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. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is Taylor Hahn, author of The Lifestyle. She is a writer and lawyer based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University and Fordham University School of Law.
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?
Yes! For The Lifestyle there was a specific EUREKA! moment. I’d just read a craft essay about tension and how the author of the essay (Crystal Hana Kim) started her writing from a situation with a lot of tension versus a plot she found interesting. I thought that was such great advice. When you start writing from a situation with a lot of tension, then there are a million directions your writing can go. As you start to pull at different threads, the whole story will eventually unravel. Whereas when you start with a plot that is interesting, there’s only one direction your story can go, and it might not be compelling.
So I knew I wanted to identify a situation ripe with tension, and shortly after that I happened to join a conversation at a party about swinging, and I thought, NOW THERE is a situation ripe with tension! Jealousy, sex, love, drama. And it took off from there.
But it doesn’t always work that way. I’m writing a second novel and did not have a eureka moment. It evolved very slowly over time. Whenever an interesting character or situation would pop into my head, I’d write it down, and eventually ended up combining several different ideas into one story in order to make the novel deeper and layered.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
The characters drove the plot. The first thing I did was go to a bar in NYC by myself, with a notebook, and I ordered a glass of wine. I sat there for a long time just writing down different situations in which someone might decide to swing. I imagined the bored housewife, a woman who was trying to regain some control in her life, a woman who wasn’t being sexually fulfilled, etc. And I jotted down notes for their potential backstories. By the end I had fifteen or so potential characters and I narrowed it down to the ones who were most compelling and interesting, and also whose stories I could blend together in some way. The plot then unfolded naturally out of their motivations.
But from a technical perspective, I did find the book SAVE THE CAT! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody to be extremely helpful. Once I had the general plot written, I used that book and its structure to make sure that my book was clean and didn’t have unnecessary plot points bogging down the story.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
YES. It is absolutely essential to stay flexible. The plot changed so much as I got to know the characters better and what would make sense for them. Tons of my original ideas are on the cutting room floor. I had imagined a whole story line where one character’s daughter gets very ill, for example, but ultimately that didn’t serve the story at all. I realized I wanted this character’s journey to be personal and not related to her role as a caretaker for her sick daughter.
I think it’s very helpful to create a loose outline because it gets your creative mind churning. But don’t stick to the outline once you start writing. Just get to know your characters and write what makes sense.
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
Somewhere in the middle. I have one other big idea that I think I will explore for my third novel, but that’s it right now. I’m always impressed by authors who are constantly churning out short stories. I don’t have that many lightbulbs going on inside my head! Even when I have an idea that I think is interesting, it takes me a long time to dig into it and really understand whether it’s worth exploring.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
For me it helps to only have one story going at a time because I really want the characters to be fully formed inside my head. If I switch to a different story and different character, I’ll lose the voice of the other one. I like to be IN the story. I want to live it, breath it, dream about it.
But as an author with a book coming out, I do have other writing obligations. Sometimes I have to write an essay or a guest post or do an interview, so whether I work on those things or write my next novel depends on my mood. If my characters are speaking to me that day, I’ll focus on my novel and exercise my creative brain. But if I’m feeling especially productive, I’ll churn out my essays. I like to ask myself where my attention is best spent at that moment in time and then listen to the answer.
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?
My dog, Kerrigan, is sitting next to me right now! I love my writing buddy, except sometimes she lays her entire head on my laptop and practically speaking, it makes it difficult to write. I think she gets annoyed with how often I spend the entire day writing though…she just stares at me with a ball in her mouth and I can tell she’s thinking, Are you done yet?
