Susan May Warren

Denise asked: Did you base your coffee/bookstore/reading room in Happily Ever After on a real coffee/bookstore/reading room in MN or somwhere else? Your description of this place – you can almost smell the coffee brewing and imagine what book you could be reading while sipping your favorite coffee.

The Footstep of Heaven Bookstore and Coffee Shop lived in my imagination long long before it ever made it onto the pages of Happily Ever After. I based the shop upon a cute yellow Victorian in the vacation town where I spent my summers. It had a sprawling porch, and a cute upstairs window, and had been converted into a bakery that made succulent cinnamon rolls dripping with frosting. It was from this memory that I took the pieces of Mona’s store, adding in my “research” visits to local coffee shops and quant bookstores to find the smells and feel I was looking for.

I think it’s vital for an author to create distinct places for readers to latch onto a story. Setting is the unspoken character of a story, and contributes its own conflict. A story without setting is like watching a movie against a blue scene. So I search for specific details that will create mood and emotion for a reader. And the easiest way to do that is to find a place that I already love and build on that.

Thank you for asking!

(Susan May Warren spent the summer collecting “Ask and Author Anything!” questions, about life, writing and anything (within reason) her readers asked. Stop back every week this winter to read the answers to those questions!)

Are you a writer? Get your daily dose of writing craft! www.mybooktherapy.com!

Writers can’t live in a vacuum. Those stories of people who are hermits that live in seclusion and write these amazing literary novels? Okay, Really? Because I only have a select amount of ideas in my brain, and after I use those up, I gotta go somewhere for inspiration. Somewhere besides my messy office, or living room sofa. Some people accuse me of being way too busy, but hey – here’s some of the tidbits I get from my “other life” that help me in my writing.

• The Lives of my Children – I love listening to the drama my 15 year old brings home, or the gitty life of my teenage football player as he tells me about team dynamics. Hearing my kids talk about their dreams or their challenges helps me tap into current issues and find relevant themes.
• Church Life – oh, don’t get me started! The theater of worshipping and ministering alongside people with different bents, backstory and needs always produces good characterization. And spiritual threads.
• Community Events. My children are involved in the local community theater, and the drama behind the scenes is more entertaining than the show! (okay, almost). I especially love, however, listening to the director teach ten year olds how to get into character. Watching them take her lessons and transform into different people before my eyes helps me turn my cardboard characters into living beings.
• My Backyard. I live in the very very tip of Northern MN, where we’ve already lost many of the leaves of our surrounding forest, where my plants have already withered into a brown soggy lump, where winter is in the breathe of the wind. I got out for a walk every day — smelling the leaves, hearing them crunch, feeling the nip on my nose…fall is so rife with the five senses, I’m inspired anew to seek out ways to put texture and setting into my story.
• TV Premier Week – Okay, I know you’re all thinking…WHAT? Isn’t that an inside, couch potato kind of thing to do? Well, it’s either that, or sitting at the local coffee shop eavesdropping. There’s no such thing as a new idea, but seeing the out of the box crazy story ideas presented on television shows perks my little curiosity bug. From this weeks’ House premier (LOVE the kidnapped guitar!) to the twist at the end of Journeyman, it’s creative television that makes me think outside the box for plotting. (And ever so much better than tuning into gossip about my neighbors!)

All these things fill up my brain with fresh, new thoughts, and give me a storehouse of ideas to draw from. If you want to write…then first, you must live.

Are you a writer? Get your daily dose of writing craft! www.mybooktherapy.com!

Jackie W asked: How do you decide on what names to give your characters? And has any of your characters names turned out to cause problems for you afterwards?

A: I love naming my characters! It’s like having a child again, except I get to see what they’re like fully grown. For a long time, I used the names of my children, and good friends, morphing the characters of course so they didn’t in the least resemble them, but just because I wanted to involve them in my stories. But a girl has only so many friends…so I then began to name characters based on character qualities I found in searched like BabyName.com, or others. I really like finding a name that I feel fits the personality of the person I’m writing about, hence why I pick names with meaning to them. I usually go to a baby name site and search according to meaning and nationality. Then you’ll find me saying them over and over until I finally find one that rolls off the tongue well and makes me see the character in my mind.

As for causing problems…once, through happenstance, I named a character in a book similar to a person I later met with a similar job. Unfortunately, she had read my book, and because my character was a villain, somehow thought I’d meant her! I did point out that I didn’t know her when I wrote the book…And of course, once I named a SAR dog after my sister.
I thought it was cute.
Yeah, she didn’t. Oh well.

(Susan May Warren spent the summer collecting “Ask and Author Anything!” questions, about life, writing and anything (within reason) her readers asked. Stop back every week this winter to read the answers to those questions!)

Crystal asked: Do your children ever give you ideas for story lines?

A: Oh, all the time! We are watching something together and they might ask a question – mom, what would happen if….and there I go with a story idea from the scenario they’ve asked. Not only that, but I have them trained now to ask me the right questions when I’m developing a story idea to determine if the story will work – “What are the external obstacles of the story?” “What’s at stake?” “Why would your character do that?” Recently, my son, (who is also writing a book) was helping a friend with a story, and as I read his advice about point of view I thought…hmmm, they could probably teach a class on writing, just from listening to my angst all these years! No wonder all these authors kids go into writing as a profession…they’ve been programmed!! Arrgh!

(Susan May Warren spent the summer collecting “Ask and Author Anything!” questions, about life, writing and anything (within reason) her readers asked. Stop back every week this winter to read the answers to those questions!)

Susanna W asked: What made you become a writer?

A: I think a true writer can’t stop writing. They love words, and stories, and the way they sing together. I have been a story teller since my early days (just as my mother!) and have always loved a great tale. But I have also loved to read, and not just novels, but poetry. I love to weave a passage together to evoke a mood in a narrative piece, to write songs and poems, and how language can make us laugh out loud, or even cry when used correctly. I have to write stories like a singer needs to sing, and a chef needs to cook. I can’t NOT write, and even if I’m not writing…I’m writing. Or at least working on a story. And, when I saw my daughter and son do the same thing, I realized, for the first time…I’m not weird! (Oaky, maybe a little, but I’m okay with that!)

(Susan May Warren spent the summer collecting “Ask and Author Anything!” questions, about life, writing and anything (within reason) her readers asked. Stop back every week this winter to read the answers to those questions!)

Kathleen E. asked: What are your hobbies? And what subject do you enjoy teaching the most? Where would you like to travel to get inspiration for a new book?

A: I love to Read, of course!! At any given moment, I have a book in my purse, a stack of books by my bed, and a book on my Big Blue Reading Chair. . I’m usually reading a non-fiction book, a writing book, a fiction book and a research book, yes, all at the same time. Reading. That’s what I do. *grin*

As for what subject I like to teach – writing! And within writing, I love to talk about characterization, because that is what I believe drive stories. You can have the most thrilling plot, but if we don’t care about the characters, no one will care about whether the world ends or not, right? I also love to teach creative writing to kids – they are SO creative, and I love to encourage them to think and dream big with their words.

I would love to go to Prague. I have a story idea set in Prague, and my husband went there a few years ago and bought me this great plate, which broke on my flight home from Russia. So, I’d like to go back, get me a new plate, and spend a week learning all about Prague. However, then I’d travel straight to Italy where I’d spend a month at some exotic winery, squishing grapes between my toes, and lazing about in a hammock. (after which I’d write an epic tale that would sell millions!) *sigh*

(Susan May Warren spent the summer collecting “Ask and Author Anything!” questions, about life, writing and anything (within reason) her readers asked. Stop back every week this winter to read the answers to those questions!)

Claudia R asked: Was it real difficult getting your foot into publishing?

A: The publishing world can be extremely difficult break in to – it can seem as times as if there might be an invisible wall…however, it’s not as difficult as one might think.

It’s all about perspective.

Early on, Dee Henderson, who is one of my favorite writers, told me that the best thing I could do to get published was to write all sorts of things, for anyone I could, for free, if I had to. So, that’s what I did – I started with my newsletter, (we were missionaries in Russia) and then I went on to a newsletter for my organization, then devotionals, then magazine articles, then novellas for contests…until finally, my writing had improved enough to catch the attention of an editor. And even that was through a contest! Those Nicholas Sparks stories of people sending in a book to a publisher and landing a cool mil for an advance is SO rare – the norm is that authors work for years and years behind the scenes before they are “discovered” and make it big.

So, I pass on that advice to you – Write, for anyone, all sorts of genres, let it hone your skill and build your audience, and keep walking through those open doors – who knows where you’re end up!