The Great INDIE Summer Read Giveaway – Day #5

One Author’s Story Triggers – Misti Wolanski

Thanks, Katja, for hosting this fantastic giveaway!

When Katja asked for guest posters, I was interested but a bit intimidated. I’ve not been at this author thing for all that long, with only one novel out and another coming July 1st. Still, every writer has a list of questions that their readers ask most often.

My FAQ? “How did you come up with this?!”

How, indeed.

Stories are developed in a writer’s subconscious.  I frankly believe that it’s impossible to track down everything that influenced a story.  But I’m usually aware of a trigger, something I encounter that kicks me into writing a story and guides me in developing it.

I’m currently writing two YA fantasy series.  A Fistful of Fire, released April 1st, is traditional fantasy.  Destiny’s Kiss, planned for release July 1st, is urban fantasy.  For both A Fistful of Fire and Destiny’s Kiss, that “kick” for starting them was a desire to break clichés.  That desire ended up displaying itself in different ways, between the two, but it’s the same root.

A Fistful of Fire spawned from a desire make fun of some genre stereotypes while still using them in a recognizable way.  One day about 8 years ago, I realized it would be fun to write a story that intentionally subverted tropes common to high fantasy.

Instead of an elegant half-elf, my quarter-elf heroine would be a klutz.  Instead of discovering at a random moment that she was royal-born and heir to a prophecy, Evonalé would grow up knowing and want to hide that information from everyone around her.  I even chose the first person and present tense because the fantasy standard at the time was all third person, past tense.

But those choices were all surface matter.  It was another choice that sculpted A Fistful of Fire: the decision that my heroine would be royalty—and be paranoid of royalty, to boot.  The story developed out of the need to both give Evonalé a reason for her paranoia and keep her believable despite it.  She’s the narrator, after all, and narrator paranoia easily becomes annoying.

Destiny’s Kiss came of a desire to break clichés.  I’d been reading urban fantasy and YA paranormal romance (yes, including the entire sparkly vampire quartet).  I’d noticed that both genres often featured really old supernatural guys fall for young ‘normal’ girls who were actually super-special.  (For the record, I’m not calling these features bad.  They’re just common.)

I liked the down-to-earth magic and politics of the urban fantasy, and the teenage lens of the YA paranormals.  So I set out to write a YA urban fantasy, without the ancient guy/normal girl dynamic.  I created my narrator.  I created her background—one that left her with teenage, magical, and political worries, emotionally complicated by the detail that she’s a devout Christian.  Navigating those concerns produced the story.

But with her background, she couldn’t be ‘normal’.  Main characters often have (super-)special powers.  I couldn’t remember encountering any who were dangerous enough to be lethal dangers to themselves.  The end result will end up a series of at least five books.

Two books, two different subgenres, two different routes to producing them… but both born of a desire to abuse genre tropes.

About the author

Misti Wolanski has always loved to play in fantasy land, but it took her a while to figure out that ‘finish a story’ thing. She now writes young adult fantasy in-between freelancing as a web writer, crocheting small toys, and knitting jewelry. Find her online at http://mistiwolanski.com, or visit her blog at http://carradee.blogspot.com.

Today’s Extra Entries

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The Great #INDIEsummer Read Giveaway – Day 5! http://bit.ly/iHfKzS Guest post by @carradee #litchat #reading #bookgiveaway

Follow Misti’s blog! http://carradee.blogspot.com/

First Time Here?

How can you win? Simply by filling out this form and you’re then in the drawing that will happen when the giveaway is over on 31st of July.

You can gain extra entries. The daily posts will have snippets of the books in the giveaway, guest posts and interviews. Each day you will get links to webpages relevant to the presented books. You get extra entries by commenting on the daily posts, following the linked author blogs/websites. You need to tell on your daily comment if you’ve done some of the other things granting you extra entries. It’s important for you to use the same nickname & email combination throughout the giveaway so all the extra entries can be added up.

You can also gain extra entries by tweeting the giveaway! You can use the example tweets to tweet on the daily posts if you don’t want to come up with something of your own. Always remember to use the #INDIEsummer hashtag.