Laura Lee Smith has been a role model of mine for years now, and she always has the best ideas for writing prompts that most certainly don’t suck!
I first met Laura when I was working on a live radio show called Swamp Radio. She regularly contributed her writing to the show, and her work was always charming and striking for our actors to read. And after reading her books, I can confirm that her writing is just as striking on the page.
O, The Oprah Magazine called her novel Heart of Palm “incandescent,” and I think that’s the perfect way to describe everything Laura writes, including her second book, The Ice House.
What kinds of prompts do you use while working on your novels?
The best prompts for me are those that get my characters moving. I look for ways to put them in action and get them busy in some sort of effort that may yield tension and create opportunities for advancing plot or developing character.
So I keep a file on my desktop called “Shit that Happens,” and whenever I come across an event, a situation, or a catalyst for action, I drop it into that file to be retrieved later as a prompt. Things that happen to me in the course of a day, or things I hear about happening to other people, may be fodder for Shit that Happens. Here are some recent entries:
Someone’s car air-conditioning breaks.
A woman drops a paring knife on her bare foot and must drive herself to the clinic for stitches.
A neighbor knocks on the door and asks to borrow yeast.
An avid Weight Watcher succumbs to craving and gets in the drive-thru line at Dairy Queen.
A tree-trimming crew drives recklessly and knocks down the power lines in a neighborhood.
Tim Gilmore put that last one on Facebook! And it’s a gem. Because now your characters are out in the street, getting mad at the tree trimmers, bitching about their downed power and internet, and generally bumping up against each other. This is activity. This is movement. There are opportunities here for dialogue, character development, and exploration of setting. In the midst of this, something serious can happen—say, a character gets a phone call that his mother is dying. But because the character is already engaged in something active and real, the moment of conflict—news of his mother’s impending death—has more texture and feels more dynamic.
The settings of your books are always so thorough. What kind of research do you conduct in order to build a setting?
For surface-level research, I cannot imagine living without Google and YouTube. These two tools help me with the kinds of fact-checking you need to ensure verisimilitude in fiction. If my character is a sixty-five-year-old Miami Dolphins fan, for example, he needs to know that Bob Griese was the quarterback in the Fins’ 1974 Super Bowl win against the Vikings. And I need to know that, too. Google gives me the rapid-fire ability to check details and keep writing. YouTube gives me additional nuances—like glimpses of 70’s era fan gear and a view of Houston’s Rice Stadium, where the game was played. Of course, I must be careful not to let these tools become the rabbit hole that destroys my momentum while I’m writing a scene. It’s easy to follow a trail of breadcrumbs on Google and before you know it you’ve lost thirty minutes or more. Get in, get out. Check your facts and keep writing.
For deeper research, I read novels set in the place or era I am writing about, and I try to immerse myself in relevant non-fiction, as well. While researching ice production for my novel The Ice House, I happened upon a huge online PDF of an actual operating manual for a functioning ice factory. That was invaluable. It was pretty dry reading, but it provided me with a real understanding of how ice is made, which opened the door to a lot of scenes, metaphors, and dialogue opportunities that I never would have unearthed on my own.
Is research essential to the novel-writing process? Or can it impede a writer from actually writing?
I think it’s essential, for the reasons noted above. The devil is in the details, as they say. When a novelist is gestating a story and a character, the primary elements will come from deep within the artist’s imagination. You don’t need research to create a compelling character or to dream up a satisfying storyline. But I think you do need a certain amount of research and fact-finding to build the texture of the world in which your character lives their story.
This is true even if you are writing a contemporary story set in a location with which you are familiar. You can never know too much about your character, and in the process of getting to know your character you may find things that you’re unfamiliar with. Oh, your protagonist is a wanna-be botanist? You didn’t know that before you started, but when you wrote that scene about her happening upon the plumeria behind Aunt Dotty’s carport while sneaking a cigarette, you realized that she needs to have a lot more knowledge of flowers and plants than you have yourself. So—research. It’s like mortar. It helps you fill in the details and ensure that your narrative foundation is solid, that there are no holes in the detail-cement. A hole in the foundation presents a danger that your reader will catch her heel and feel disengaged from the story.
What’s a failsafe writing prompt you’d recommend to any writer who’s feeling stuck?
Here’s a fun one that you can do over and over and always come up with something different. I think this prompt came from Janet Burroway.
Take a piece of paper and quickly sketch a floor plan of the first place you remember living. Maybe your family lived in an apartment, or an oceanfront home, or your grandparents’ basement. Quickly sketch out the location of the rooms, the windows, the doors, the porches, the stairs, etc. This can be very rough… you just need some gestural lines to work with.
Now draw an “X” on your floor plan to mark the places where something memorable happened to you or where you witnessed something happening to someone else. Could be good, could be bad. Memory is a powerful thing, and you don’t know what might bubble up. These “X” marks identify seeds that may be able to grow into scenes for your novel.
I did this recently and found myself marking an “X” on my floor plan to mark the small bathroom just off my parents’ bedroom in our first house. When we were small children, my brother and I stole my father’s pocket knife and took it into that bathroom to examine it. The switchblade snapped open unexpectedly and cut my thumb. There was blood all over the vanity. I remember my brother trying to wrap soggy toilet paper around my hand to stanch the bleeding, trying to convince me not to cry and not to call for our mother. I remember the pain of the wound but also the thrill of summoning the stoicism to appease my big brother. I think there’s a scene there… something that may come up in a character’s memory, or something that may occur in real time between two children in a story or novel.
You can say hi to Laura over on her Facebook page, and while you’re at it, get your hands on Heart of Palm and The Ice House as soon as humanly possible.
What are some of your favorite writing prompts?
I asked a handful of fellow writers to tell me how they get writing. Here’s what they shared with me.
“Reading always makes me want to write. When I make time for fiction, I always write more.” —Sarah
“I begin all of my stories by writing about a feeling or memory of a feeling that I know really well. This helps me get the story started from an authentic place and gets my writing mind moving at a fast pace from the get-go.” —Mara
Want to be included in a future issue of Lonely Victories? Answer some questions on upcoming topics and I may include your response!
Really Digging This
Here’s what I’ve been reading, watching, and loving lately.
If you’re wondering where to start your education on the prison-industrial complex, the documentary 13th is a great place to dive in. Grab a pen. Take notes. And while you’re at it, consider purchasing books like Women, Race, & Class by activist Angela Davis, pictured above.
It’s been remarkable seeing books about antiracism hit the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists! But let’s make sure those books we’re purchasing don’t collect dust on our shelves. This is our moment to read and learn as much as we can.
I learned so much from this Jenny Mustard video about reading routines. I’ve always been a one-book-at-a-time kind of gal, but Jenny’s routine convinced me to try adding to my stack. I’ve also been convinced for years that I don’t have the attention span for audiobooks, but listening at 1.5 speed like she suggests has helped me concentrate!
Tell me about your lonely victories.
“I wrote fiction for four full hours the other day.” —Sarah
“After years of writing on my personal blog, two of my articles have been published in online journals! Woohoo!” —Taylor
What’s a lonely victory you’ve had in your writing life? Tell me all about it here!
The books featured in this issue of Lonely Victories are linked to Loyalty Bookstores, a group of black-owned independent bookstores in Washington, DC and Silver Spring, MD. I hope you’ll do your part in supporting black-owned businesses with me!
Special thanks to Becca Wucker for editing this newsletter and to Aysha Miskin for the banner lettering.
“Writing alone can give you a very deep sense of satisfaction and lonely victory.” —Greta Gerwig