Today, Award Winning author Vannetta Chapman writes about how stories come about, and what makes them into a book.  Vannetta has published over a hundred articles in Christian family magazines, has won dozens of awards from RMA chapters, and been a finalist for a Carol Award. She taught for fifteen years, but now writes full time in the Texas hill country.

Truth or Fiction?

I’m often asked, “Where do you get your story ideas?” The short answer is “Everywhere.” Different writers are inspired by different things. We are all bombarded daily by information—some is amusing, some is tragic, and a lot is mundane day-to-day stuff. Which of those ideas can be developed into a good story? After publishing 16 books in 5 years, I can share what works for me.

Characters First. While a news story might catch my attention, it’s the people in that story that I feel I can develop into a full length novel. In Anna’s Healing, my recent release, it wasn’t a story of a miraculous healing that inspired the novel. It was speaking with an Amish farmer about someone he knew who had been healed. The young man’s story captured my imagination. What would it be like to face that sort of heart break and then joy? How would your family react? How would your church treat you? What about the doctors? Once I was able to put myself in that person’s point of view, the story pretty much wrote itself.

Plot Twists. While I might begin with characters, plot twists abound everywhere. A new smart phone app that allows a person to track another person’s location provided a wonderful twist in my recent cozy mystery, Murder Freshly Baked. A python that attacked its owner fit well into Murder Simply Brewed. An article on service dogs for military personnel with PTSD also worked nicely into Murder Freshly Baked.

Nailing the Ending. There are some personal interest stories that make me walk around with a smile on my face for the rest of the day. It might be about a person who is generous to a stranger, or someone who found love late in life, or the reunion of old friends. These kinds of real life stories touch our heart. They give us hope! And they make for wonderful fictional endings as well.

Where do you look? If you want to try using real life events to inspire your fiction, where do you look? For me, the answer has been to let the story come to me. I like to browse the news. I enjoy scrolling through Facebook or Twitter. The truth is that people are interesting, and there are all sorts of stories out there. So go ahead. Give yourself 15 minutes to sit back and peruse the news. If you’re a writer, you might find something helpful. And if you’re a reader, you might read something that will pop up on your local fiction shelf soon.

JIM:  Not a bad outline on getting that book out.  Here’s a blurb for her book Ana’s Healing published just last month.  I’ve read it and can recommend it.  Good book with some unexpected twists.

When a tornado strikes, Anna Schwartz’s life is changed forever. She suffers a spinal cord injury and finds herself learning to live as a paraplegic. But then a miracle happens, and the world’s attention is drawn to this young Amish girl who has experienced the unexplainable.

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http://vannettachapman.com

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