Past or Future?

Welcome one and all to my blog!  Please bear with me as I step out of my comfort zone and into a new experience of talking about a subject I absolutely love—creativity!

Since God is creative, and we are made in His image, it’s only natural that we should desire to create, originate, and orchestrate all sorts of things.  Making something that has never existed before is deeply gratifying.  You must try it.  It’s at the top of my list of fulfilling and fun things to do. 

The most recent type of creativity I have delved into is writing.  I think I may enjoy it more than anything else I’ve ever tried.  As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a camera.  When I was ten years old, my parents bought me a Brownie camera.  I loved it.  I wish I hadn’t lost it . . . it might be worth a small fortune today!  Anyway, because I have always enjoyed taking pictures, an idea for a story about a camera came to me one day.  This camera would be unlike any other camera in the world.  Wherever you pointed it, it would take a picture of what happened in that spot a day ago, a week ago, a month ago, or even a year ago, depending how far you rotated the aperture ring.  How amazing would that be if such an object really existed!  Perhaps I should spend my time trying to invent such a device rather than simply writing about it.

The second thing to tackle was where would someone find it?  Since my sister and I have always loved to explore old deserted houses and shacks, I thought an abandoned cabin in the woods might be the ideal location.

Next I needed to decide who would find it.  How about three teenagers (Brandon, Mark, and Natalie) on an outing in a wooded area close to Austin, Texas, the day after Thanksgiving?  Yes, that sounded perfect.  Once my teenagers discovered that the camera could take pictures of the past, they would definitely be the adventurous types to find exciting ways to use it. 

Then I thought it would be really cool if they accidentally realized that when they twisted the aperture ring in the opposite direction, it would show the future. That made the camera super-valuable.  The picture would reveal to them what would happen in a certain spot the next day, the next week, or even a year from then.  Talk about amazing!

After that I had to create the plot and determine what the teens would do with their valuable possession.  What would you do if you had a camera that was capable of telling the past and the future of any spot you photographed?

The three teenagers considered taking a picture of the winning lottery numbers, then buying a ticket with those numbers.  However, Natalie discouraged that idea.  Everyone she had known who’d won a vast sum of money overnight did wild and crazy things with it, and the fortune eventually ruined their lives.

So what should Brandon, Mark, and Natalie do? 

The neat thing I’ve discovered in writing stories is after I’ve given my characters their personalities, they seem to write the account themselves.  I just type what the individuals tell me to type—you know—I simply record what I hear them saying or doing in any given situation.  Sometimes I have no idea where their actions will direct the tale, but I love it.  The process really works!

I created Brandon to be a big, tough, muscular fellow who is ready to tackle any problem, no matter how dangerous it might be.  Therefore, he suggested they use the camera to solve crimes, then collect the reward money.  That way they weren’t gaining a ton of money at once—just enough to pay their way through college—and they’d be helping victims of the crime and the police at the same time.

They discussed his proposal and agreed to his plan.

But guess what.  That might have sounded like a great idea, but things began to go wrong—they have to in a story, or you don’t have a story—and the nasty characters the teens encountered could not understand how three immature teenagers kept bringing them down, so the criminals eventually came after Brandon, Mark, and Natalie with a vengeance.

Anyway, my story (their story) continued until it reached a satisfying conclusion, and when it did, it ended.  So a word to the wise—you must throw lots of problems at your main character or characters and lots of challenges for them to work through to keep those readers turning your pages.

I still remember what my dad said years ago when our whole family sat watching a thriller on TV.  Someone would invariably say, “They shouldn’t have done that,” or “How dumb of them,” or some such comment.  His answer was always, “If you had written it, there wouldn’t be a story!”  How true.  Stories need to be filled with problems the protagonist must conquer, or the tale won’t hold our interest.

Anyway, these were my thoughts when I wrote my first book.  And before I finish writing any story, I always try to think of a catchy title.  After all, I’ve bought many a book simply because I found the name of the book intriguing, haven’t you?  I oftentimes like to name my stories a familiar saying or a line everyone’s heard, like The Mouse Ran Up the Clock or All That Glitters Isn’t Gold.  Don’t get me wrong—I’ve never named one of my books either of those two, but don’t such titles pique your curiosity?  I thought so.  Anyway, I opted for Time Will Tell . . . that’s a catchy phrase we all say often, and it fit the book perfectly.  After all, the past or future actually did tell the teens what they needed to know.

The final thing to do with a story you plan to self-publish is to design a cover for it.  That was a total blast.  I photographed an old camera of mine, then took the picture into Photoshop and blurred everything but the lens.  Next I drew two boys and a girl running to indicate the tension of the plot, scanned them in, and with a few funky filters skewed them to make their images look like they were reflected on the curvature of the glass.  If there’s anything more fun to play with than Photoshop, I don’t know what it is!

 

There you have it.  The journey of the creation of my first book.  You must try writing one.  It’s big fun.