O IS FOR OPTICIAN!

O is for Optician.  (Skim to the underlined genre or style that best suits you.)

The eyes are windows to the soul, or heart (when you’re writing Romance). And who has the right to get super up-close and personal to your eyes? Your optician. So now you know your hero is going for an eye check-up. The new optician is pretty in more ways than her luscious brown eyes. Her sense of humor gets a glowing review, too, because as soon as he starts worming his way around the question–are you single–she smiles and inquires instead, So, how many people in your family have glaucoma? She lets him sweat a second before she smiles and says, Don’t worry. It’s not looking like you’re going to be the first. After that humorous little ice chipper, your hero is determined to get more than just another appointment for his next eye exam. With any luck, he’ll have her number.

Now you have how they met. You know they both have a sense of humor. So now you just have to add a few mishaps or misunderstandings, or some bigger obstacle, and watch how clear their vision is in the end when they realize that they could never be with anyone else.

Mystery writers, it isn’t the butler who did it. It’s the optician. And guess how? A little substance of something to add a clear coating to the victim’s contact lenses. And going by the estimated time of death, it had to have been done during the victim’s eye exam earlier today. But your sleuth is wondering if that might be too simple. Maybe somebody wants it to look like the optician did it. True, he was having an affair with the victim, and he might have wanted out of it. Divorces can be quite costly and not timely when you’re starting a new practice of your own. So what about his wife? Nothing like the scorn of a jealous woman. But she’s on a Carnival cruise on her way to the Bahamas. Did she hire someone for murder and frame her husband? Their daughter is only twelve years old. Surely she didn’t …

 

You really won’t know who did it until you start writing. The more you get to know these people and the other people in their lives, the easier it’ll be to figure out whodunit. Remember to make sure the characters have some tie in with your sleuth or main character to create a strong motivation to solve the crime.

It’s a Literary tale when the longtime optician finally learns what real sight actually means. For this story, the eye examinations Nelson gives are secondary to the examination he trips through in his own life, but it is that close examination, both outside of him and inside, that will give insights for this story. What does Nelson see when he’s examining the eyes of another? He will see more than pupils and irises and retinas. What will he see when he looks in the mirror at his own eyes? What do these realizations mean in relation to his understanding of the human condition? That should give you a jumping off point, an idea to work with, and now you can shape it into the lyrical prose that lovers of literary stories can’t resist.

It could be an entertaining and informational story for Children if you take your little character, bunny or child, to an optician for the first time. Everything the child will see and experience will be brand new to him or her. It might be a little scary too. I’m never too keen on it when the doctor brings that goggle-like machine up close to my face. But to a child, this trip will prove exciting, and getting a first pair of glasses, with frames in his favorite color, can be exciting, too. My daughter needed a story like this when she was young, because she did not want glasses at all. A positive story making wearing glasses a thing of style and wonder would’ve been good to have in my mother’s tool bag.

N IS FOR NAILS

N is for Nails  (Skim to the underlined genre or style that best suits you.)

Ideas can’t be copyrighted, so the ideas I will be posted below are free for you to use.

Nails may not be romantic on their own, but they sure can lead to Romance if your heroine just moved to a new place. Imagine that she’s anxious to make her new abode look homey. She’s got her favorite artwork ready to hang on the walls, and she even has a hammer, but she can’t find anything more than thumbtacks. It’s a small town and a Sunday–good luck finding anything open. The grocery store, yes, but nails are not in the aisles. Determined, she hustles over to the next-door neighbor, remembering the little old lady who waved from the porch the day before. Such a sweet old lady. She’d probably be more than happy to hand out a few nails. But when the door opens to a green-eyed man wearing tight-fitting jeans, your heroine forgets what she came for.  

In a Mystery it’s fun to keep the readers guessing, but you’ve got to dole out clues or you’ll lose them. It’s possible somebody was murdered with one of those huge four-inch nails that look more like spikes, because they would be deadly if thrust right into somebody’s jugular. But you might want to use them as clues in your story, instead of as the weapon. Either could work. If the victim died of suffocation because somebody gifted her with a pine box for eternal sleep (before her scheduled time), then the nails used in the coffin could be a clue. Maybe a couple of them had a small blotch of red on them, and one such stained nail was found by the librarian’s desk (a sister-in-law to the victim) when the sleuth was there for research and a few questions.

What is it? Red paint? Fingernail polish? Now your sleuth is going to get a sample of that paint or polish from the nail, and maybe be one step closer to the truth. If it’s paint, your sleuth might remember seeing somebody else with red paint splatters on his or her baggy clothing, which means this person was working on a project of some sort (or he’s an artist!). Your sleuth will follow the clue and have a chat. This could be the killer, or it could be somebody supposed to look like the killer. So, who is it? The evil librarian, the artist, or someone we’d never suspect?

Literary stories often involve a physical process of doing/creating something, and that process parallels the inner process of growth going on in a character’s mind. Building something can be a process. It can work like layering, a common technique in literary work. So your character has enough nails that by the time he’s done building what was to be a simple frame room, he might have an entire house. Something usable. Something that can withstand a lot of time and weather. What can that mean on the outside to a particular character? And what will the interior process mean when with each new nail securing the dwelling, the character comes closer to a realization about himself, and about life?

A nail in Children’s stories? Consider middle graders competing in a bicycling race. Either your protagonist or one of the other characters wants to boot out the most serious of competitors, and so he stabs a nail into the competitor’s bike wheel. Would your protagonist do that? You’d first have to make him likable and create a situation where readers will understand such an action, even if they don’t agree with it. But maybe it isn’t the protagonist who is so ruthless. Maybe the protagonist is the victim. How would he tackle the problem?

To make this story really interesting, you need something important at stake. I don’t think a little trophy is enough, although to some it might be. But maybe there’s a money prize, and the character who did the cheating only wanted the money because he or she really believes that it might save Grandma by getting her better care in a hospital strictly for cancer patients. Now the character has a strong motivation to win. Whether this is your point of view character or not, the dishonest action will have an emotional impact for the reader. If it isn’t your point of view character, will the point of viewer, once wise to what’s going on, lose the race on purpose? Make it a hard choice with something at stake on both sides and you’ll have a captivating story.

What ideas can you pull off the top of your head? If you can offer some ideas in genres I didn’t cover, such as horror, sci-fi, or fantasy, please share! Readers will appreciate it.

Happy writing!

 

M IS FOR MESSAGE

M is for Message (Skim to the underlined genre or style that best suits you.)

I strongly suspect this word will be used as a topic by many bloggers today, and for that I apologize. But I’m betting we all handle it in a different way. (At least I hope so.)

Messages can jumpstart a Romance easily, and they don’t have to be from a secret admirer. It can be from a wife or husband letting the other know he or she is the circle of thought right then. (Add the obstacles later–the message going to the wrong person, etc.) Messages don’t have to be written either, but to have any power they still need to be revealed. It might be in the way of a painting created for the object of someone’s affection. It might be turning down a job one character knows the other character wants. Or it might be in the sentimentality behind the gift of a pair of colorful fuzzy socks–maybe that particular gift will remind the receiver of a good time had not long ago. The socks would then be something for your character to consider before she takes a job 1,200 miles away. (Or some other decision that will cause tension.)

Messages have flocked the Mystery genre since forever. Messages can be in code, delivered anonymously and slipped under a door, left by a person’s drink while that person uses the restroom in a bar, or given via E-mail or a voice message. But the message has to mean something to someone. It will somehow tie into the murder that has already happened, or the one about to happen. So, was the message delivered by a hired courier who was hired by another courier who was hired by another, who ultimately was the one hired by the creator of the message? That would certainly make the message-maker a little more difficult for the sleuth to track down.

But what message could be so important, and why is hiding the identity of the creator important, and what would it mean if the message was delivered to the wrong person? What could happen? Maybe it was never meant for the sleuth, but for someone else … And now the sleuth thinks someone in his or her life is in danger. But upon investigating the situation and following leads, he or she begins to wonder if… And yet because now this sleuth knows more than he should, the threat originally not intended for the sleuth is definitely a possibility now.

A message with a Literary slant might have double or triple meaning. To one character the message is salvation, while to another it means jeopardy, and to another it means condemnation. Who are these people and how can one single message have these different meanings to these different people? Do they know each other, or is it simply this message that binds them?

For Children or Young Adults a message can have almost paralyzing power, unless it’s from a secret admirer the character was hoping to meet. But what if it’s a message that reveals a secret the protagonist thought no one else knew? And now he or she has to worry if the secret will spread to the rest of the school population. And what would that mean for the protagonist? Give a little thought as to whom your protagonist is, his or her values, strengths, and weaknesses, and it won’t be hard to come up with a secret that could have a devastating effect.

What ideas can you pull off the top of your head? If you can offer some ideas in genres I didn’t cover, such as horror, sci-fi, or fantasy, please share! My readers will appreciate it.

Happy writing!

L IS FOR LIE

L is for Lie  (Skim to the underlined genre or style that best suits you.)

Ideas can’t be copyrighted, so the ideas I will be posting Monday through Saturday during April are free for any of you to use.

In what world would a lie not grab interest? I don’t know of any. They certainly can be lovely tools for tension in a Romance novel. Imagine that a hero and heroine met at some fancy writers’ convention somewhere. Neither expected to ever see each other again, despite the immediate attraction. They lived on opposite sides of the country. Knowing she’d never see Jon again, Tara chose not to expose every dark secret in her life. Especially the secret of the second reason she was in town, not just for the writers’ convention. Nope, she was there to visit her loser husband in prison and beg him to sign a divorce agreement. He refused. Her anger stayed with her all day until she’d met Jon. He made her laugh and forget the rest of the world existed, at least temporarily.

How did she know she’d run into Jon again? And worse, right when she thought she should fess up and be more forthcoming about her situation, a writing friend of Jon’s interrupted the conversation, and she lost her chance. During the conversation, which included some joke Tara couldn’t even remember, the writing friend says, “So what? We’re all single here, right?” And Jon laughs and looks at Tara with an expression as though he assumed she’d agree. And so she did, followed by a nervous laugh. Who wants to lay out the truth at a moment like that? You take it from there, you savvy romance writers.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a Mystery that didn’t incorporate a lie–more likely, oodles of them. In fact, without someone lying, would there even be a mystery? I haven’t had enough coffee to consider the question. So, let’s take those wannabe lovers mentioned under romance (above). To twist this little tale into a mystery, once they start seeing each other regularly, he’s going to end up dead. Naturally Tara is going to think it has something to do with that waste of skin sitting in prison. At least that’s what she thinks until she snoops in Jon’s mail and sees that he was up for a prestigious award, one that actually doles out money. Then her brains start thinking, Would a writer really kill another writer just for an award? For recognition and fame? She lets the idea simmer in her head while she rummages through his desk. There she finds some not so decent photos of the wife of another gentleman she’d met at the convention. Because of the shock, she doesn’t even think about the fingerprints she’s leaving on the photos.

Okay, mystery writers. You have a few suspects lined up; it’s that butt-in-chair time for you.

I couldn’t help notice that both Literary and lie start with an L. Literary stories often explore the dark crevices of a person’s life, so there’s bound to be a few little (or big) fibs to create an interesting array of shadows anytime a speck of light shines through. Monica never thought her lies were harmful–just little white ones, and usually for the benefit of saving someone’s feelings. She never really expected any half-truths or lies to catch up to her. The problem is, these little white blemishes became a habit. They became her demons.

For years she had never given them much thought, because they were generally told with good intentions. How would she know that the day would come that she’d forget what was the lie and what was the truth? And when the day did come, she finally has to come to terms with one fact–her lies were erasing her. She told so many that she came to believe them (with age, that’s easy to do), and she no longer recognized what her real opinion ever was. Suspecting as much, she wondered who she really was. Did she even know? Or had she glorified her own life with a series of lies just as she had everyone else’s?

Children’s stories can really heat up when one friend tells another a lie and it ends up hurting someone. Don’t be afraid of this idea. Even children’s story should reflect their real lives, and what child hasn’t told a lie or two and regretted it at some point? As long as you don’t make the story preachy, it will read as a true story to any child. So maybe Tanner never really beat Haley in the spelling bee. He simply told her brother that he did, just too get at him, and he didn’t know why he wanted to do that. He didn’t know her brother would tell their dad, a man who didn’t accept failure even from a fifth-grader. So in this story, the brother repeats the lie before they even hear from the actual officiators of the competition. This could mean trouble, for sure.

What ideas can you pull off the top of your head? If you can offer some ideas in genres I didn’t cover, such as horror, sci-fi, or fantasy, please share! My readers will appreciate it.

Happy writing!

 

Hey, bloggers, please help!

I no longer need the help, but thanks for stopping. If you read below, you'll see I was looking for a certain series of blog posts about quitting smoking, and Gossip Girl @ http://myworldaccordingtomeii.blogspot.com/ replied--that is the blog I was looking for. Thanks all of you who offered help. What a great bunch of bloggers, and if any of you are trying to quit or know someone who is, steer them to this site. It'll help. :-)

(My original plea for help is below.)
It's Sunday and I know I don't have to write/post anything, but I need a bit of help. A couple days ago I hopped into a blog that had a post about the blogger's efforts in quitting smoking. I loved the post and left a comment, and I'm sure that I joined as a follower. The problem is, I don't remember the name of the blog or the blogger. I have been checking the blogs that I follow and going back a few days to see if there was supposed about quitting smoking (I'd love my daughter to read it), but I can't find that particular blog or post, and I'm sure that simply because I don't remember the name. If anyone can help out, please do. If it was your post, please step forward and let me know.


It might be that I don't remember the name of the blog or post because I'm thinking it was only a few days ago, and it could have been a week ago. :-) Please see previous post for the help I need.
Thanks all, and enjoy your day off from posting!

K IS FOR KEY!

K is for Key (Skim to the underlined genre or style that best suits you.)

Ideas can’t be copyrighted, so these ideas are free for any of you to use.

Who doesn’t love a Romantic guy? Jerome has the key to Ella’s loft, but not to her heart. After trying the old cliché (though a classy one) of sending flowers to her office, taping an announcement of his love for her to her windshield, and dangling in front of her a diamond pendant which she refused, he is going for the gusto. Pretending to be Ella’s cousin, he convinced a semi-friend (a locksmith) to make a key to her front door. Now he’s in, and he’s got his bag of goodies with him. So what’s in the bag?

 

Maybe a couple hundred little golden keys he’ll be dropping like breadcrumbs to her bedroom. To symbolize his wide open heart, little keys might be a better idea than the old rose petal motif he’s seen on TV a million times. If he wants to impress her, he must be unique. Maybe she suggested they swap house keys and he said no? Now he’s saying yes with all his heart. What else is in that bag? Knickknacks to mimic hotspots in Italy, her dream vacation? Groceries so he can cook her favorite meal? And a broken remote control to suggest his TV will be off the next time she stops by. That last one would work on me.

Mystery buffs, you can bet whoever has the briefcase that belongs to that key is the killer. A small key that either fit a diary or a briefcase was found at the scene, and the victim’s case is missing, so it’s not leap to assume the killer took the case. The killer probably doesn’t know he won’t be able to get it open without a screwdriver and a little labor. Your sleuth knows the victim, but that doesn’t mean the sleuth knows the killer. Naturally the sleuth is going to check the calendar and schedule book on the victim’s desk. When he does, he sees the word “keys” circled with red ink on the date of the 24^th.

 

Now your sleuth needs to know what events might the victim had been planning for the 24^th. Maybe a presentation or a one-on-one meeting with someone–someone who needs whatever was in that briefcase. But why is the word keys circled? Give that some thought and you’re on your way to solving the mystery before you write it. Mysteries are so much easier to write sort of backward, after you already know who did what and why. (At least I find this easier.)

Literary. He locked up the momentos, or rather, the torturous reminders of his past, packed up and moved to a new home. New home, new town, new beginning. But as time wore on, it was as if someone had brought the keys to each of those discarded items he so desperately wanted to forget. They entered his dreams more vividly every night, prompting headaches, fatigue… It was causing problems at his new job. So what were the items, and how will he learn to keep the past in the past and only let memories out as learning tools rather than as punishments?

 

Suppose one stowed-away item is a pair of old running shoes, and another is a high school yearbook, and maybe a third would be a thick, sealed letter-size envelope with his name on the front, along with a few smudges of grease. Tie these items together at some event no one would want to remember, something that happened in his past, and you’ll see your story unfold as your protagonist struggles to stay a step ahead of his nightmares. Peace may come, but you have to decide the cost for it. What is your protagonist learning about himself as he learns about the world?

How would keys fit nicely into a Children’s story? Think about little Lucy, who wants to be a singer someday. The problem is, any one song takes her through more keys than what exists on a keyboard. Some keys no one has ever heard before, nor would want to. Her voice bounces all over the place. People actually cover their ears when she sings, or cringe and walk away. But she is not the kind to give up. She sings in front of the mirror, she sings while taking a bath, she even tried singing while eating dinner, but her mother didn’t like the view of food in her mouth. If you make the plot as interesting as your character is likable, you’ll create a successful children’s story.

Please feel free to add to these ideas or share your own, and don’t be shy about offering up some ideas for sci-fi, horror, historical, or fantasy writers. We all need a little jumpstart now and then.

Happy writing!

 

J IS FOR JAMBOREE

J is for Jamboree  (Skim to the underlined genre or style that best suits you.)

It’s easy to think of some party–a jamboree–in a Romance novel, because that’s where Opie and Ms. Right meet. Now decide the purpose of the party, and who will be there. A town event, something celebrating the town’s history? Are the people attending wearing costumes? What two costumes would look so not right together, and yet be a perfect fit? What brought Opie to the party–obligation and servitude, or boredom, or hope? And how did she end up there, the Ms. Right wearing the costume that so outrageously clashes with his?

Mystery lovers, imagine the clues you could find at a jamboree. A business card left behind, suggesting that somebody who denies being there might have been there after all (or someone wants us to think so). Perhaps the murder was committed with a weapon that might be part of someone’s costume. The story could be quite lively if it circles around a jamboree. Imagine all of the colors you’d see there, feathers and chains, sequins, and candy with just the right sprinkle of poison and served to just the right guest. Think about the different types of people there, the dancing, the laughing, and the screams that weren’t even heard over the loud music. Who wanted the victim dead? What does the victim mean to the sleuth? And hat is the sleuth’s motivation for solving the mystery?

Literary writers might think about a jamboree as a significant event not only in the history of the town, but the history of a certain family or a certain person. From year to year, a jamboree was held, but in this one particular year, it took on a new meaning. It put a series of events into motion that ultimately brought back that same certain person, if not in time and space, at least in mind. How does this jamboree reflect the inner workings of this character’s life? Think of a town event or jamboree that in some way defines a little part of you, and then magnify that aspect to give it to your character. Give it meaning; stretch it this way and that.

Children or Young Adults love parties of any type. For young adults, it’s an excuse to meet the opposite sex. That could turn into a romance, or it could turn into a reflective coming-of-age story, where the character learns romance is merely a plot point in her life, but not a way of life. And where better to learn such a lesson than a jamboree? And for younger kids, I think it best that their parents organize a jamboree-fest from A to Z. Naturally, the one who contributes with the most originality wins some coveted prize. Remember, this doesn’t have to be a story that turns out happily ever after. It can be a realistic story, where not winning turns out to be the best win of all.

Please feel free to add to these ideas or share your own, and don’t be shy about offering up some ideas for sci-fi, horror, historical, or fantasy writers. We all need a little jumpstart now and then.

Happy writing!