Suzanne Frank's Blog

I've been invited to join in a blog-a-rama by Terry Price and Cindy Corpier -- thanks so much, y'all! Here are the questions and my answers. Check out their sites for their answers! Enjoy!

What is your working title of your book (or story)?  Laws of Migration, out last month.

Where did the idea come from for the book? It was an amalgamation of ideas, actually. One was relationships and how the different lens through which we each see the world has such an effect on what we think/believe/act on; another was the idea of "how the could the best thing be the worst thing/how could the worst thing be the best thing"; and the overarching idea was about birds -- watching them, they way they live, their variety and behaviors.

What genre does your book fall under? Women's fiction

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Oh, this is tricky -- Elize could be played by any strong blonde who comes across as Alpha. But I think I had Kelly Lynch in mind, that extreme competence and physicality. Not to mention rocking cargo pants and no makeup. Erik/ Eric Bana? Sebastian Stan? Someone who is magnetic and you glance a second (and third) time, but not someone who is beautiful to the point of awkwardness. Frankie I see as a shorter Lucille Ball, but in a black curly wig and pencil skirt; Karen Gillan, with the addition of some weight and ink and a New Orleans accent, could be Zephyr. 

By and large, as writers we love the characters we write. For whatever their flaws, they're the people we're choosing to spend our time with. They've become our friends. This, I think, is a danger point.

As writers, we aren't writing happy stories about happy people. If we are, 99.9% chance we aren't selling it! "Nothing proceeds in the story except through conflict." (Robert McKee) No conflict = no story.

Conflict comes from wanting something and not getting it. All the ways of not getting it, all the failed plans and paths to trying to get it. This is overlaid with the personal belief system of whether getting it should happen.

If our character is our friend, we try to protect them. If we feel like the parents, we want to shield them. If we are Santa, then we give them space to act and reward them regardless. (Has anyone EVER gotten coal in his/her stocking?)

This thinking keeps stakes low and characters flabby.

In LOM, I knew Elize had to radically change in order to actually get the outcomes she wanted in her life. The only way that could happen would require short-term agony for long-term benefit. She had to break, in every way, before she could be remade, pliable and open. In this way the mythic Hero's Journey rings true to life: pain can birth redemption and a new start.

I write, to a large degree, the adventures or experiences I'd like to have … or at least to read. For me this has always included a healthy dose of sights - my characters going places I'd like to see. Consequently, my characters usually have a substantial background in art and history, and a vocabulary of elements and colors.

As I was crafting Elize, my straitlaced scientist, none of that fit. Why would she know Islamic architecture? How could she explain and/or appreciate Majorelle blue? Between her family and her education there wasn't a reason. She wouldn't and she couldn't. 

My first draft had her blind to the world around her, which made Morocco ominous and unappealing, not to mention drab. Not fun to write and NOT the experience I wanted to read! If she couldn't SEE, then what was the point of being in Morocco?

I returned to her biography, walking as Elize through her life experiences. I also threw down the book and picked up my bins, exploring South Texas's great birding sites and visiting Elize's home town, alma mater and closest shore, at South Padre Island. 

Why is it the most productive practices are the hardest? (This question may fall under the same category as: why is everything good bad for you? I'm looking at you, Bacon!)

At the first flush of an idea there are two impulses: tell everyone and write it all down. From what I've seen, if you tell ANYONE, especially if it's a really good idea, you don't write a thing. In fact, the passion dissipates and you float like a helium balloon exactly 5.5 days after the party: still inches off the ground, but deflating and sad.

If you make it to the "write it all down" phase, you look up after X number of pages and have no where to go. Nothing left to say. THE WALL.

Writing needs a pressure cooker, which is why accountability, classes and deadlines work. Something needs to exert enough compression to force your mind and body into new and strange paths in order to produce a story.

My experience, as a writer, as a writing teacher, as a friend of writers and wanna be writers, suggests: get an idea? Shut up. Write a single sentence if you absolutely must, but really, just press the idea down. Ask questions, throw hypotheses, let it grow. Sketch, don't write, a Hero's Journey cycle for it. Toss that out and do another. Throw away all that you've read/seen/done before. Keep silent. Make "resist = persist" work for you. 

In LOM, I knew exactly how the story started. The three women, the "kidnapping talent" conversation, the scene at the office. What I didn't know, for my first time writing a book, was how and where it ended.

With my time travel novels, I always knew Chloe had a YEAR, exactly and what needed to be accomplished in that time. In my Dallas O'Connor mysteries, I knew the killer would be caught and Dallas would live, though it would be close. Those genres gave me the constructs on which to hang the storyline and a goal post to aim for.

Not so with Elize. I spend seven years searching for her fitting "ending." (Don't worry, what's published is absolutely perfect, IMHO!) This searching was due to a combination of too much focus and wrong timing. Too much focus meaning I had what I wanted to happen. I didn't ask the story how it ended. (At some point, if you're going the wrong way, your brain will just STOP you.) It was wrong timing, because I needed to learn a lot more, experience, listen, loosen up and trust the story was there. I'm a slow learner.

I'm an immersion writer. What I'm focused on is filtered into every aspect of my life: food, design, movement and especially sound. I didn't grow up with TV (really didn't miss it) but I did grow up with radio. For me, music connects immediately to emotion.

When I write, I use music to fill myself with emotion I can pour on the page. Not necessarily for a character, but for the ambiance of the location, the texture of the world, the palette of sensations, thoughts and feelings I'll be exploring in the story.

Bless Sarah Brightman, she brought out Harem right as I was embarking on my all-Morocco, all-the-time adventure. Track # even mentions "American writers"!

When I was little, we lived in southern Spain. My parents and their best friends took the ferry to Morocco for a visit. I'll never forget the sight of their return: our pumpkin-colored Datsun, stuffed with four adults and spilling over with stuff.

Baskets, rugs, even a camel saddle, were tied to the roof -- a stack so tall that it was the height of the car again.

I had wanted to go, but had to go to school instead. However, seeing the proofs of their great adventure fanned a fire in me that was already fascinated by and attracted to arabesques, tiles, veils and other accoutrement of the exotic Middle East. 

To put it another way: from childhood on, I've been looking for an excuse to go to Morocco. Elize's birding gave me the reason I needed. I excel at research trips, they seem to mesh well with my obsessive nature and laser-beam intent. 

Which leads back to one of my laws of writing: write what you love. Or perhaps, more accurately, follow your fascinations in your writing.

By adding all my fascinations together I found the premise for my story: woman travels to Morocco in search of an exotic bird ...

What I had so far: Elize was nestled at home, friends with two other ornithologists and I needed her to go to Morocco. 

Prompt: In fictional Port Rockton, she studied the white-faced ibis and the glossy ibis. In fact, that part of the Texas is the only place in the nation where the glossy ibis and white-faced share territory. So I knew she appreciated the rare ... and what would be more rare than the Northern Bald Ibis, an endangered bird? A few hundred pairs in the world! 

She's also competitive, an athlete, so "scoring" a NBI would please her too. Behold, the Northern Bald Ibis.

                                                                  Bald Ibis picture from photo.net

Prod: Especially if she felt she'd been put down ... and she had to save face. She had to accomplish something to prove herself. Which brought me back to: How could the worst thing be the best thing?/How could the best thing be the worst thing?

Elize's world is known, quantifiable, numbered and fairly orderly. It's bike rides on the beach, surfing in the afternoon, mornings waking up with the birds. 

But what if I shook her -- and her world -- up? Uncertain, unknown, unintelligible and overwhelming. A fish out of water, a tall blonde in a country of medium sized black haired people? 

What if I put her HERE? The chaos of Marrakesh.

What would she learn?

How would she change?