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Practice writing and read good books.>
The Origin of a Story
October 7, 2009
In early May of 1998, India conducted a series of nuclear tests. Two weeks later that same month, Pakistan followed with its own.
Afterward, there was some discussion in the news about how to detect low-yield nuclear explosions and whether they differed seismically from earthquakes. I researched academic papers written at the time, and the threshold where scientists seemed certain they could tell the difference was about 4.0 on the Richter Scale. As time progressed, that breakpoint slowly fell, until today scientists seem reasonably certain they can nearly always tell the difference.
The following year, China issued a White Paper that related primarily to its preparation for war with Taiwan -- a shock to the international community that evoked strong reaction from Taiwan about the conditions for reunification.
These events were the catalyst for Di Zhen. I began to wonder how a story might evolve where China decides the United States is all that stands between it and reunification, and how China might use nuclear weapons to rattle California's San Andreas fault, causing an earthquake of epic proportions.
With these events in mind, I developed a general outline of the story I wanted to tell. I did not consider the characters -- they would come later as the story unfolded. But with this general idea of how the story would begin; how the earthquakes in California might be created; how the discovery would be made; and how the plans of the antagonist might be foiled -- these were the necessary ingredients to start writing.
Rick Starr and Marly Cooper were "born" and became the protagonists -- at first separately and then together attempting to solve the mystery of what was happening from their own perspectives -- neither one having enough information on their own to find the answers.
Hence chance brings the two together, analysis lets them make sense of the very different puzzle pieces they each hold, and the two join together in a common destiny to ensure the triumph of good over evil.
There's nothing magic about developing an idea for a story. Everyday experiences in the news or in our lives, seemingly unrelated, can be the start of a new novel.
Writing our novels, of course, is another matter. I'll save that topic for a later blog.
Everyday living experiences and my research on terrorism were the genesis for the sequel to Di Zhen that I am now writing: Bella Roma. Rome is the setting, and a realistic terrorist plot ignites the action.
It's exciting stuff to be a fiction writer. We are limited only by our imaginations and the bounds of "good taste".
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