Fascinations
For a time, looking back on my writing, I was fascinated by the grey areas of criminal life. I was fascinated by criminals with families, by people who walked the line for good even though parts of them were bad. Or people who appeared to walk the line for good, even though they actually were very, very bad and it was all a lie.
Now, I am not so fascinated by that. Maybe I explored all there was I wanted to explore. But I am on to new themes and new variations.
My new fascination seems to be missing pieces. As I look through all my wips, all my recent books, that's what I am gravitating toward. Even in the half-finished stories and bits of ideas . . . somehow that's what I see. Characters who know something is horribly missing from their lives, but they have no idea what it is. I have characters with amnesia, and characters who are lunging toward doppelgangers in a search for their past. I have characters who are searching for actual physical evidence of missing pieces in their lives. I have characters who cannot even articulate that something is missing, but they are empty and lonely. I have characters who don't even realize something is missing until they find the missing piece and then their whole world makes sense.
So what area of fascination is currently your theme or big picture idea?
19 comments:
People who are into genealogy often are searching for identity. I did this when I first got married because all the sudden I wasn't just me anymore, I had a husband and son. The definition of family had changed for me so I researched family history.
What I'm into at the moment is eminent domain and how it stresses a family to bring out both the best and the worst.
Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be a movement to take my home from me.
Richmond:
I never got into geneology, though I have two uncles who went back several generations and I have copies of their geneology report and photos, which is fun.
E
All the fiction I write seems to go back to the theme of non-traditional families -- my WIP as well as any new book ideas, flash fiction etc -- all have to do with family units that are not mom/dad/kids in the conventional configuration or there is something unusual about the family unit - or something that makes the family feel different from the people around them.
It's not a matter of them wanting to fit in as much as it is a motivation to accept themselves.
Amy:
Self-acceptance . . . powerful theme.
E
Probably the Derek Stillwater novels are about facing your own fears and acting responsibly anyway. It's probably also about betrayal.
I find in the other books I'm currently working on, the Sf and the mystery, that they both have themes of longing for normal lives, of a certain type of loneliness--my characters are lonely and maybe don't even know it. I actually think that's there in the Derek Stillwater novels and if I write the 5th one as I expect to, it might deal with that as well.
Mark:
I really like that theme of longing for a normal life. That was actually a huge theme in Double Down. Skye really wanted to live her life in a way where she wasn't always looking in the rearview mirror for cops.
E
Right now, I'm fascinated with the ways in which we are all connected. How there is a bigger order to the universe than our individual lives.
Perpose, many of my characters are just trying to figure out how they fit into their worlds.
Oliver has spent his life being useless, now he's pulled into a world where he can make a dfference.
Pearl's life is changed by one small piece of information, and she begins to realize that she may just be happier this way.
Piper was just a dumb teenager back in the Nameless Ver.1 days, until she started shooting fire from her hands.
I think that's what makes me good at writing about teenage characters, that's really all teenhood is - tryin to find yourself.
I think we go from theme to theme because we are looking for freshness in our writing.
I don't like writing the same thing a second time.
Heather:
A very Buddhist theme!
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JT:
It's funny, in the rewrite to my next YA, that is something I pulled it . . . my Oldest Daughter read the draft and said both teen characters needed a "thing." I.e., they both needed some passion that defined them. Their purpose.
E
Joe:
Very true for me, as well.
E
Hmm, I haven't looked at it that way, but I'd say getting on with your life when things don't go the way you want, and to keep trying.
Oh, and about genealogy. My mother's family dates back to the Revolutionary War (Ethan Allen) and my step-dad's to the 1600s. We have lots and lots of cool history. :)
Can't seem to get past the no-name obsession (which has never properly fit into a story yet), and starting from nothing and having no one--then growing from there and making a life of what one wants--seem to be obsessions of mine. Man alone against the world, I guess. I often have to purposely do the opposite, so even in my stories that don't contain those themes, they did once; I just edited them out, LOL.
Sometimes, these things bug at me until I find just the right story for them.
Right now, and what it's been for a while, is finding/making your home. In my stories it can manifest in people or tangible property. It wasn't until I finished my last WIP that I realized that I had used a Gone With The Wind type of motif. It started off as a joke on the first page, but it dug it's way into the rest of the novel. The heroine's store is her version of Tara.
Not sure how long I'm going to run on this theme, because I don't find the one I'm drawn to until I look back two or three novels later.
Melanie:
Those are REALLY amazing roots, there!
E
Natasha:
I still find your no-name themes interesting . . . .
E
Melissa:
I know. It's interesting. Because a book can have multiple themes and threads, I don't always see the consistency until later.
E
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