The dreaded questions

A few epochs ago, I mentioned something called the ‘questionnaire approach’ to writing a book. The conundrum was I couldn’t answer those tough questions until I was ready to write the book, and I couldn’t write the book without being able to answer those tough questions.

When I mention I’m writing a book, I’m usually confronted with similar questions. Or a raised eyebrow and a healthy amount of skepticism.

It usually goes something like this:

“What have you been up to lately?”
“Well, besides the usual, I’m writing a book.”

There’s a lot of responses one can receive after saying they’ve started writing a book.
Here’s a few of the more common ones:

A. “Who isn’t?”
The cynical response. This is implying that all people have given writing a try at some point in their lives and have already failed miserably or, if they haven’t yet, inevitably will fail.

B. “Oh. What’s it called?”
Ah! Either we have some genuine interest here, or they’re casually asking—much the same way one would ask about how the weather is or how a sports team is doing … and could actually care less about the title or the story that lays behind it.

But ‘What’s it called?’ is a tough question to answer if you’re not prepared for it. It took me a lot of composting, writing, and moments of inspiration to finally realize what the title of my book was actually supposed to be.

I guess next time I’ll come up with a ‘working title’; a tentative title just like what films have during production. Because I felt like an idiot not knowing the title of my own book. But eventually I knew. And I graduated to the next part of the conversation, which sometimes they’ll just skip straight to:

C. “So, what’s it about?”
A weighted question…
If I’m too expositional, their eyes will glaze over—guaranteed.
If I say stuff like:
It’s about mankind’s struggle to believe in a world full of empirical data.
or
It’s about being dragged by fate into the world’s torrid whirlwinds.
or
It’s about the shades of grey between good and evil.
or
It’s about surrendering trust to find true love.
or
It’s about achieving a goal you never intended to chase, but will cost you everything in the end.
then I end up sounding like another Barton Fink, complete with delusions of grandeur.
So I tend to say “A high fantasy about a thief.” I try to keep it simple and let them take the bait. You know…. To learn more if they wish.
At that point, the conversation usually moves on to another topic. :P
But if they ever did ask any additional questions, I’d be glad to answer them!
*hint hint*

In our personal quests to conquer the novel, the questions only get harder from there. But unlike the casual masses, us writers are genuinely interested in what we are writing (hopefully!) and we want all the expositional details and tidbits that will help us dig into the meat and bones of our stories.

There comes a day when we know we’re ready to answer those tough questions. That’s when we’re done composting/free writing and ready to create scenes!

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~ by cirellio on July 25, 2008.