I share My Personal Top 5 Reasons AUTHORS (especially me) Benefit From (touring and visiting) Historical Residences. I’ve visited many and share highlights as well as personal epiphanies of the value of researching history up close and personal.
I share a full scene that didn’t make it into the finished novel: The Bride Lottery. I’ll explain why this scene was cut from the final version during editing.
Question: How do authors determine where to begin the story?
Answer: I imagine in a group of five authors, you’d obtain at least 2 different answers. How’s that for ambiguous?
Every writer has developed their own methods that work for them. We’re all different, as unique as our fingerprints. My method of ensuring my books start at the right place may be quite different from someone else’s methods and that’s perfectly OK. My answer to this question: “As late as possible.”
This means I skip as much back story as possible– details that don’t really matter for the crux of the story yet it still makes sense. We dive right into action. It’s the latest possible moment when that “something” happens and everything changes.
Inside, I share a full, polished opening scene (not published in The Bride Lottery), deleted when I realized in the final drafts that the story was beginning too early.
Historic recipes are a valuable link to our immigrant ancestors (whether the actual recipe is a family heirloom or not). This recipe for shortbread and Pebber Nodder (Danish Butter Cookies) put me in mind of my great grandmother. I include the Top 5 Reasons why I care about old fashioned cookie recipes.
One of my favorite sources of inspiration is antique photographs. Who were these people? The possibilities seem endless. The images are unlabelled without so much as a year or a photographic studio imprint. That’s where imagination must take over.
