Why Write This Story?

Of all the potential story ideas we cracked out of coconuts in yesterday's post, the one that got under my skin was Joe-Bob VanDermeer's situation (he's got a last name now, that's how you know it's getting serious).

We've discussed how a science fiction writer can get ideas. Now, how does the writer choose which idea becomes a story?

The answer is as diverse as the writer. No doubt an action-adventure oriented sf writer (think Michael Crichton) would have gone for bioweapon smuggling in coconut shells. Other writers may have been attracted to the idea of crime rings selling illicit tubs of petroleum based Tide on the black market. Some would have gone for a futuristic Great Gatsby in which rich women trapped in their personal corporate hells let loose at wild parties where they dance wearing nothing but coconut shells. After a brainstorming session, one of the resulting ideas keeps popping up in the writer's head- in the shower, commuting to work, peeling potatoes- a certain situation will worm its way into the brain and get lodged there. The only way to get it back out is to write it. Joe-Bob got stuck in my head, and he'll be the subject of my next story.

Can a writer know that a story will be a best-seller (or a seller, at all) before writing it? Not unless it's possible to ride on the confidence of name recognition and previous success. But, wait a minute, doesn't the writer want some kind of guarantee all the work of writing the story will be worthwhile? Yes, of course! I'll explain how you find the guarantee in a minute.

Over the last twenty-four hours Joe-Bob VanDermeer has been simmering in my brain. Here's what I know about him:

1. He hates coconut-based biodiesel with a passion and refuses to buy a vehicle that runs on it because he and his father were counting on ethanol (corn-based fuel) making them enough money to keep the family farm. The U.S. has turned its back on the small, independent American farmer by approving vehicles that run on Copranol instead of Ethanol- allowing poor nations overseas to get "rich" while Joe-Bob struggles to hold the family's land. To make matters worse for Joe-Bob, vehicles that don't run on Copranol are no longer made- and neither is Copranol-free diesel.
   
2. He's a die-hard Lutheran. He believes the conception of his son is a miracle. He identifies with Abraham as a hero figure, but is not so crazy as to think he is Abraham and his child is Isaac.
3. He wants the child to be a boy so much, that he refuses to believe he's going to have a daughter even after Peggy's sonogram. Though this appears sheerly sexist, we will learn that Joe-Bob's family life is extremely female-dominated. He's craving male companionship and misses the father-son relationship he had with his (dead) dad.
   
4. He loves his family with all his heart.

Joe-Bob is precisely the kind of person I wouldn't be friends with- provincial, hyper-religious, suspicious and jealous of foreign people and ideas, sexist. But he's only got one job in the female-dominated process of bringing his "miracle" child into the world- to get Peggy to the hospital for the delivery. He's determined to bring his son into the world his own way- to drive Peggy to the hospital on coconut-free diesel. Trouble is, regular diesel doesn't exist, anymore. I know Joe-Bob is going to go on a search to find it, I know Peggy's going into labor early- forcing his hand. I know at the last minute Joe-Bob's going to remember his father's old tractor, and that the couple will be tooling down the highway in an antique John Deere, stopping up traffic from Boonsville to Urbandale. The image of Joe-Bob and his pregnant wife put-putting to the emergency room in a tractor makes me love him, and makes me intrigued to learn more about the woman sitting beside him, knee jammed against the tiller.

The ideas that came together to form the scenes above came from researching solutions to our current environmental problems. Then like tinder they were sparked by images from my childhood in Iowa: eating dust on stretches of highway while creeping behind tractors who shouldn't have been on the road, my grandfather's farm, government cars with corn ears painted on the doors (Ethanol advertisements), and by stories from my husband's grandmother about the birth of her children, stories of friends who have had sonograms. The only person who could possibly write Joe-Bob Vandermeer's story is me. That's what I'm selling, that's what I'm offering to my readers- a story that only I can write. That's how I know its worth creating, and worth sharing with the world.