Half-Baked

I'm back. Fifteen hours in the car with Demon Baby. Do the math. I feel like I have been slugged with a sack of rocks.

But . . . that isn't to say I am without a writing post. However, the title of this post can refer to my brain today . . . or the point of my post. Or perhaps both.

Ever meet someone who wants to write a book and they approach you with what they think is a really cool idea. Only the idea is sort of a fragment. A lot of times the really cool idea is either an interesting character or a single element of a thriller-esque plot--a heist, a caper, a con, a person about to blow up the president.

My reaction is usually . . . AND? A fragment of a cool idea is simply a cake that is half-baked. A werewolf is not an idea for a book. A werewolf who is a vegetarian isn't even an idea for a book. The risk when you start full-speed ahead with a half-baked idea is it may never bake. The cake may never rise. There's just not enough ingredients.

So it was that I was driving when I came up with a totally amazing Shiny New Idea. This was about two hours into my trip. Out of nowhere I had an idea for a late-YA, and even a character name--Lark. And I knew she was special. It's a fantasy idea, and Lark has a special skill I have never seen done in a book before. A mythology that came to me fully formed. A half-baked idea.

You see, just because Lark has this certain gift, and just because it's original, and just because it has dramatic possibilities, doesn't mean she's anything more than a character running around in my brain.

By the fourth hour, I had the mythology more organized. I had a historical placement for Lark's lineage in the Russian Revolution. I had her great-great-grandmother . . . I had a dramatic prologue.

Lark was still half-baked.

By this time, I was heading into a driving rainstorm in Georgia with a trucker who decided to eff-with me on the road. I had to concentrate. Ahh, the joys of driving alone with three children in the car. I stopped for coffee, giving the trucker time to go find someone ELSE to bother.

Back in the car, the driving rain meant intensity, but Lark kept coming into the fringes of my head. By hour five, she had a voice. By hour six, she had a mother, and a reason for escaping her father and coming to a new town.

By hour eight, she had a love interest. And the idea was starting to go from half-baked to baked. Her love interest was VERY different, and there was a natural collision course between her special skill and his special need.

Three hours later, I realized the theme was free will and personal choice. Always good to have a theme.

I had the villian. I had the darkest of dark moments. I had what everyone looked like.

I had a full-risen cake . . . um . . . book.

Of course, now all I have to do is write it.

But the bottom line is a book is more than the sum of its parts . . . and yet it is the sum of its parts. Cool ideas aren't books. Neither are interesting characters. You need all the ingredients.

Thoughts? Or am I merely half-baked today. (Don't answer that!)

Peace,
E