zone trippers
Novel Synopsis
Owen MacIntyre’s daughter is missing but he can’t just file a missing person’s report—Eve is a first generation zone tripper. While her body is safe at home, host to a revolving door of other zone trippers; her soul skips into other infected trippers all over the world.
Or at least, her soul had been tripping. Now it’s complete radio silence. There has been no word from Eve since she tripped out of a dying woman who was only a train stop away from her waiting father. And the odds are falling fast. Suicide rates are sky high for zone trippers, a tasteless reality show debases victims on international television and a zone tripping serial killer calls himself the Infinity Killer.
Is a father’s love enough to achieve the impossible? Or is he too late?
I typically discover a new novel idea in August, which gives me three months of incubation before I write the first draft in November. In those few months, I become intimate with my characters, I plan a complete outline and I refine the story.
In 2010, I was in the middle of outlining the story I planned to write when I went to dinner with one of my NaNo friends. I shared an inkling of an idea I had with Amy, bemoaning the fact that it had an element of science fiction–which is not my style.
Amy, who does enjoy science fiction, encouraged me to ponder the idea a bit more. After our dinner, I did think about the plot–and overnight it all clicked into place. The whole world existed in my mind in an instant. With one domino tipped, I had to create all the benefits and consequences for my new disease.
It’s my favorite part of the writing process–the moment I discover the story I am telling myself.
The first draft was rougher than usual because I was still outlining as I was writing. But I also lost in the story.
This week I will complete a big revision round, moving the book one step closer to finished. I feel anxious to finish because 1.) I am pitching the novel in July at a conference and 2.) I expect my next novel idea to appear in August.
How do your novel ideas come to you?
zone trippers
November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which makes it my favorite month of the whole year!
As I approach my fifth year, I have found there are five distinct phases of pre-NaNo drafting and story percolation.
Giddy Excitement
My novel topics usually come to me in fits and starts. Experimental short stories or a big “what if” question can spur a novel topic. Dismantling Spider Webs, 2009’s novel, was founded on the question “what if the spouse you were cheating on died? How would you get forgiveness?”
However, this year’s novel, (working title) Zone Trippers, smacked me upside the head! A cacophony of characters and scenarios seemed to formulate in my head instantly. I suddenly understood what J.K.Rowling meant when she said Harry strolled into her, fully formed.
Overwhelming Unqualification
The second stage for me is always complete despair.I knew nothing about widowhood when I started Spider Webs. I wanted to do the topic justice–touching on every emotion and every problem a new, young widow faces.
Zone Trippers has its own stumbling stones. My characters find themselves spread out all over the world, having to adapt to their abrupt environments. I can research the slums of Calcutta and the factories in Belarus all I want but it easy to feel hopeless when I consider the sheer depth of what I do not know.
Diligent Research
After downing several chocolate infused reinforcements, I start researching.
For Spider Webs, I confounded the librarians by special ordering books on home improvement, how to have an extramarital affair and how to survive widowhood. I am sure they talked about me behind my back!
I am currently researching the nature vs. nurture debate, medical holidays, epidemiology, human trafficking and various obscure countries. I will never finish by the end of October but I will hopefully gain enough information to create a starting point for the book.
Pregnant Pause
I am an outline writer. I have a bare bones spreadsheet, outlining each of the major scenes of the book. But most importantly, I must know my characters. I have complete character sketches complete with photos for each character–major or minor. I am purposefully in choosing their names and their back story. Without their motivations, I can’t begin to write about them. Since the setting is often crucial to the story, I need that information written down as well.
All of these preparations are percolating in my head until I write them on index cards. Then I will rearrange and throw out cards while I write my spreadsheet. During the editing process, I tend to bring out the Post It notes so I can move the story chunks around.
The last two weeks of October has my fingers itching to start the new book.
I feel ready.
I am anxious.
I am impatient.
But because I want to follow the rules of NaNo, I don’t commit a single word until the Kick Off party. The flood of word that follows sets me up for an euphoric first two weeks of NaNo.
Hard Work
I have probably wrote the book ten times in my head before I commit the words to paper. Once the words take on ink and find a home on pulp, new surprises abound. I remember in Holiday Cards, the doorbell rang and I had no idea who was at the door. In Dismantling Spider Webs, I completed the whole second draft before I realized my protagonist was adopted–therefore driving most of her actions.
I am excited to see where Zone Trippers will take me. I have a plot. I am getting to know my characters quirks and flavors. The rising action has been decided but the ending remains a mystery–even to me.
This is the lure of NaNoWriMo–the bubbling thoughts, the new friends who live in your head, the Panera’s bagels and oceans of coffee, the paragraphs that snake across your computer screen and the heft of a printed novel in December.
Have you ever NaNo’ed? Care to join me?