Ask the Author: Peter L. Bensen
Answered Questions (6)
Peter L. Bensen
The best thing is sitting down at the keyboard and writing the first pieces of the first draft. The character(s) are just forming, I'm creating a world for them, I generate disgusting roommates for them or hillsides to climb and aggravating mothers they are escaping from. That creative process is what I like best. I also like imposing a plot on the characters, shoehorning the nascent story into an outline with broad strokes for where I'm going with it. I enjoy not following the plot or the outline but watching in pleasant horror as the character refuses to do what I want him to do and acts far more rationally and without the pathos and angst I need to further the plot and grab my reader.
Peter L. Bensen
The surest way to inspire myself is to go to a concert, best is classical - jazz works, so does choral music. Also good are well written TV shows. I don't often feel the need to sink into the shows world, rather it adds to an ocean of ideas that I can tap into. But the books that I have written spring from a person I have seen (but do not know) that I find interesting. Can be just a glance, like a kid in my daughter's christmas concert. He or she can morph into this character that blooms into a full character and from there I cloth it with plot and story.
Peter L. Bensen
The recent escalation of fighting in the Ukraine reminded me of the rapid changes in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in the late '80s. Twenty five years, that's all, and look at all that has changed since then. These moments of flux in our world are places I like to write in. I like Russian literature, including Russian scifi and a series I read recently where the hero was a late 19th century russian spy, in the mold of James Bond, urbane, deadly and brilliant. I have to go look through my books to find the author and the character, but he has stuck with me and I want to write about someone like him. What if there was a Russian Ambassador to the US who was a paradigm changer, someone who made the world a better place? Handsome, prime of life (late fifties!), falls in love with a young american and uncovers a crew of alien tourists waiting for their ride home.
Peter L. Bensen
Keep your day job. I'm not being nasty. I think you need to try out a bunch of journeyman projects. Learn to write poems, learn to write a short story. Try your hand at intimate third person, or first person narrative. Count on this decision of yours to write as a life-long endeavor. So there is time for you to experiment. For me, a person who wrote proposals, fund raising letters and board minutes, writing a novel was almost an obsession at first. It (the story) had to come out. My son told me that most authors hide their first books and there is good reason for that. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Just leash your obsession and keep your life balanced.
Peter L. Bensen
I let the problem or issue percolate. Like a computer problem or when something is wrong with my car and I can't figure it out. I try what works and if that doesn't help, I let it sit for a day, go to work and then suddenly I have a thought about how to solve the issue.
Writers blocks, like misbehaving computers, require enthusiastic curiosity. You need to find a way to be enthusiastic about solving the problem. So "I don't know what to do with the middle of this story!" turns into my character deciding he doesn't want to finish high school but join the royal marines (since he happens to be british). You can work out the details about how this gums up your plot, but if it is realistic for the character then it has wonderful potential.
I'm almost at the point in my writing when I say, "let the character solve the problem".
Writers blocks, like misbehaving computers, require enthusiastic curiosity. You need to find a way to be enthusiastic about solving the problem. So "I don't know what to do with the middle of this story!" turns into my character deciding he doesn't want to finish high school but join the royal marines (since he happens to be british). You can work out the details about how this gums up your plot, but if it is realistic for the character then it has wonderful potential.
I'm almost at the point in my writing when I say, "let the character solve the problem".
Peter L. Bensen
I am working on a manuscript called "Solnishko Stan and Igor, his Laboratory Assistant? Sonishko is a russian diminutive or endearment, loosely translated as "sunny". It's a play on words. It started out as a "what would happen if" story about a powerful and accomplished sixty year old, ambassador to his nation (Russia) for the United States. what would happen if he got trapped in an elevator shaft with a homely underachieving young man - and there was chemistry between them? I brought in cold war intrigue, science fiction and romance. I was fascinated by a romance between two men, one who grew up when it was unacceptable deviance and one who considers it a cliched romance.
Again I'm interested in what happens next. It's gotten long and I'm near the end and having trouble editing it down.
Again I'm interested in what happens next. It's gotten long and I'm near the end and having trouble editing it down.
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