I’m excited to welcome author Jim Naremore to the blog today! Jim is one of those rare writers who combines a deep love of storytelling with a life richly lived—something that’s abundantly clear in his latest novel, American Still Life.
The book tells the haunting and powerful story of Skade Felsdottir, a photojournalist grappling with trauma, connection, and redemption, and it’s as moving as it is unforgettable. You can read more about the book below!
Jim’s path to becoming a writer has been as fascinating as his fiction. From growing up surrounded by folklore in southern Indiana to working in public service and nonprofit advocacy, he’s always carried a love of stories with him. Now, with two award-winning novels under his belt, he’s sharing that passion with readers. Read more about Jim below!
Today, Jim is talking to us about his creative process in his post, “From Idea to Full-Blown Story.” It’s a fascinating glimpse into how a story takes shape, from that first spark of inspiration to the final draft.
Whether you’re an aspiring writer or a seasoned one, there’s much to take away from Jim’s approach. I’m so happy to have him here—let’s jump into his post and learn from his journey!
—CC
From Idea to Full-Blown Story
by Jim Naremore
All stories, be they full-blown novels or short fiction, spring from story-ideas. Many writers or would-be-writers throw up their hands in frustration and cry writer’s block because they think they don’t have any good story ideas, and thus no pipeline to a real story. Writer’s block is a very real (and very misunderstood) thing, but its usually not a lack of good story ideas. The problem is not fully understanding what an idea is and how they work.
If you’re waiting for a fully-formed story or even a full-fledged plot to drop out of the blue on you, my experience says you’ve got a long wait. Stories are complex, multi-layered organisms. Ideas, on the other hand, are like snowflakes, when your environment is right, they are everywhere, swirling around you, but they are usually tiny and without context or even meaning until you begin to give that meaning to them. An idea can be a random line of dialog that you either overhear or that comes to you. It might be an image or a metaphor. It might even be a word you find attractive for some inexplicable reason (I’ve written the word “Skein” in my notebook. I love everything about that word). It might be a character description or name. They won’t be linked, they won’t always make sense, but that isn’t the point. What is important is that they cause something in you to perk up and play with them for a moment in your mind.
Write these ideas down!
I’ve got several notebooks I use, small ones I try to take with me everywhere so whenever something strikes me (and when you get into the right mind-state they can come like driving sleet) I write them down. Once I get a novel rolling, I’ll keep a notebook specifically for that project, but the best way to do it is to just keep a general one with no rules or limitations. This notebook is the heart of your creative process. Here is how those random snowflake ideas become a story: I’ll use my most recent novel, American Still Life, as an example.
Every story begins with a central idea. A central idea is usually about an action, preferably a character doing an action. I opened my notebook and ran through all my random ideas and found this: “Someone doing a photo-essay on roadside markers”. That is the original idea (if there is such a thing) for this novel. It’s not what it’s about, but it is sort of the barest thumbnail of the story. I then grabbed a dozen or more other ideas and started trying to push them together. Think of ideas as malleable lumps of clay. I had “tattoos”, “A group of socially awkward puppeteers”, “A tall young woman who has been bullied”, “a house fire”, and “wax figures”. In my original list of ideas. If you’ve read the book, you can see how the ideas begin to fit together. A group of puppeteers became a single puppeteer and the fire, and the wax figures disappeared back into the notebook to be used in some other project.
It’s REALLY important not to hold too tightly to any idea, even the central one. As I was putting my ideas together, Lane was the puppeteer, and I had an outline with that concept that went pretty far. You can absolutely crush an idea out of use by trying to force it. The story will begin to come together, and it will tell you what it needs, you can’t usually tell it what it needs. As the characters of Skade and Kit and Lane came into clearer focus, it became obvious that I needed to change some of my initial ideas to make the story work.
Ultimately stories are not ideas. Ideas are the building blocks that stories are made from. These ideas are everywhere, all the time, you just need to collect them and write them down. Then, carefully, you can begin to construct your story gently, like making a lamp out of collecting fireflies in a jar.
—Jim
About the Guest Blogger
With roots in the American deep south and the Midwest grounding his sense of place, Jim Naremore has published an array of short fiction and the award-winning novel The Arts of Legerdemain as Taught by Ghosts (Belle Lutte, 2016). He holds an MFA from the Solstice program at Lasell University in Boston and currently lives with his partner and cat in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
Connect with Jim:
Instagram: @jim_naremore
Website: https://www.jim-naremore.com/
About American Still Life
published by Regal House Publishing, 296 pp:
"We are all drowning, and we are all saviors.
Wresting with addiction, guilt, and self-loathing, gifted photojournalist Skade Felsdottir finds herself trapped in a web of her own creation when she is forced by circumstances to return to her hometown—the place that holds her crippling secrets. After screwing up her “big break”, a photo essay book about descansos—roadside memorials to people who have died tragically, Skade tries to salvage the project against a tight deadline. While simultaneously working and keeping her darkest demons at bay, Skade reconnects with an old boyfriend and befriends a unique but broken young woman named Kit. Their burgeoning friendship begins a process of healing for them both, until a devastating sequence of events plunges Skade into darkness, leaving her to decide between redemption and running away; between life and death. Set against a backdrop of the back roads of a forgotten America, American Still Life explores the crossroads of grief and artistic expression, of loneliness and atonement. A journey familiar."
If you want to read more about Jim or the novel, American Still Life, be sure to check out the other stops on the WOW Women on Writing Blog tour!
In the meantime, you can add Jim's book to your Goodreads list or enter a giveaway by January 19th to win a free copy of the book. You can also purchase a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or at Bookshop.org.
Peace & Plenty,
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