Preparations

LISTENING FOR THE IDEA

In the beginning, there is only an idea.

If you are reading this book, you want to write a novel. If you want to write a novel, you already have an idea, whether you realize it or not. When the first storytellers stood up in their caves and moved closer to the fire, when they looked into the eyes of that first audience and said, "Now listen to me," they did so because they had a story to tell. Now is the time to call your idea out of the shadows. Even if you've never written a line of fiction in your life, you can start now. Begin by writing down your idea. So far, it might be only a single sentence, but write it down all the same.

Your idea might be a character you want to follow, a setting that haunts you, or a scene that plays out in your mind. A writer conjures ideas from everywhere — by watching people pass in the crosswalks, by elaborating on childhood memories, by retelling nightmares, by taking pieces of history and contemplating alternate outcomes. Inside you there is already the seed of a story that drives you to move closer to the fire and speak. Give it a name. Not a title — that comes later. Just name the idea so it will know its master. You might call it "Hunted Preacher" or "Underwater Schoolroom."

Your idea might be an overview of the whole tale or just a glimpse. Michael Crichton conceived The Andromeda Strain by reading a footnote in one of his college textbooks. Most of my ideas start out as a single moment: A man waits in the woods for his beloved. A child sits in a bush listening to fairies no one else hears. A woman watches the farmhand praying. If this moment is meant to grow into a whole idea, it will follow you around and beg to be picked up.

Stephen King wrote The Dead Zone by imagining the last moment in the story — a lone gunman attempts to assassinate a popular presidential candidate. Under what circumstances could this assassin be right? How could he be the hero? Your idea could be the last moment of the story, or it could be the first. You see a man answering the phone: A ransom must be paid, or his wife will be killed — only he has never been married. It could be a climactic moment from some- where in the middle of the plot. You don't know why, but a woman in uniform is running through a stream, trying to get to her village before the enemy arrives.

Some ideas start as a character or a set of characters. You keep imagining a healer haunted by a past failure, three sisters building a bridge, the husband of a woman on death row who writes notes on the backs of their wedding pictures because she will not speak to him. You see your character and picture her in various situations or imagine him telling his story aloud.

Other ideas start as a setting — a place so vivid that you can smell the damp hay, hear the submarine engines hum, or taste the volcano ash in the air. If the little desert town you grew up in, the South American nightlife you adored on vacation, or the sinister factory where your aunt worked for thirty years keeps creeping into your daydreams or nightmares, it might become the setting of your novel. Of course, you don't need to have visited a place to write about it. You can create settings from scratch. J.K. Rowling conjured up Hogwarts as she stared out her train window somewhere between Manchester and London.

As a writer, you should always carry paper and pen. When your idea shows up, write it down. More pieces of the story will follow if you welcome the first. Write everything down. Don't worry about fitting the elements together yet. Just take notes. Your muse is brainstorming.

Once you get in the habit of collecting ideas, you'll find that they will come more often and more clearly. Sometimes ideas wake you up in the morning, nagging to be written down. Ideas open up like flowers in the steam while you take a shower. They evolve into other species of themselves while you drive to work. Ideas hide in the back of your mind, then slide forward when you hear a certain chord of music or smell burning leaves.

I like ideas that sit next to me during a play and nag my pen to scratch notes in the program margins, dictating phrases that help me recall the idea later. "Confuses cat with dead son," it will whisper. "Write that down."

I like characters who loiter on top of the television or under my seat at the movies and tell me how they would behave in the same situation — "Not me. I could never walk away from a crying woman," says my character. "And, by the way, I've never been able to wear a wristwatch. They stop working or run backwards. Why do you think that is?"

I like settings that keep house behind my eyes, appearing like ghosts when I blink; settings that can be heard like a phantom ocean in the cup of my hand. I like settings you can smell as you fall asleep — the creak of the bamboo in a tropical cemetery. The scent of hot wax floating from the cathedral doorway. A cigar's red ember throbbing like the eye of a cyclops in a darkened office.

Often ideas come from seeing something in a new way or combining two elements you had never pictured together before. While watching a movie, you might hear a line of dialogue spoken by a priest and imagine it spoken by a prostitute. What if those words from the lips of a serial killer came from the lips of a four-year-old boy as his mother tucks him into bed? What kind of story would you have if Rhett Butler wasn't coupled with Scarlett O'Hara but Boo Radley? Imagine Sam Spade locking horns with Eleanor Roosevelt or a partnership between Lady Macbeth and Joan of Arc.

Think about the kinds of moments you love best in your favorite novels. If you read mostly mysteries, you might love the moment when the first clue contradicts the current theory of whodunit. If you read romance, it might be the first physical contact. If you read horror, it might be the satisfaction of stopping the monster/alien virus/psychopath at the last possible second. This is what I call the "that oughta do it" moment. One of my favorite moments is the first time our protagonist comes across something that can't be explained without the introduction of the supernatural — the "wait a minute now" moment. Another favorite of mine...