Some people have asked me if my stories ever evolve into something different than I was expecting. Or if my stories ever change as I’m writing them. Sometimes they do slightly, other times quite a bit.
Did you want to see what the changes for one story look like?
I give you Gift from the Storm
Sometimes my stories start in unusual ways. This story was unplanned and was one of those random things that popped into my brain was night and I thought I’d just write down what I was thinking. I had no idea where it was going to go.
I wrote a few thousand words and posted them on my blog, but unlike The Unexpected Request, this one didn’t get any comments or people asking what happened next. It sat for months with just the first part of the story on my blog while I was busy writing and posting and publishing other things.
Then I got the urge to write this story again. And a few readers decided they wanted more.
But who was Amy? I didn’t know. I was in the dark as much as Justin, Adam, and their father were. Several times I sat at the supper table and talked over ideas of who and where with my family. I kept writing and tried idea after idea, but, as Justin found out, they led to dead end after dead end.
At last it came together! Was it what I had first thought it would be? Nope. Did I like it better? Yep!
Oh, and if you get to wondering, I’m ‘Sara” in the book. Only skip the cooking. My grandma read the book and said, “You gave yourself the wrong name in here.”
When it came time for the cover, I had no idea! I had only just started designing covers and was at a loss for this one. So I hired Perry Kirkpatrick and she designed this wonderful cover! Isn’t it lovely?
A few years after it was published in paperback and kindle, I had it recorded for Audible. The reader did a great job and commented to me that he and his wife really enjoyed it and wished there were more stories like this one out there.
Have you read this book? Have you ever written a book where you didn’t know the ending when you started it? Which of my books would you like to see featured in a post like this one?
This is one of my favorites of your books.
Aw, thanks. 🙂
This is one of my favorites of yours as well, right up there with Stephen and Through the Tunnel and Dylan’s Story and… :p It’s a little different from your other books though, probably because it’s a mystery, but a different sort of mystery.
And I had wondered as I was reading it if Sara was you (though of course minus the cooking :p)!
I normally don’t write like that, not knowing how the story will end, but I’ve been trying it for the first time with the novel I’m working on now. There have been things about plotting that I’ve realized work better for me, but I’ve also realized that there are some elements of pantsing that I’ll probably keep doing. Pantsing has seemed to make my story less predictable. It sure did with Gift from the Storm!
Hmm… I think I’d like to hear the story behind Dylan’s Story. 😀
Yep, Sara is me. 😀
Oh, that’s fun that you can do some plotting and some pantsing when you write.
Maybe I’ll have to do Dylan’s Story next time I do one of these posts.
This was the first book of yours I ever read, Auntie! And one of my favourites still. And the cover is beyond gorgeous. I find it interesting you didn’t know the solution! 😀
I love the cover too! 🙂