An Open Mind
By Jeff Mariotte
The question commonly asked of writers by people who don’t really understand writing is the old chestnut, “Where do you get your ideas?” By this, they usually refer to the overarching idea for any given book. We each have our own way of answering the question, whether it’s a genuine attempt to describe the genesis of a project or a joke, along the lines of “From a factory in Hackensack.”
On further reflection, though, I think the question, as stated if not as intended, is a legitimate one, and the answer we give, whatever it may be, is usually to a question that wasn’t asked.
Certainly there are books that are built predominantly on one “high-concept” idea. What if dinosaurs could be cloned and brought back to life? What if Jesus had a family, and the Vatican would do anything to keep it a secret? What if a friendly Saint Bernard dog were infected with a particularly virulent form of rabies that turned him into a four-legged death machine? (As a partial digression, I still remember the morning-show interview with Robert B. Parker and Stephen King, shortly before Cujo’s release, when King was trying to be cagey about just what Cujo was really about. Parker goaded him and wouldn’t let up until King finally exploded with, “Okay, it’s a dog! Are you happy? It’s a book about a dog!” Or words to that effect. It was all done in good humor, and Parker cracked up at King’s response. But King was right to be cagey. Cujo is about a dog, but it’s about so much more than that, too, and that, dear reader, is what I’m getting at here.)
Because most of our books are not those easy “elevator pitch” books, but are much harder to summarize in one pithy line. And every book, no matter how high the concept, contains not one or two or ten ideas, but hundreds or thousands. And the getting of those ideas is about half of what we as writers do that non-writers don’t or can’t do. The other half is setting those ideas down in sentences and paragraphs. All the language skills we might possess, however, don’t do us a jot of good if we can’t snatch the ideas from the idea fairy’s basket in the first place.
The thing our questioners don’t really understand is that every page of every book contains a plethora of ideas. Sure, the basic thrust of the book is the result of an idea (or more commonly, I believe, of two or more ideas jammed together in an unexpected way). But page by page, line by line, the ideas have to keep coming or the book doesn’t go anywhere. Who is the protagonist? What was her family life like? What did his father and mother do for a living? How many siblings? Where did they live? Why? Did they move? Where to? Why? Where does the protagonist work now? Why? What is her romantic life like? Does she have children? Is he left-handed? Does he listen to hip-hop? Country? Classical?
The answer to each of these questions, and thousands more like them, for every character in the book, every location, every situation, are ideas had by the writer, grasped and set down in type. Some of them are minor, but others will lead the writer to greater understanding of his or her story, and therefore will relate directly to the artistic success of the book. A few wrong ideas can set it rolling in the wrong direction, while the right ideas, put together in the right order, will create a satisfying and worthwhile read.
To illustrate my point, let me discuss the most recent book I’ve finished. Last month in this space I wrote about waiting, and one of the things I said I was waiting for was to learn whether or not a book (that I wrote while waiting for various work-for-hire gigs to come about) would sell. Turns out it did, and it will be published in mass-market paperback next year.
The book is called Missing White Girl, and like most books there were a couple of big ideas that came together, in addition to the thousands of smaller ones.
The first—a true story that has haunted me for more than a decade—is the story of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca found himself shipwrecked and stranded on America’s Gulf Coast in 1528. He lived as a slave among the natives, until he escaped. Eventually he found three companions, two Spaniards and a Moor, from his expedition. The four men traveled ever westward, either across Mexico or southern Texas, encountering various tribes. They developed reputations as powerful healers, which they attributed to the intercession of the Christian God and which their patients attributed to magical powers. Finally, having won the trust of the native populations, they led a procession of thousands, until they were reunited with Spanish soldiers in Mexico—soldiers who were busy killing and enslaving the local native population, the sorts of people who had become such good friends of Cabeza de Vaca and his comrades.
These four were the first non-Indians to enter the American southwest (depending on which interpretation of their route one chooses to believe). They practiced magic among people to whom magic was second nature. They united tribes, survived against incredible odds, and lived exactly as the natives did, until they found their own kind, whose goals were entirely at odds with their own experience. It’s a great story, and I have long wanted to do something with it.
The other main idea that occurs in Missing White Girl is just what the title implies—I wanted to look at the recent media phenomenon, the circus that a missing white girl inspires, especially in 224-hour cable news. Natalee Holloway is a prime example, although far from the only one. Her story is a tragic one, but is it different, substantively, from the story of a black hooker who disappears in Seattle and is assumed to be a victim of the Green River Killer? Or a Mexican girl who disappears in Juarez, possibly to become one of the 400 or so murder victims there in the past several years? Or any young person who disappears anywhere? Why do we fixate on some and essentially ignore others?
There’s another missing white girl in the novel, as well, but you’ll just have to read it to find out what she’s all about.
I set the book in the region where I live, in Arizona’s rural Sulhpur Springs Valley. The basic premise is that a missing white girl in a nearby community has sucked up all the media attention and therefore all the law enforcement resources, so when a black/Hispanic girl goes missing from a rural community, the local Sheriff’s office, run by Lieutenant Buck Shelton, himself a rancher as well as a cop, has to investigate with very little support from anyone else.
The book is a supernatural thriller, which means there are paranormal elements to the investigation and the puzzle. The Cabeza de Vaca story winds up playing an important role in the plot, because one thing that fascinates me, in fiction as in life, is history’s impact on contemporary life. Because the book is set where it is, on the US/Mexico border, immigration and border issues also come into play.
Each of the elements described are ideas, and built around these ideas are the smaller ideas I talked about earlier. Each character, each setting, each action was another idea. It’s the cramming together of all these ideas into a cohesive narrative that makes a novel.
No writer can live in a vacuum and simply pull ideas from vapor, my crack about the idea fairy notwithstanding. A book comes from observation and interpretation, from reading and watching and experiencing life, and from those things generating the ideas and the technique for putting them together. These thousands of ideas are what give a work of fiction its life, its interest. The writer has to be
receptive to these ideas, and to those moments of inspiration that spark them. The writer has to keep an open mind so the ideas will come when they’re needed (and has to know which to discard and which to nurture).
Because border issues interest me I read about them, in local papers and national ones, in books and magazines. I got to know a reporter who covers them locally, and through him met Border Patrol agents. Because Cabeza de Vaca fascinated me, I read multiple accounts of his journey and learned that one possible route brought him right through my valley, possibly right across my property (although probably not). Because my mind was open to possibilities I saw a way to combine those elements with the missing white girl phenomenon, and then to layer in the smaller ideas that supported these major ones.
I just returned from a trip to Texas, and while on the trip I was exposed to things I would not have seen had I not gone. Some of these things tie in to thoughts that have been germinating in my head for a while for another book—which, now, may well be set in Texas. I’m not sure yet that all the major ideas that have to be stuffed together have come to me, but enough of them have that I can massage them and make the rest show up.
Ideas aren’t hard to get. They’re hard to manage, and managing them is what writing is all about. Keeping an open mind and being available to the right ideas at the right time—then taking those and structuring them into a story—that’s the trick.
That, to close on another chestnut, is why we get the big bucks.
