioned in that article write military-themed thrillers. Add to this the fact that most folks I speak with or who I work with in various writing seminars seem more inclined toward producing thrillers.
Ideas Can Be a What If What if people going into the Witness Protection Program really disappear? This is the what if behind Cut Out.
The goal for this article – as well as a few more downstream – is to help you move beyond the “I have a great idea for a novel,” and actually get down to the nuts and bolts, the “how to” so that you can produce 80,000 to 100,000 words of fiction that will entertain readers. That is the goal, but before we put pen-to-paper, let’s talk about that “idea” and where it can come from. There are so many paths, and it is crucial for you to pick the one that works for you, the one about which you are passionate. Only that passion will sustain slugging through creating hundreds of pages of prose.
Ideas Can Be a Setting or Scene An international treaty bans weapons in Antarctica: What if the U.S. put nuclear weapons there and lost track of them? This is the setting of Eternity Base. These are ideas from well-known books or movies. They are familiar to many of you, so I suspect that you all get the notion that ideas can spring from anywhere. When I lead writing seminars, much of the feedback involves attendees saying things like: “We don’t just want to hear best practices of this or that writer; we want to hear about what worked for you.” Fair enough. Here are four examples from four of my recent novels. They represent how I turned my ideas into thrillers. The first one is “what if ” that is plot-focused. The next on is “what if ” as well, but it is character focused. The third and fourth are also “what ifs” and are character focused.
Let’s deconstruct this a bit, because I believe that it is crucial for any writer to be wide open regarding where ideas can originate. Here are just a few examples, and they cover the spectrum: Ideas Can Be a High Concept In a post-apocalyptic world, what if the top .1% is delineated by length of life rather than wealth? This is the high concept of Burners.
All right, you have your idea, your high concept, and you are passionate about it. What’s next? What all successful novel and screenplay writers do next is to turn their idea into a “log line.” What is a log line? Well, the writing expression comes from the old nautical term.
Ideas Can Be a Theme What is more important? Honor or loyalty? This is the theme of Duty, Honor, Country. 17
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