Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is M. P. Woodward, the author of The Handler which is the story of a disgraced former CIA operative who must go back in the field with only his ex-wife as his handler
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
I did! It was early January 2020 and I was in an airport about to board a flight for a business trip. I looked up at a TV screen and saw that CNN was covering a tragic event—the accidental shootdown of a civilian Ukrainian airliner over Tehran. The Iranian Air Defenses had blundered and taken down this innocent aircraft right over their own capital. On board the plane were several Iranian college kids, traveling back to school in Canada. In a prior life as an intelligence analyst, I had spent a lot of time thinking about Iran and knew how their Air Defense people might have made such a disastrous error. Perhaps because I was in an airport… perhaps because I have college-aged kids myself, I started to think about how the average Iranian parent would feel. By the time my flight was over, I had the broad outlines for a plot.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
I started with a few “design principles,” which was how I thought of them at the time. First, I wanted the story to be about mid-level people who seemed real—with faults, hopes, dreams, bad habits, and sometimes unscrupulous motivations. I wanted them to be low enough on the totem pole that they didn’t always understand what they were doing. And even if they were playing the role of antagonist, I wanted the reader to be able to understand their motivations, to be able to sympathize with them. Second, I wanted tension in every relationship, even among allies. That was when I decided it would be fun to have a divorced couple as the core protagonists. Once I had that couple in mind, I homed in on a theme of familial bonds and trust—the idea that a strong, multi-layered relationship could overcome the most daunting challenge, even if no longer officially together as a couple.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
Absolutely—though I might state it differently. I think sometimes we can think we have a plot all set, but then when we put it on paper, we realize we have gaps. I don’t know how others do it, but I spent a lot of time writing out a Q and A for myself that would help firm up plot details. For example, I’d ask myself, “Why wouldn’t Character X already know about this? Why would Character Y even give a damn?” And then I’d lean back in my chair with my keyboard on my knees and let it rip. I’d type out long rambling, brain-storming answers until I had the right idea, or more questions, or both. I probably went through that little exercise twenty times as I made my way through the book. Sometimes the exercise would make me completely change some plot point I thought I’d had all worked out.
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
Now that I have a world of characters fully formed, story ideas do come to me often—at least at a high level. We currently live in a world where geopolitical risks are rising. I spend a few hours a day reading about them and often imagine what a potential story behind the story might be. If a good narrative involves a hero overcoming a challenge that ultimately leads to a personal transformation, it is not too hard to think about what some of those challenges on the world stage might be. Of course, the devil is in the details when it comes to weaving that into a compelling read.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
I try to have an idea for what I want my protagonists to go through—the personal flaw that they need to overcome. Once that’s established, then it’s a matter of finding the real-world context that can present the right set of challenges. For that, I usually have two or three ideas born of current events and start reading up on them. At least for me so far, I see patterns emerging in the news. Some of those often reveal an area of tension that would make for a hot cauldron into which I can throw my poor, suffering protagonists.
I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
Funny you should ask. I wrote this book in the mornings when everyone was asleep—except for my fifteen-year-old cat, who would always greet me, whether I liked it or not. Most of the time she would sit reverently next to me as I wrote, like a little sphinx next to a temple. I found her purring to be a comfort. But sometimes, she’d start rubbing her face on the edge of the laptop screen in a bid for attention and, well, that would get irritating. But sadly, my cat, Mimi, passed away last month. Now I miss her dearly. I will have to train a new one.
M. P. Woodward is a veteran of both US intelligence ops and the entertainment industry. He is currently developing the international distribution strategy for the upcoming serial adaptation of The Lord of The Rings.