Ask the Author: B.K. Mayo
Answered Questions (2)
B.K. Mayo
I avoid writer’s block by always having two stories in progress at the same time. That way if the one I’m working on at the moment stalls, I set it aside for a while and work on the other one. Eventually, my subconscious mind resolves whatever it is that hung me up on the first storyline, and I am good to go again on it.
B.K. Mayo
Have you ever had an experience so awful that you wanted to bury the memory of it forever? Most of us have, I think. The problem is keeping the memory banished from thought. Something always seems to happen to trigger our remembrance of an unpleasant event. Then suddenly we are reliving the angst, the sorrow, or the horror of something that happened long ago.
My idea for “The Water Tower Club” grew out of my desire to write a story about a character forced by circumstances to relive the awful things that happened to him growing up. But I didn’t want the story to be just about his unfortunate past. Fiction, like life, has context. Who a character is in the present inevitably collides with his or her past in the unfolding of any drama—real or fiction. So I wanted to give my character a worthy goal to achieve in the present, thus setting up my job as a writer to work out, as the story progressed, the conflict (inner and outer) between the character’s confrontation with his past and his struggle to achieve his present goal.
This shell of an idea was enough to get me started writing, since all I needed to do at that point was to answer some basic questions in order to set the action of the novel in motion: (1) Who is my main character and what is his current circumstance? (2) What bad things happened to him growing up? (3) What event forces him to confront his past? (4) What is his story goal? (5) How does he change as a result of his struggle to achieve his goal?
Of course, there’s one other question that should always be asked and answered before a writer proceeds from story idea to storyline, and that is, “In terms of universal human needs, what is my story really about?” Is it about family? friendship? loyalty? love? redemption? Or is it about something more existential—i.e., survival? “The Water Tower Club” touches on a wide range of topics—sexual abuse, gun safety, bullying, traumatic brain injury, family relationships, and more—but at its core it is a story about the universal human need for self-respect. Which just happens to be inherent in my “idea” for the story.
My idea for “The Water Tower Club” grew out of my desire to write a story about a character forced by circumstances to relive the awful things that happened to him growing up. But I didn’t want the story to be just about his unfortunate past. Fiction, like life, has context. Who a character is in the present inevitably collides with his or her past in the unfolding of any drama—real or fiction. So I wanted to give my character a worthy goal to achieve in the present, thus setting up my job as a writer to work out, as the story progressed, the conflict (inner and outer) between the character’s confrontation with his past and his struggle to achieve his present goal.
This shell of an idea was enough to get me started writing, since all I needed to do at that point was to answer some basic questions in order to set the action of the novel in motion: (1) Who is my main character and what is his current circumstance? (2) What bad things happened to him growing up? (3) What event forces him to confront his past? (4) What is his story goal? (5) How does he change as a result of his struggle to achieve his goal?
Of course, there’s one other question that should always be asked and answered before a writer proceeds from story idea to storyline, and that is, “In terms of universal human needs, what is my story really about?” Is it about family? friendship? loyalty? love? redemption? Or is it about something more existential—i.e., survival? “The Water Tower Club” touches on a wide range of topics—sexual abuse, gun safety, bullying, traumatic brain injury, family relationships, and more—but at its core it is a story about the universal human need for self-respect. Which just happens to be inherent in my “idea” for the story.
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