If you would like to write to Leigh Aubrey, here is his email address: HLeighAubrey@aol.com
My Writing Process
I want to begin by saying no two writers work alike. I have a friend who spends a month plotting her book right down to every scene, who's in it, and what happens. At the other end of the scale, I know a New York Times bestselling author who writes the first sentence without knowing what the second will be. I know another who uses a plot board that covers three sides of her office. Each writer should do what works best for him and ignore everyone else. That said, my approach to writing has worked for more than forty books so there may be something in it that you'll find helpful.
What I Write
Just so you’ll know where I'm coming from, I write contemporary and historical romance, but most of my books are westerns set between 1865 and 1890. So even though my books contain a lot of action, mystery, or are framed around historical events, the romance is the focus of the story. The research required for historical accuracy, while sometimes extensive, is also secondary.
The Idea for a Book: the Set Up
My first problem is to come up with an idea for the book. I always start with a situation rather than the characters. For example, I had an idea for a series of books about seven brothers born into Virginia aristocracy but exiled to a ranch in Texas before the Civil War because their father was a liar, a thief, and a womanizer. The brothers ranged in age from six to twenty-four. The two oldest fought in the war, one losing an arm. The next one vanished, and teenage twins were left to defend the ranch and look after their younger brothers. The first book begins when the two older brothers come back from the war. Each brother bears a psychological wound from his parents and from the war years. Into this contentious family I had to bring the woman who would eventually fall in love with and marry the oldest son. Because of the frictions in the family, she would have to be a healer as much as a wife – and remarkably strong to deal with all these males. I decided to have her be hired as the cook and housekeeper.
Now I have a set up, but I don't have a plot. Two things have to happen. The two protagonists have to fall in love, and the brothers have to rebuild their relationships. That takes place against the backdrop of Texas in 1866 during Reconstruction. Now I hate to outline. I can come up with a backbone of events or crises that will support the story, but I have no idea what my people are going to be like until I start writing the book. I don't know what they'll feel, what they'll say, what they'll do. I know where to start, I have several landmarks along the way, and I know where we end. With that, I start writing the book.
Before I start, however, I have tied these landmarks to changes in the relationship between the protagonists. They make things better and bring them closer together, or they make things worse and jeopardize the happy ending. Since there’s also an external plot involving some kind of action, the landmarks have to tie into that as well. If there’s a fight, someone dies, something is stolen, a lie is exposed – all of these should affect the plot and the emotional arc between the protagonists. I find that five or six points are usually enough for a book.
An example from another series. A young teacher who was an orphan is
taking eight troubled orphans to farmers who plan to adopt them. When
she discovers the farmers actually use them as slave labor, she's
forced to stay momentarily at the run down ranch of a man who's just
come back from the Civil War and needs to get his cattle to market. He
wants to hire the oldest boys to help him. The woman refuses to let him
take some boys and ignore others. She also thinks he's cruel and
unfeeling, exactly what these boys don't need. She feels they need love
any understanding. However, if she doesn't find a home for these boys,
they'll end up on the street and most likely be dead before they're
twenty. In the end, they compromise. He needs cowhands and she needs a
home for the boys. He agrees to hire them all if she'll go with him to
cook and take care of the little ones. Only she can't cook and she was
an only child. The problem is how to bring these two adults together,
and how to make a home for the boys. Again, I had a few landmarks along
the way, and a clear ending. In between, I winged it.I’ve written two gay romances which I approached the same way. In one my main character is a 37-year-old married man who has three sons he adores, a promising political career, and a position as a prominent architect. The physical side of his marriage dried up years ago and he’s maintained a sexual relationship with his best friend who’s in a similar situation. Both think of their relationship as something that has continued from their early teens because of convenience and necessity. Both believe they’re straight and wouldn’t be having sex with each other if they were having it with their wives.
My other character is a twenty-five-year-old man who fought against admitting his sexuality until an indiscretion ruined his marriage and drove him from town. He takes a job in the same firm as the married man, determined to start over and live openly as a gay man. The trouble starts when they unexpectedly fall in love.
First the older man must admit he’s in love, decide it’s too important to ignore, then decide how much he’s willing to risk losing to gain love. The younger man realizes having a relationship without causing the older man to lose everything he worked for most of his life would put him right back in the closet as well as reduce him to a dirty secret. Before the men can decide what to do, the younger man is exposed. After that, everything snowballs out of control.
In a second book, the only son and heir of a very wealthy, white, New York society family feels isolated because he never knows if people like him for himself or his family’s money and power. Introduced to sex with a guy when he was fourteen, he continues to accept it on a few occasions when someone approaches him. Though he thinks he may be bisexual, he knows he must marry and continue the family name and tradition. A bit cynical, he’s inclined to use others as they use him.
His first week in college he meets an extremely handsome black athlete who seems just as lonely. The child of a white father who never knew he existed and a beautiful black mother who abandoned him, the athlete was molested in foster care and by his uncle. He resists the white guy’s overtures of friendship because he can’t believe anybody can be interested in him except for his looks and his body. He’s especially confused as to why a wealthy white guy would want to be his friend. However, he’s just as lonely and wants to believe the guy’s offer of friendship is genuine.
Over three years, they gradually develop a close friendship which eventually becomes physical. The black guy overcomes his abuse and realizes he’s gay and in love with the white guy. The white guy has been so thoroughly programmed to follow the family’s plan he backs off at this point and goes through with the marriage. Only after he’s married and his wife is pregnant with the eagerly awaited heir does he realize he’s really gay and in love with the black guy. Unfortunately, the Black guy won’t allow him to break up his family because he knows what it was like to grow up without a family to love him.
The challenge was to bring them into a friendship despite their different backgrounds and fears before helping them to a solution which would allow them to be with each other.
One other thing. I never bother with secondary characters when I'm working on the idea for a book. I create them as I write, as the story needs them. You may think this is crazy, but when I create only characters I need – and only when I know exactly what niche I want them to fill – I end up with fewer extraneous characters who walk on only to disappear a short time later never to be heard from again. That confuses the reader by cluttering up the stage with non-essential characters.
So what do I have when I sit down to write that first sentence? A time and setting, my protagonists, a set up, and an outline that's rarely over two pages.
Writing and Revising
I'm essentially a first draft writer. By that, I mean I add almost nothing to the book once I've finished the first draft. I describe my approach as organic – each scene grows out of the one before it. I've had books when entire sections of the outline got thrown out and books where big chunks weren't in the original outline. I don't know my characters until they start to speak, to act, to react. By the time I've written the first hundred pages, I know who I'm writing about. That sometimes means I have to make changes in the first hundred pages, but I don't do any of that until I finish the first draft. My rule is never revise until I've finished the book. Only then am I sure of the revisions I want to make. If something has to be changed, I make a note in the manuscript, or in a notebook, and keep moving. I've gone back in a book only once and then only because the book had stopped working. I went back to where things started to go wrong, deleted everything that came after, and kept on writing.
Writing and the Schedule
I like to have six months to write a book from start to finish, but that's not always possible for a variety of reasons. I have written for more than one publisher at a time and schedules sometimes don't fall very conveniently. Some books are harder to write than others. Some editors want more revisions. Then there's my personal life. With a family consisting of a wife, three children, a cat, a house, domestic chores, a parttime job for the first ten years I wrote – not to mention a mother and brothers and sisters – life kept getting in the way. And no one can afford to ignore the business of writing. Many times that has taken up more of my day than the writing itself. I've been very active in my national writers organization, serving on the board of directors for six years as well as speaking and giving workshops at conferences around the country. I didn't do this entirely for altruistic reasons. Self promotion is very important to a writer's career. The more people who know about you, the better chance they'll buy your books. I’ve even gone on book signing tours designed to bring me into contact with wholesalers and booksellers. If a bookseller likes you enough to sell you by hand, she's worth her weight in gold. Don't forget the business of dealing with editors, agents, and keeping financial records so the IRS won't have any reason to put you in jail. I only include all of this to remind you that only a few hours of a writer's day are actually devoted to writing.
And those hours must be cherished, guarded, used before I do anything else for the day. Even when I was working full-time and a career in writing was only a dream, I had a time to write, a place to write, and a goal in terms of number of pages or length of time to work before I let myself quit for the night. That's the only way I got three books written before I sold the first one.
Now that I have that career, I use the same formula except that my writing time comes at the beginning of the day rather than the end. I sometimes check my email if I'm expecting to hear from someone, but other than that I don't do anything until I've done my writing for the day. I postpone household chores or answering correspondence and paying bills. I let my answering machine take calls. I do my best to allow no interruption until I have reached my goal for the day.
I aim for ten pages a day, fifty pages a week. Since my books come in at over 400 pages, that means it takes from eight to ten weeks to write the first draft if I can keep to my schedule. Interruptions like vacations, holidays, family events, time spent on promotion and going to conferences, giving workshops, and traveling and doing research constantly play havoc with my schedule. But by planning around these events as much as possible, I'm usually able to get the first draft done in about three months. That means I have about a month to rest between books, and two weeks to come up with the idea and the general outline.
That month of rest is very important for me. I need a period when I don't have the pressure of meeting a writing schedule, when I can sleep late, when I can concentrate on other parts of my life and career. When I can watch TV, go to a movie, or have lunch with friends. This gives me time to rest mentally and emotionally, even get so bored I'm anxious to start writing again. It gives me time to read and recharge my batteries. Few things make me want to start writing again as much as reading a good book. Writing is exhilarating, but it is also very tiring. The process of creating something out of nothing, of pulling it out of your gut every day, of living through the emotions of your characters is exhausting. A period of rest is very important because once I start the process of writing the book, I can't afford to run out of energy or inspiration before it's finished.
Regardless of when I start a book, I always make sure the first draft is finished at least six weeks before my deadline. I write too long. Always. 10,000 words. 15,000 words. 25,000 words. 35,000 words. My publisher gives me a contractual limit of 90,000 but lets me have 100,000. It's not easy to cut 25,000 or 35,000 words, but since I talk so much – I write the same way – there's always stuff I don't really need for the story. Not scenes, not chapters, just extra sentences here and there, maybe a paragraph. It takes me two weeks of intensive work to cut those extra words.
The Editing Process
Maybe I should say a few words about this editing process. My first approach is very mechanical. I determine how many words I have to cut, divide that by the number of pages in the manuscript, and know I have to cut an average of from twenty-five to fifty words a page. I check my progress at the end of each chapter. That way I can leave one page in tact and maybe cut a whole paragraph on the next. Since my pages average about 350 words each, I sometimes have to work very hard to find those fifty words to cut.
Fortunately, it's usually not that difficult. When I'm writing the book, I'm deeply into the characters in a particular scene or moment of internal dialogue. I know the hundreds of thoughts going through their heads and I sometimes include to many of them. But in going back over the book, I approach it more as a reader who's reading it in a couple of days, not several months. From that vantage point, I find there's often too much detail, too many extraneous thoughts. While they may add a little to the depth of characterization, they slow down the action, even sidetrack the emotional flow. I'm a talker, so my characters talk a lot, too. While most of the dialogue stays, I can sometime abridge sections. Sometimes it simply comes down to which sentence I can cut with the least damage. I hate this part. It's agonizing, requires me to read some parts two and three times before I can decide what to cut, what to keep. My family usually keeps out of my way because I'm not lots of fun to be around, but I get it done. After it's done and I'm reading it over for the last time, I usually end up wondering why I needed those extra 25,000 words in the first place. That lets me know I've done a good job.
Once I've cut the book down to size, I add an extra step. I was trained as a musician. I worked as a general music teacher, choir director, or organist for thirty-two years. I never had any training as a writer. So I send my manuscript to an editor I pay to go over it to make sure I haven't done anything stupid. I usually haven't, but there are always things she points out that make the book better, the conflicts clearer, the characterization more consistent. She also catches the typos I miss. This results in a clean copy when I send it in and virtually no revisions from my editor. I give the editor two weeks to turn the book around.
That gives me two weeks to make any final edits, clean up spots that inevitably show up when you haven't looked at the book for two weeks – (why did I write that? What could I have been thinking?) – and get the book in the mail in time to meet my due date.
I have missed a couple of due dates, but by no more than a week or two and only after calling my editor to make sure it was okay. It's very important to have a reputation for being on time when you're trying to build a career. It's amazing how many authors turn their books in late. If your book is in house, edited and ready to go, you may get the chance to fill a higher spot on the list when someone above you is late. That means more books on the shelves and more sales. It's a lot like the understudy stepping in when the star is sick. More than one writer's career has taken off after just such a chance.
Research
I'd like to take a little time to talk about research. Any writing requires research, but research for historical settings can be difficult and challenging. First, it's not possible to travel back to the time and places I write about. Second, until I settled into writing only about the West, I had to research different times and places for each book. I remember spending a month researching Bonny Prince Charlie's retreat from England in 1745-6. In addition to knowing where they were and what battles they engaged in along the way, I had to know the weather, the accommodations, problems of feeding and caring for an army, clothes, weapons, rivers to be crossed – the list was endless. Once I settled in the West, I had the advantage that my research was cumulative. Once I learned what it was like to make a cattle drive from Texas to Wyoming – I don't mean watching the movie of Lonesome Dove or reading the book – I could apply that to a cattle drive from Texas to Santa Fe or to Colorado. But the landscape, flora and fauna, weather, etc. are not the same in Texas, Arizona, and Colorado. Not only that, each state has zones which are completely different from each other. The soil in Texas changes as you go from east to west. So do the plants, animals, and the rainfall. East Texas was settled long before the Indians and buffalo were driven out of West Texas. Drive fifty miles in any direction in Arizona and everything can change.
I have four shelves of books I've collected over the years on every aspect of the settings for my books – the history, topography, plants and animals, maps, clothes, food, equipment. I use firsthand accounts as often as possible. I subscribed to Arizona Highways and Texas Highways for years because of their fantastic photos and vivid descriptions. I also try to visit the actual locations, take pictures, and buy books in local bookstores I can't find elsewhere. Being in the setting gives me a much better feel for the book. It even suggests plot ideas. With the development of the internet, it's possible to find a lot of these pictures as well as detailed information without traveling to the locations. However, westerns take place mostly outdoors so a feel for the setting is important. I've just finished my 28th western, so I don't do nearly as much research as I used to. Still, nearly every book requires that I learn something I didn't know before.
When all is said and done, none of what I go through is supposed to show – not the planning, the research, the cuts, and especially not the days when the ideas not only didn't flow, they seemed to stink. It's the human emotion that determines whether the reader will connect with my characters or forget them five minutes after closing the book, whether that feels real to the reader and they can identify with the journey and believe in the ending. If you can make your characters seem real, readers will be looking for your next book.
Copyright 2005 by Leigh Aubrey