Pondering a New Story

Sometimes when I prepare to write a new story, the parts and pieces just fall together like snowflakes. Too bad that doesn’t always happen. There are times, like now, that I “ponder.”

Pondering includes research, lots of thinking, pages of scribbling “what ifs,” and then mental rewrites. I do just enough to be sure I have a story before I open a new Scrivener project.

Take now, for instance. I have book one of a new series completed and I have a firm idea for book three. I know who my main character is for book two, but his life is still in the research stage. I’ve written down a list of things that ‘could’ happen to him and gave them a loose order. Meanwhile, the other characters’s personalities are forming while they interact with MC—in my head.

I’m thinking. My mind is wondering through story. I stare at my computer or look into the distance. This is usually when my family thinks I’m upset. What they don’t know is that I’m not — until they interrupt my thought process and my characters go off and do their own thing.

A character’s back story plays a huge role in who they are and how they will handle the problems I intend to throw at them. In book 1 (tentatively titled Dream Big), Bet is a Brooklyn city girl who loves horses and lives in an area where a girl could get into trouble. Her home life is ‘iffy’, but she’s close to her cousin. She and her cousin decide early on they will not be sucked under by where they live or go to school. When they graduate high school, l they get enrolled in Midwestern colleges, Bet for teaching and her cousin for journalism. During her college years. June gets involved in the horse program and ends up with a horse the college didn’t want. That horse is accidentally bred one evening when the College warmblood stallion gets out of his pen and into hers. Soon Bet has two horses.

In order to defray her college expenses, Bet got enrolled in a Missouri program that helped with tuition. In return, she had to teach for five years in the poorest inner-city schools. When the story opens, Bet has just completed her five years, and she’s also competed in a huge event at a high level on the horse she raised and trained. She and her cousin look forward to moving back east, closer to the equestrian competition mecca, so Bet can shoot for her dreams.

Bet has risen above her circumstances. She’s an accomplished teacher with a heart for inner-city kids, and she has followed her dreams of eventing with her horse mouse. She’s fought her way out of poverty and competes with her home-grown horse in a sport for the wealthy. In Dream Big we’ll see if Bet has the fortitude to fight to the top a second time or will she buckle and give up.

The MC in book two has played a role in Bet’s story, but now he faces his own life. Dallas is a good guy. He’s an educated cowboy with an upbeat personality, always ready for a good time but works hard in between. He’s competitive and likes risk, but mostly, things roll off his back like water off a duck. I’m looking for that water droplet that gets stuck between his shoulder blades. The one he can’t shake. The one that strips off his feathers, gets under his skin, and tries to break his wish bone.

Dallas’ backstory is forming in my mind. I’m considering his wounds and his failures, as well as the dreams he’s buried. If I don’t know his back story, I’ll never know who he truly is.  I may only share small bits of his story with readers, but knowing and pondering his story this deeply is part of my “process.”