Ask the Author: Rosemary Cole
Answered Questions (10)
Rosemary Cole
This summer I'd like to finish the third in Justin Cronin's The Passage series, The City of Mirrors. It's a big book and I'm pretty busy, so it's a tough goal!
Rosemary Cole
I believe there are two sources for ideas. The first, of course, is one’s own imagination. These ideas are affected by our personality type and how we see the world. Someone who is more pragmatic, concrete or attracted to the mechanical might have inborn ideas that lead to stories about futuristic machines or habitats. My personality type tends to be idealistic and romantic. One of my earliest ideas—which I haven’t actually used in my writing yet—is about a girl with immense psionic powers, the product of a secret breeding program, who saves the world, saves humanity from itself.
The second source is other stories. Yes, authors definitely feed off each other’s ideas. Yet it’s not at all derivative or plagiaristic, because the elements we pick up from another’s writing go into a kind of simmering pot in our heads. They cook there for a while, combining with original ideas and each other, and suddenly one day a fresh new idea with our own unique stamp on it pops up.
I’ll give you an example. Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved space station stories, from Babylon 5 to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Downbelow Station by the great C.J. Cherryh sank to the bottom of my consciousness like a stone, where it still lives. I thought of the people that author depicted, struggling to make a living and raise families on their space station. I thought: what if (yes, the essential idea question!) there were a young mother, an asteroid miner dealing with harsh circumstances (quite possibly including abuse by some huge, faceless megacorp) who, while passing through such a space station, just quietly “lost” a kid she no longer was able to support and was too stressed out to cope with? I thought of the dark underbelly of Deep Space Nine and figured such throwaway kids would probably congregate there on the fringes, trying to keep away from the eyes of the station security personnel. And the germ of an idea was born. It expanded when combined with other elements, such as super-powers and alien invasions, to create something altogether new and different. I can’t wait to write this one! But you see my point, how ideas feed and spin off each other, merging and changing until a new concept is born—unique, but with many existing ideas feeding into it.
The second source is other stories. Yes, authors definitely feed off each other’s ideas. Yet it’s not at all derivative or plagiaristic, because the elements we pick up from another’s writing go into a kind of simmering pot in our heads. They cook there for a while, combining with original ideas and each other, and suddenly one day a fresh new idea with our own unique stamp on it pops up.
I’ll give you an example. Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved space station stories, from Babylon 5 to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Downbelow Station by the great C.J. Cherryh sank to the bottom of my consciousness like a stone, where it still lives. I thought of the people that author depicted, struggling to make a living and raise families on their space station. I thought: what if (yes, the essential idea question!) there were a young mother, an asteroid miner dealing with harsh circumstances (quite possibly including abuse by some huge, faceless megacorp) who, while passing through such a space station, just quietly “lost” a kid she no longer was able to support and was too stressed out to cope with? I thought of the dark underbelly of Deep Space Nine and figured such throwaway kids would probably congregate there on the fringes, trying to keep away from the eyes of the station security personnel. And the germ of an idea was born. It expanded when combined with other elements, such as super-powers and alien invasions, to create something altogether new and different. I can’t wait to write this one! But you see my point, how ideas feed and spin off each other, merging and changing until a new concept is born—unique, but with many existing ideas feeding into it.
Rosemary Cole
Hi Skip,
The X-Variant eBook will be coming out on Amazon around April 10; the paperback on April 14. Readers will be able to buy the book at the special price of 99 cents eBook and $6.99 paperback from the time they are published until April 30. However, I appreciate readers contacting me directly and so I've PM'd you with an even better offer ;)
The X-Variant eBook will be coming out on Amazon around April 10; the paperback on April 14. Readers will be able to buy the book at the special price of 99 cents eBook and $6.99 paperback from the time they are published until April 30. However, I appreciate readers contacting me directly and so I've PM'd you with an even better offer ;)
Rosemary Cole
Thank you! I think that other authors' works have a lot to do with my answer. Not that my book is derivative! But in any body of fictive work, there are just so many ideas/themes/tropes out there. They (don't ask me who "they" is) say there are only six main plots and so every book must be a form of one of these, but with the author's own original stamp on it. I think what happens is, as a writer becomes exposed to more and more intriguing ideas as they grow older, these ideas go into a sort of soup cauldron bubbling away in the back of their mind. The ingredients combine, separate and combine again, often with new additions (either someone else's ideas or those from one's own imagination), until suddenly voila! a whole new lifeform emerges (sorry about the mixed metaphor). That's pretty much what happened with The X-Variant. I'm a nut for post-apocalyptic fiction (The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, The Road, Station Eleven, Margaret Atwood, World War Z, Mad Max, etc, etc ad nauseam), and I was looking for a way to take that main premise (society goes down in flames, usually due to mankind's own brilliance and stupidity) and make it my own. I think Justin Cronin's The Passage trilogy was especially influential - I loved the way he made his zombies so different from everyone else's. I was determined to do the same, and then it just hit me - an evolving synthetic virus. First it's deadly, then after centuries it becomes an enhancement, and then it becomes - well, you'll need to read the book to find out. :)
Rosemary Cole
I think this is the question most asked of authors. I believe every writer has multiple ideas for stories inside them. Some of them are old and have been around since childhood. Some are discarded as you grow older, while new ones pop in to join the pack. They simmer and change over time, like a soup, and move around to different burners--back or front. As you grow older, they are fertilized, if you will, by one's life experiences and by the works of others. If you don't have this nest of ideas living inside you, you're probably not cut out to be a writer.
Rosemary Cole
The muse comes and goes as it will. Of course, I can still write if I'm not inspired--in fact, an author often has to do that--it just isn't as fun!
Rosemary Cole
I've just finished The X-Variant, the first book of a sci-fi trilogy called The Guardians. In the series, a perfected posthuman species finds they must travel back in time to 2079 (when the world is being ravaged by a manmade global pandemic) in order to change the future, or else all of humanity will die out. I'm planning to launch The X-Variant on Amazon on April 7, 2017. I'm currently working on the second book in the series, The D-Revenant. You can check out my work and read a sample on my website, www.rosemarycoleauthor.com.
Rosemary Cole
There appear to be three kinds of aspiring fiction authors: the first kind lacks the imagination for good ideas, but they are excellent at writing. The second kind have terrific ideas, but can't write very well. The third kind is good at both ideas and writing. To be a novelist, it's best to be the third kind. You can still make it as the second kind, but you have to work, work, work at it. Study grammar, expand your vocabulary, practice. The best prose uses few words to get a powerful meaning across, but those words must be exactly the right ones. Read a lot, especially in the genre in which you want to write. How-to books actually do help a lot, and critique partners are invaluable.
Rosemary Cole
Like any other artist, I think it's having others enjoy and value my work :)
Rosemary Cole
I don't think I've experienced that per se. What I do experience (more often than I'd like) is having plenty of ideas, but finding myself unable to turn any of them into a coherent story. I start developing an idea and run into a sort of "stop." To me this just means I need to switch to a different idea. Oftentimes the stopped idea will change over time, become something better to work with.
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