A Surprise Novel ~ Part 2

Joanna Davidson Politano

Part 2

. . . I ended up using the outline for about three chapters and scrapping the rest (then going back and changing those three chapters later). I’d heard plotting made the work faster, but that’s just not how my brain unfolds mysteries!

I can’t tell you how many times I’d write about ten chapters, feel totally wrong about the story, and delete six of those. (My motto is when you feel like your draft is bad, delete to the point where you were still smitten with it and go a different direction for the rest. It feels like backtracking, but you move forward with smoother, better material.) I’ve done the “fast and furious” first draft with promises to myself to go back and fix it later, but that’s another one of those “not my style” tricks. I need a solid foundation laid with each chapter for the next to be any good. So I actually did a lot of deleting and rewriting with this book, and it became a frustrating one.

Then I stumbled upon my inspiration. During one of my “stuck” periods, a friend suggested I watch a related show called, “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered” and I truly fell in love. In the evenings of that drafting stage, I binged every episode about the dead letter office and misplaced letters. I didn’t glean plot ideas, but I was inspired. The subtle way truth was woven in, the gentle but authentic dynamic between well-drawn characters, it all invited me to craft an even better story.

When I finally had the first draft done, with a month until deadline, it still felt wrong. I sent it to my mentor for feedback and he told me hey, I know you think this is the theme, but it’s actually this totally different thing over here. He had many other helpful notes too, but that single sentence woke me up to the “point” of my story—after I’d already written the whole thing in another vein. But he was right, and the theme he brought forward actually did exist strongly in the book already. I reimagined the ending, the part that would “drive home” the theme, and out blossomed the most surprising, beautiful truth about the human search for love, to know and be known. At last, I was deeply in love with this story and the truth it brought out. The entire story came together as a cohesive whole around this other theme I hadn’t even seen before.

I learned a lot in this project about not forcing anything—chapters that don’t work, writing techniques meant for someone else, and even themes that aren’t quite what the book is trying to say—even if it’s what you intended to say. I will say though, that moment of revelation concerning this story’s (really cool) theme came pretty late in the game, but it was very much worth the wait.

Joanna Davidson Politano is the award-winning author of Lady Jayne Disappears, A Rumored Fortune, and Finding Lady Enderly. When she’s not homeschooling her small children, she spends much of her time spinning tales that capture the colorful,exquisite details in ordinary lives. She is always on the hunt for random acts of kindness, people willing to share their deepest secrets with a stranger, and hidden stashes of sweets. She lives with her husband and their two children in a house in thewoods near Lake Michigan and shares stories that move her at www.jdpstories.com.

A Surprise Novel ~ Part 1

Joanna Davidson Politano

This novel surprised me. I was desperately scrambling for a nugget of an idea to offer my publisher when they requested it. I had two ideas already but no glimmer of a third, so I frantically looked around. The first thing I saw was a framed photo of my grandparents, coy smiles and all, from when they were dating. They’d met only a handful of times, and their entire relationship was carried out through letters while my grandpa was overseas in WWII. How cool, I thought—but also dangerous. How easy to misinterpret something or miss information in a dropped letter… or even have someone else write it! When you barely know a person, so many things can go wrong. Which, of course, is perfect for a story.

I decided on a lost love letter concept for my third book idea and hastily scratched out a paragraph to send my publisher. A career-minded girl finds a passionate love letter in the crack of an old desk and becomes determined to deliver the note that was never opened, and to play matchmaker to the unknown couple. Back at the seaside manor home where the desk (and letter) came from, someone else finds the letter when the heroine misplaces it and the poor maid believes she has a secret admirer—perfect story fodder. Trouble ensues. Confusion, suspicion, secret longing, denied love… all great stuff. I’d work out the details later, and let the story percolate—or even come up with a better idea to send them—while I wrote the other two books in the contract.

Plot twist—they wanted me to write the love note book first! So with nothing but a short paragraph to go on, I constructed a story about a declarative love letter from some unknown individual that was never opened—was it not found? Had someone refused to open it and set it aside? I had a brilliant answer for all that. Really brilliant. What if the letter was slipped into the old desk for the heroine (to whom the desk was given as a hand-me-down) to find, and her childhood friend wrote it for her? How cool!

And predictable, and a little too coincidental. I wrote with that ending in mind but at about sixty percent I could sense how cliché that twist actually was and knew I needed to make a sharp turn in a new direction. Not that I knew who wrote the letter or who it was for, but the cliché answer was gone. I felt much better after that, so I kept turning more and more corners, and surprising (and amusing) myself completely! I probably drove my poor characters nuts with how off track they really were so many times in their search for the letter writer.

That wasn’t the only big shift I made in this book, though. I started out attempting to plot this book out before writing it, which was utterly disastrous. Not to say plotting doesn’t work—it certainly can. It’s writing in a style that is not YOU that makes for an epic fail. I spent weeks, maybe months, on a plot outline that, when it went into actual story form, was really quite terrible and full of unnatural bridges from one scene to the next. I ended up using the outline for . . . see part two tomorrow to see what outline she used . . .

Joanna Davidson Politano is the award-winning author of Lady Jayne Disappears, A Rumored Fortune, and Finding Lady Enderly. When she’s not homeschooling her small children, she spends much of her time spinning tales that capture the colorful,exquisite details in ordinary lives. She is always on the hunt for random acts of kindness, people willing to share their deepest secrets with a stranger, and hidden stashes of sweets. She lives with her husband and their two children in a house in thewoods near Lake Michigan and shares stories that move her at www.jdpstories.com.