Insecure Writers Want to Know
Hello and welcome to Adventures in Writing! Please look around my website and tell me what you think. I am delighted to be one of the cohosts this month for Insecure Writer’s Support Group.
So, in answer to our June question, my fiction story ideas usually come from my many family camping adventures with our five kids. You can read some of our many camping adventures at Camping with Five Kids.
I create contemporary fiction grounded in reality. Most times, my story begins in nature, in a park I’ve hiked and explored personally. Then I ask, “what if my character becomes lost out here?” Or injured? What if danger presents itself at every turn? What if that person, who is physically lost, is also dealing with internal strife?
This is that internal and external conflict that I always discuss in my writing workshops. To make a story unputdownable, a writer must create conflict for their characters. Something is troubling them on the inside. A relationship. A belief. A way of looking at life. A problem. Then I place the character in a dangerous situation. A snow-covered mountaintop with the black of night approaching. A churning river into which someone tumbles from a canoe.
We want our readers to empathize with our characters. They don’t need to like the character necessarily. But they do need to care about the protagonist, the main character. If readers don’t care about our protagonist, it doesn’t matter what happens in your plot, your external conflict. Readers want to connect with a sentient being before they care about the story. A protagonist with troubles, just like the reader. We want an emotional connection between the reader and our character. Then the reader cares what happens to the character.
So, my local library has asked for a few more writing workshops. One in August, one in October, and then one in November. I’ll provide more details once they become available.
I also sold another personal essay to Business Insider. This one is about caring for my sister-in-law as she enters a new stage in her life. I’ll let you know when it is published online.
Now I’m off to see where YOUR story ideas come from. Happy Insecure Writer’s Support Group Day, everyone!
Thank you for stopping by my little spot on the web. Please come again! And please sign up for my FREE monthly newsletter to find tips on writing and camping. It’s greatly appreciated.
This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. I’d like to thank my co-hosts for June: Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and C. Lee McKenzie! Please visit them if you can.
Our group posts on the first Wednesday of every month. To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.