Inkshares Community discussion

Hello Inksharers,

I was just writing about why I chose to write a book elsewhere on here and I thought it was an interesting question for the group.

Why did you choose to write a book? Or maybe, what drove you to write a book?

My answer:

As a screenwriter, a novel is strangely unknown territory. It's a really different way to write -- you're responsible for every detail, every sound and smell and thought in a character's head. Screenwriting is like drawing blueprints for a skyscraper that may or not get built one day by a big company. Writing a novel is like building a log cabin in the woods by yourself.

The reason I chose to write Champions of the Third Planet specifically:

1) I was an obsessive reader as a kid and always wanted to write a novel one day.

2) Champions of the Third Planet has such a gigantic scope and would be so expensive as a film I didn't just want to write it as a script and take my chances in Hollywood. I have a few old scripts like that that are just on a shelf and I couldn't let that happen to this one.

3) Unlike film or TV -- which takes an ARMY to create -- writing a novel would mean creating something solely on my own: a finished thing that was just mine, flaws and all.

I also wanted to write a kids' novel, but actually what I'm writing is a book for ME when I was a kid. I certainly HOPE real kids like it too, and grown-ups like it for that matter, but 10-year-old me is the audience. When I was that age I used to always wish I'd stumble across a spaceship that would fly me into STAR WARS, and when I remembered that fantasy it made me want to write a book about it. I had a happy childhood and loved STAR WARS so I wanted to write a love letter to both.

I wanted to write a book because I had so many stories living inside me I finally decided to let them out. Explore some of things I wanted to write and my creative process.

I was nine years old and started a comic strip featuring a Superhero who was the reincarnation of Albert Einstein. I planned on making it into a comic book series.

Instead, as I grew older, that Superhero character (SecretAgentMan) became the focus of short stories and that in turn grew into an epic novel longer than War & Peace.

At the same time I started creating the comic strip, I became fascinated with the story of "The Great Impostor". I decided that I would grow up to become a Great Impostor myself. I achieved this by impersonating SecretAgentMan myself in real-life; I fictionalized those escapades and folded them into the novel

The first installment in that series is what I funded on Inkshares and got a full Hardcover deal.

https://www.inkshares.com/books/journ...

http://secretagentman.org

Rich Saunders

fyi - Mykl Walsh wrote Journey as the intro to SecretAgentMan

I have an obsession with stories. I grew up in the Deep South around people who believed storytelling was an art form. My grandmother was a librarian in rural Alabama (incidentally, there's a library named after her there too) so I got whatever book I wanted whenever I wanted it. I was never without books.

I was without cable, though. I was homeschooled. I didn't have many friends. I lived on a 200 acre farm. I was so, so, so bored. I wrote stories to entertain myself when I ran out of books to read. You know that quote, "If I want to read a good book I'll write one"? I came across that saying at the age of 11. I read Lord of the Rings at 12. I wrote my first novel at 13.

That novel, if it still exists somewhere, is terrible! The descriptions are bad, the dialogue is worse. My (biological) mother had a cameo role in it as a witchy stepmom. My characters were paper dolls, described solely by their hair color, eye color, and their clothes.

When I was 14, my mom got me creative writing lessons with a crazy French lady in the next town over. She tried (and failed) to teach me how to write poetry; but I learned to write fiction from the seat of my pants. I also learned that no detail is too insignificant to be noticed, but only certain details should be included in a description. (Otherwise my writing would sound like George RR Martin ordering a pizza...)

I recounted my inspiration for Lucky on another thread, but she (the character and the novel) very much arose from boredom and the need for a story, like so many others. I believe in what are called "plot bunnies", which I define as an image or an idea that can be developed into a work of fiction. I saw enough of west Texas to know that a mining colony on a desert planet would be a crappy place to get stuck. From there, I came up with names and a place to go. I had the joy of discovering the adventure along with my characters, which I think is the true joy of writing.

In college, I and my dear friend had a theory that all fiction is actually a momentary glimpse into a parallel universe. I usually write with this in mind. I try to let my characters develop themselves within the guidelines. My hope is that this will make them feel organic and 3D.

I started writing at the age of 11 at my grandparents bungalow. I would shut myself in my room half the time and just sit there scribbling down short stories in A4 notepads. I was also a keep drawer too and I was fairly good at it - although not as good as my mum or sister - needless to say I enjoyed doing both.

The stories I wrote were always fantasy based and always featured dragons as I absolutely adored dragons - I had posters of them everywhere.

But the real inspiration came when I travelled to Norway for two weeks - being on a cruise ship for two weeks with several days at sea really opens your mind a little.

When both my mother and sister decided to collaboratively work together - and produced a book called 'Dawn of the Awakening' found on Amazon - and been accepted by Unbound with their prequel to the book 'Blackthorn' - that was another reason why I decided to write a book of my own.

My love of fantasy totally derived from Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, and later branched out to Robin Hobb's The Farseer Trilogy and Brent Week's Assassin series. And of course, the many games - The Witcher, Dragonage, Dungeon and Dragons, etc - and films too.

The names and places actually just popped spontaneously in my head and others I mish-mashed from real place/people names.

I have been making up stories and writing them down since I was very little. I spent summers with my brother and cousin at my grandmother's house in South Florida and we used to make up our own superheroes and Star Wars characters to be since we all had more freedom to define them the way we wanted. The TV shows we watched back then in the afternoons also had a huge impact on me. Reruns of Star Trek, Batman, the Avengers, the Monkees, Doctor Who. I also read a lot of comic books and from a very young age I was drawing my own characters and stapling papers together to make my own comic books.

I began writing poetry in high school, mostly to turn into lyrics for one of my crappy high school bands. I then turned a lot of my childhood pretend characters into short stories (pretty terrible ones back then), but I was always reading. I read everything. Horror, science fiction, mysteries, biographies, memoirs...any and everything and all along I was picking things up and adding them to the mental toolkit I was building up.

I started writing more short stories, posting them on my own blog and kept trying to get one of my artist friends to make a comic book with me. The first character I pitched was the character that would eventually become Penny Thorne, the main character of "To Live and Die in Avalon". The concept was not as refined as it is now, focused more on comedy than action, adventure and intrigue. The artist wouldn't draw it, so I pitched a darker concept focused on spies and assassins and we did end up self-publishing that.

I've always wanted to be a novelist, but deciding on the right story to go with that I could turn into a full-length book was proving difficult. I had written dozens of short stories and had gotten used to the "short and sweet" format. Penny and her world and her supporting cast was built up over years in a lot of short stories that I shared only with friends. She went from being a slapstick character to a badass secret agent in a pulp sci-fi setting. I've been fortunate to have a lot of strong female role models in my life, including my mom who raised my brother and I by herself. I always felt there weren't enough strong female characters out there that weren't foils for male characters or damsels in distress.

Now, being a father with a seven year old daughter, I get frustrated when I don't see Black Widow or Rey action figures. I'm raising a kid who loves Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl more than Barbies, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So, for Penny's adventures to be my first book is fitting. It feels right.

And sure, its still funny, because I believe in playing to your strengths and my sense of humor has always been one of mine. That will always be a staple of my writing (in varying degrees, of course).

When I was a kid, people told me I was a good writer. It got so that I started to believe them. I loved doing compositions for English. But then I kind of put writing aside for a long time, what with Life and everything. It wasn't until someone got me into NaNoWriMo back in 2003 that I thought of writing anything longer than a short story ... or, considering that it had been almost ten years since my last short story, writing anything at all.

I wrote a "golden age" "fair-play puzzle" mystery story because that's the sort of book I like to read. (Sorry, sci-fi and fantasy don't really do it for me, not on their own. Please put away the torches and pitchforks.) It seemed hard to find that sort of mystery in the bookstores: there were police procedurals which seemed more concerned with the process than with the puzzle, and there were "cosies" which theoretically encompassed the thing I wanted, but more often than not seemed a lot less interested in the logic and the search for a solution than I liked.

So I decided to write my own.

I mostly began writing because these REALLY persistent voices in my head couldn't type for themselves. I let them tell their stories just to shut them up for a bit. And to keep them from biting.

I actually started writing poetry. I wrote when I was twelve years old and actually got made fun of in school for it. It was weird to write poetry. So I wrote in secret for YEARS. I entered several contests under a pen name for a while just so people wouldn't know I was writing them. I was afraid my "friends" would find out. I didn't think to write a novel until I started working. The place I work at has a plethora of creative minded people (mostly from the music world) and I found myself wondering if I could actually go back and write again. (I had stopped during high school)
I had so many people telling me I should write the stories I tell them all the time so I put a pen to paper and wrote for months straight. I came up with the concept of Dangerous Beauty and handed it to the two people who cheered me on the most and then waited for their feedback.
Ever since that time I've been working on book ideas and polishing up Dangerous Beauty. I just don't usually tell the full story behind it.

Linda wrote: "I mostly began writing because these REALLY persistent voices in my head couldn't type for themselves. I let them tell their stories just to shut them up for a bit. And to keep them from biting."

That too...

Well I've always been a gamer...no not the computer kind, the table-top RPG kind. The MUD's, Yahoo Groups, PBP stuff. After a while I got bored playing in other people's world and imaginations and decided to create my own worlds.

Suffrage is entirely the fault of an evil muse and supportive friends.

Julian wrote: "Well I've always been a gamer...no not the computer kind, the table-top RPG kind. The MUD's, Yahoo Groups, PBP stuff. After a while I got bored playing in other people's world and imaginations and ..."

Always good to see another old school gamer who's referring to books, dice, and pencil & paper when they use the term. That was a factor for me as well but not the only one. I keep meaning to post my actual reason when I have time. For now I need sleep though.

I've always really enjoyed writing. Essays, notes, shopping lists, whatever. Books are the things I care about most, outside of those "normal" things that take precedent, like family & etc.

The thought that I can write something, from start to finish, and that just one other human might read and enjoy it, is magical.