Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Idea Growth: Hunters of the Moon

The growth of Hunters of the Moon was about as different from that of Darkness as it's possible to get. I had been collecting info on a variety of anthology submission calls. One asked for werewolves in an urban fantasy setting. I pulled it out and mulled the idea for a couple of days.

The seed of plot I started with involved Sara, the Hunters, and the tattoos used in the story to control the shift from human to werewolf. I also scribbled the last line of the story in one of my notebooks. That line remains almost intact--I think I changed a word or two. There wasn't much else to it when I sat down to write.

When I wrote this story, I just took a pen and a notebook to Starbucks and scribbled the entire first draft in a couple of hours. The other plot elements fell into place as I was writing, and by the time I was halfway through, I knew exactly how the plot was going to wrap up.

Until I got there. I reached a spot in the story where we discover something important about the werewolf Sara has been pursuing. I started to write the sentence that would reveal the secret--and then I stopped.

I stopped because my brain was screaming a completely different sentence at me, one I'd never considered. I sat there for a minute just staring at the paper. Inside my head, things went something like this:

"Wait, what?"
"Yes! JUST WRITE IT!"
"Seriously? But I thought it was--"
"IT ISN'T! LISTEN TO ME FERPETESAKE!"
"Seriously?"

In the end, my brain got its way. I figured I'd go ahead and write the ending that way and then change it later if it didn't work. But it did work. So I didn't change it.

I submitted the story to the anthology, and it was rejected. Instead, it's found a home at Etopia.

Have you ever had a story that surprised you like that? If so, please share. I'd hate to think I'm the only one who sits at Starbucks while weird conversations go on in my head.

1 comments:

Katie O'Connor said...

Don't you just hate when you are hearing voices in your head? Yesterday, I had lunch with the ladies, and at one point drifted off into in inner monologue about the arguement scene in my WIP. It seems that blurting "What the hell?" in the middle of someone's happy story is NOT acceptable behavior. Sigh!