So where do I start?

That’s invariably the first question I’ll hear tomorrow evening as I become acquainted with the latest crop of adults interested in writing fiction at my local community college. And, quite frankly, it’s a question I’m excited to answer…

As best I can, anyway.

I can’t speak for all writers, but I can say that one of my favorite parts of the writing process comes at the very beginning. Or, more specifically, during the “blank screen” phase.

Why? Because the only guiding force at that point in the game is your imagination. There are no parameters. No personalities to work around. No setting snafus to navigate. You simply get to dream, to create a world and characters that didn’t exist before you started typing.

Sometimes that world is created on the heels of a dream. Sometimes it’s sparked by a face in a crowd. And sometimes—as is often the case in my writing—it’s sparked by a single sentence in the corner of a splash screen or a twenty-second news highlight on the radio.

The key is listening.

The secret is allowing your imagination to see something more.

Thankfully, every writer is stoked by something different. If they weren’t, we’d have way too many of the exact same book. But, even better, is the fact that every writer has the capacity to look at the same springboard in very different ways. Perhaps their “take” is based on a genre preference or a tendency to lean towards light/dark. Perhaps it’s based on life experiences or personal opinions. And perhaps it’s based on that person’s ability to shirk off all of the above and simply let their imagination guide them…no matter where it may go. Whatever the case, the same idea can go a hundred different ways based on the imagination of each person.

And therein lies the answer to the “where do I start” question.

You start with an idea. And you make it your own.

My best real life example comes from the romance novel I just sold. The idea, itself, grew from a news highlight I heard on the radio one morning. Why that particular sentence stuck out from the four other sentence-long highlights spewed out over a minute of my drive is beyond me. But it did.

It stuck in my head for days and weeks afterward, toying with my imagination. I spent weeks mentally churning twists and turns only to realize it wasn’t meant to be a mystery. Not for me anyway.

For someone else it could have been the springboard for a dynamite whodunit. Or even a sci-fi novel. But my imagination took that nugget and dreamed up a romance novel (even though I knew absolutely nada about writing one).

Sure, I’ll tell that story to my students. I may even share with them the various ways I tried to make it a mystery. But in the end, they’ll see how I let my imagination guide my writing. And how much better my writing was because I let that happen.

Then, after I share that little personal story, I’ll challenge them to give it a try by using a one-sentence teaser that jumped off my splash screen about two weeks ago.

In this particular case, I think it simply jumped out at me as an example I can use to make them think and imagine. I say this because it hasn’t gone through my normal “ooooohhhhhh this has gotta be a story” mental process. But it intrigued my writerly side nonetheless.

And so I use it on those of you looking for a way to charge your own imagination—whether privately or (even better) in the comment section. Take it from the original sentence itself, or springboard off anyone courageous enough to share their ideas aloud. But give it a twist. My only request is that you think free of genre constrictions. Try a romance twist, a sci-fi twist, a mystery, a western… Whatever grabs you, ladies and gentlemen.

Ready? Set? Go—

*Underground City Existed for Years Before It was Found.*

Hugs,

~Laura