Have you ever wished you could write a novel? Did you give up because you believed you just weren’t born with the necessary creativity?
Those statements were both true of me. In fact, I didn’t attempt creative writing in my adult life until I was thirty-five years old!
Despite my self-doubt, I’m now about to publish my debut novel, a sci-fi romance/space opera about a musical prodigy on the run from a dark and dangerous past.
In case you’re jumping in from my regular blog, welcome! I usually blog about my favourite sci-fi books. But as my debut novel, A Symphony of Starlight, nears publication, I’m doing a series of posts all about the characters, world and inspirations of my upcoming book.
This post is all about where I got the idea for my first chapter.
If you haven’t read the first chapter of A Symphony of Starlight, you can read it for free here. If you have, read on to discover how DJ Rollercoster was born!
So, where did I get the idea for A Symphony of Starlight?
The spark that ignited Starlight flared to life one day when my 10-year-old and I were watching Youtube videos. We were both interested in learning to write, so we were blasting our way through Brandon Sanderson’s free Youtube writing course. On this particular day, we’d reached the episode on short stories, and Mary Robinette Kowal was Sanderson’s special guest.
If the names Sanderson and Kowal sound familiar, that’s because these two are superstars in the SFF writing world.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an amazing writer of sci-fi short fiction and also a fantastic teacher. Brandon Sanderson is a world-class sci-fi and fantasy writer and a master teacher, too.
Combined, these two authors made magic sparks fly in my brain!
During the video lecture where these two superstars joined forces, Kowal led Sanderson’s students through a short-story-writing exercise in which she challenged the class to write a sci-fi story that included a jockey and a coaster, while following her through a specific series of steps to form the story structure.
Kowol represented those steps with a handy dandy math equation that spoke to my inner nerdy girl heart like no other story writing formula had done before.
As I followed along, my imagination took the seeds of the prompt and transformed them. The prompt’s “jockey” wasn’t a horse jockey in my mind, but a disc jockey. The “roller-coaster” morphed from a physical contraption made of bolts and metal into an emotional roller-coaster ride brought on by the DJ’s music. I threw assassination into the mix because, well, Kowal said my character needed a goal and stabbing someone seemed like an exciting, measurable objective.
DJ Rollercoaster, part time assassin, was born.
I followed along with Robinette’s clear, mathematical method, and within a few minutes under her expert guidance, I’d composed the mini-story that became the first chapter of Starlight!
It was unedited and poorly written, but the ideas had sprouted!
From there, I took what I’d learned from Sanderson’s other lectures and made a Sanderson-style bulleted outline. That outline became a novel!
I always knew I enjoyed words and wished I could work with them, but until just before this Youtube class, I hadn’t tried creative writing in my adult life. I’d assumed that to be a fiction writer, you had to be born with some magic creative spark inside of you just fizzing over with clever ideas.
Turns out, the spark can be external. You don’t need to be a fount of creativity to be a writer, you just need a prompt to help you think outside the box and a little bit of structure to build on from there! Or at least, that’s what I needed.
Once I had a spark and an outline, I plucked more ideas from my life as I penned each chapter, fictionalizing and altering and re-combining them into something new and far-fetched yet grounded in real experience. I’ll share the top movies and books that inspired me in my next post. After that, I’ll share some personal experiences.
In the meantime, if you haven’t read A Symphony of Starlight, discover what the musical-prodigy-turned-assassin is all about here.
If you have read Starlight, consider leaving a review. You can find out more about why reviews are so important to new authors like me here. Hint: it’s not what I thought it was!
And if you’ve done all that, why not watch Sanderson’s and Kowal’s video above and follow along with the prompt? Maybe it’ll spark your imagination, too!
Im currently trying to write my own book and am thankful for any and all advice. I’m not even looking at the self publishing stuff yet because it’s too overwhelming haha but this information is super helpful. Sanderson is a very beloved writer in my community! So I’m excited to check out these videos!
Sanderson’s whole fantasy/sf writing class is free on youtube! I’m so grateful that a big name author like him is willing to share his knowledge.
This is fascinating! A mathematical formula behind writing sounds fascinating to my math loving heart. So great that Sanderson has free classes that are actual helpful. Thanks for sharing!