Finding Stories in Popular Non-Fiction

Greetings Lovely Readers! 

This is Shelley, writing today about finding mystery story ideas in unlikely non-fiction places. I'm not talking about a "true crime" narratives or newspaper stories. I'm talking about pop science, pop psychology, or any other pop non-fiction books. Health and wellness? Personal finance? Technology? Yup, yup, and yup.

I've found ideas for various fiction stories from books on all three of those last topics. Today a mystery plot blazed into being while I was reading a book about technology. The 2018 book, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms, led to a eureka moment this morning while I was casually drinking my coffee and reading on my balcony. 

In Hello World, author Hannah Fry wrote about how supermarkets first began using customer reward cards to collect data, the success of which led, eventually, to the huge data broker businesses and affairs we've heard about in recent years, including the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal. Basically, we are being tracked everywhere online and then fed advertisements that our data indicates will most likely result in a sale. 

Or a vote, as it turns out.  

But I'm not here today to talk about political shenanigans. It was a supermarket data collection example Fry gave that set  my author antennae vibrating. Early on, sending coupons via email was a tempting and useful marketing strategy for supermarkets and other retail stores (still is, judging by my inbox). Data analysis gave retailers a way to pinpoint what offers and coupons to offer to which customers. But they didn't stop to think about how these rewards programs and subsequent offers would impact humans on the other end. 

One story was about an angry father who telephoned a company that had been sending pregnancy-related product coupons to his teenage daughter based on her online searches for products like vitamins and moisturizer for stretch marks. He accused the company of "encouraging teenage pregnancy." The company apologized and took a note to stop sending the coupons. 

I bet you know where this story goes. 

Yes, he called back later and said he'd had an interesting discussion with said daughter. In other words, the retail store knew before he did that he was gonna be a grandaddy. 

Immediately, an idea for a murder mystery short story popped into my head with the "twist" being that a "wronged" person finds "incriminating" email offers sent to someone in his family and takes drastic action...but of course, he's misinterpreted why his family member was getting those offers and he's now grievously ruined his family and his life. Now I just need to figure out who is solving the crime. 

I could write it from the criminal's pov. I've never tried that. On second thought, I think it might be more fun for someone else to figure it out. I don't do police procedurals. Maybe I'll try an amateur sleuth.

As authors we have to make all these decisions. It's hard to know ahead of time what will work unless you have a large body of work and a readership that expects a certain type of story. Then they might be upset if you tried something new. 

So, you see, there are pros and cons to every success or lack of. 

The point is, stories are everywhere, and fiction writers might think they are wasting time if they read about topics seemingly unrelated to their genre. Yes, we definitely should read great fiction in the crime genres. It's essential to do so if we want to improve on our craft.  

We also should consider cleansing our creative palates with some non-fiction every so often, as well. I think it stimulates brain activity in different ways. You never know when the next exciting plot will pop up in the pop non-fiction section of your local library, bookstore, or bookswap. 

Check out my revamped blog/writer journal at shelleyburbank.wordpress.com where I wrote more about my non-fiction reading this week. 

Also, check out the new look of my website, shelleyburbank.com. I'll write more on this change in my next Type M blog. I think this is going to be an exciting chapter in my writing life. Stay tuned! 

Searching for that grain of sand

Before I explain that title, I want to second Rick's excellent suggestion about buying a book (or more!) from your local independent bookstore as a gift this holiday season, and I love the idea of Type Mers buying one another's books. Read and transport yourselves this holiday!

Now for my actual blog. I'm probably not the first person to use the oyster metaphor to describe writing a novel. An oyster starts with a single grain of sand inside and then works layer upon layer around it to create a beautiful pearl. For me, that's how my novels start. With a single intriguing idea. It can be a simple image like a pair of shoes, a character that I am curious about, a small snippet from the newspaper. No matter how small, it's a toehold that allows me to start spinning the story around it, expanding and developing and adding until sometimes the original germ of the idea has completely disappeared as it's subsumed by the bigger story it inspired.

I am just embarking on the fifth Amanda Doucette novel, and at the outset I knew only one thing; it would be set in British Columbia. Because of the constraints I'd set upon this series, it should involve Amanda creating a charity event somewhere in the wilderness. Luckily, British Columbia has plenty of absolutely spectacular wilderness, so there was a lot to choose from. After some thinking and some reading, I narrowed it down to the west coast of Vancouver Island, in part because I always travel for research and it's on my bucket list. But a setting does not make a story by itself. I needed an idea. So I started to read about the history and people of the area, looking for that inspirational grain of sand. Lots of history. Lots of drama. Shipwrecks and swindles and epidemics and heartbreaking loss. It was way too big a canvas. Most novels, especially mystery/ thrillers are about struggles and triumphs on a more intimate scale. So I continued to read, asking myself all the time "what is this book going to be about?"

Then this morning, the idea came to me in a single word. Hermits. Apparently the wild west coast of Vancouver Island is a haven for hermits. Every hermit has a very intimate story, of tragedy, triumph, rejections, and perseverance. And in that single word lay a world of possibilities. A grain of sand I can build a story around. In the few short hours since reading that, the tiniest pearl has already begun in my head. It will mean a whole lot more research but now it will be focussed. I will no longer be casting about aimlessly but slowly building the knowledge I need. I am still far from setting pen to paper, and I know there will be moments of despair and frustration as the story develops, but it's an exciting moment.

I even came up with the title, far earlier than I usually do. But that's a secret until I'm more confident about the pearl I'm hoping is in there.

 

Weekend Guest C. Michele Dorsey

We're delighted to welcome C. "Michele" Dorsey to Type M. Michele is the author of No Virgin Island and Permanent Sunset in the Sabrina Salter mystery series set on St. John in the US Virgin Islands. Michele is a lawyer, mediator and adjunct professor of law, who finds inspiration and serenity on St. John and on Cape Cod. She is co-chair of New England Crime Bake, Vice President of Mystery Writers of America, New England, and served on the board of Sisters in Crime, New England.

The Seeds of Story

I heard Walter Mosley use the term “unconscious writing” several times during this past weekend at the New England Crime Bake, where he was guest of honor. I haven’t been able to shake it. He talked about connecting with your unconscious mind. I think that is where the seeds of a story begin before the writer ever knows it. What follows is an evolution that can take years, even decades to root and grow.

Twenty years ago, my husband and I went on a trip to Ireland to visit our daughter who was attending Trinity College for her junior year. They waited in line to kiss the Blarney Stone, but I felt restless. I admitted to already being too full of blarney and walked through the grounds of the Blarney castle where a ground fog had risen and sent shivers throughout me, but not from the damp. Something intangible, visceral filled and excited me. Later, while visiting monk huts and other stone formations, I felt stirred by something close to being spiritual I still haven’t quite identified. But it remained with me.

During the intermittent years as I wrote more and more, I discovered myself using language that was not part of my daily vernacular, but had been used by my Irish grandmother. When I traveled to Mexico, I commented that a woman “hangs a nice wash” when I observed her colorful and orderly laundry drying on a clothesline, a phrase I later remembered my grandmother using. The more I wrote, the more her words surfaced.

Fast forward to June 2017 when I returned to Ireland for a five-day stopover on my way to Provence. A friend recommended a tour of Newgrange, a monument that is a thousand years older than the Pyramids, where historian Mary Gibbons leads you inside the oldest astronomical observatory in the world. Outside, on a cool misty day I looked out at fields of green that seem to extend forever, and I felt it again. But this time, I knew I felt like I had come home. Later as I stood on the Hill of Tara, the ancient royal site of the High Kings of Ireland, I could see twenty-three of Ireland’s thirty-two counties. While I had never been there before, it felt familiar.

By the time I arrived at the Dublin Writer’s Museum, I was relieved to be inside looking at concrete images in photos and at books and journals of Joyce, Wilde, and Yeats. I wondered why I hadn’t read more of them. But my TBR pile was already so high.

This September, I wandered onto an announcement for a course on James Joyce’s Dubliners at my local Open University, which I didn’t know existed. (To be fair, I’m new to the community.) The inner rumblings could no longer be disregarded. I enrolled and was ignited by the images of fictional people created by Joyce a hundred years ago that I felt I knew.

It was inevitable. The seeds had been planted long ago, maybe forever. I have an Irish story sitting inside of me now that is now screaming to be let out. The geographical images are there. The people are there. And the stirring from my unconscious mind can no longer be ignored. Now I must go write it.