Purple Striped Alien Mutant Plot Bunnies for Me

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Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about those Plot Bunnies: How/where do you corral them? How much room do you give them to grow?

I have what I refer to as “author brain” and no, it’s not an affliction. It’s the way I view the world and everything in it as possible points for a story. So I’m very good at recognizing the infamous plot bunnies, which for me anyway are the little factoids I run across in my daily life, especially when reading nonfiction articles and novels. Our own world can be a strange and awe inspiring place. Those quirky-but-true items set my author brain off on a flight of fancy – usually science fictional in nature – and I start to envision a story around the core idea. Like pearls build up around a grain of sand.

The rabbit analogy works because there are a zillion plot bunnies, an author can really “go down a rabbit hole” chasing one as they try to find out more about it and/or start working out a plot featuring it and often one plot bunny leads to more. Plot bunnies can be a real problem if they cause an author to keep abandoning whatever story they’re in the middle of writing (aren’t we always in the middle of writing something?!) to chase the newer, shinier idea.

Although occasionally an idea is so compelling an author can’t let go of it and then yes, I support switching gears and writing what’s really got the creative juices bubbling. Go for it!

As an author, I’m never very tempted to go chase those rabbits right away. Although I’m renowned as an impatient person, I have infinite patience for plot bunnies. I’ve been known to sit on them for years before one might make its way into a novel. In the old old days, I’d rip the article or the inspirational photograph out of the magazine – the Wall Street Journal and Vogue used to be two of the places I found the most bunnies, oddly enough, with Business Week close on their heels – and stuff it into one of the many bulging folders I kept in boxes, lugged around through various household moves and…usually never looked at again. Eventually I leveled up to merely writing down one or two sentence fragments for myself that encapsulated what it was I found so interesting and stuck those scraps of paper into newer, still bulging folders. Which again, I don’t look at very often, if ever.

Only when I’m moving and trying to cut down on the number of boxes…

No matter how many bunnies I capture by scribbling down the nub of a flicker of an idea, I’ve found the ones that really intrigue me stay with me. No need for paper or clippings. Not that they’re constantly running or hopping through my brain – perish the thought! – but my Muse will bring them forward when I’m at a point where they can be useful. Maybe I need a new Pets In Space® story (hint: PISA® 5 will be releasing on October 6^th) and since I write those at a certain times of the year to meet the deadline, they don’t arise organically in my head, as in “Ooh, next I’m going to write that empath-in-love-with-a-Special-Forces-guy because it’s SHINY and I can’t wait to pound the keyboard and tell the story.” It’s more of a process that starts with “Okay, time to write my next annual PISA® story, what cool elements do I have that I could blend into a good adventure with romance, set aboard my interstellar cruise liner?

Some of the larger plot bunnies stay with me for years and do become the central theme of a novel, like taking the story of the Titanic’s sinking and setting in in interstellar space. More often though, the bunnies become small elements of an overall book. It’s really important for me to stress, these ideas aren’t the pure Angora plot bunny that first tickled my interest when I read the WSJ article or saw the arresting photograph. The idea, whatever it was, has gone through a lot of processing and revising and adjusting and sometimes the link to whatever prompted the particular plot point is visible to only me and I could never explain it to someone else. So by then I guess it’s a purple striped alien mutant plot bunny?

I’ve shared a few plot bunnies here with this post that played a part in inspiring story elements for a few of my books on these graphics…but there’s a lot more to each novel than the bullet points (or bunnies) mentioned here.

Happy reading!

PETS IN SPACE® 5 ANTHOLOGY BLURB:

It’s time for an escape! Pets in Space® 5 is back for the fifth amazing year! Escape to new worlds with twelve of today’s top Science Fiction Romance authors. They have written 12 original, never-before-released stories filled with action, adventure, suspense, humor, and romance that will take you out of this world. The giving doesn’t stop there. For the fifth year, Pets in Space® will be donating a portion of the first month proceeds to Hero-Dogs.org, a non-profit charity that supports our veterans and First Responders. If you are ready to forget the world around you and make a difference while you are having fun, grab your copy before it’s gone!

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Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pets-Space-5-SE-Smith-ebook/dp/B08F2XF73Q/

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Pets-Space-5-SE-Smith-ebook/dp/B08F2XF73Q/

Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Pets-Space-5-SE-Smith-ebook/dp/B08F2XF73Q/

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/pets-in-space-5

Apple Books: https://apple.co/30maDUg

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pets-in-space-5-s-e-smith/1137421518?ean=2940162669395

GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/SE_Smith_Pets_in_Space_5?id=AGH0DwAAQBAJ&hl=en

Plot Bunny Mob

Plot bunnies are everywhere. In everything. In everyone. In snippets of conversations overheard in what passes for public these days. There's no need to hunt them. If you're open to them, you'll stumble over them at every turn. A little like tripping over a cat who wants to be fed.

Plot bunnies carry no malice as far as I can tell. Might they be distractions wrought by a brain desperate for a bit of cognitive conservation of resources? Sure. Human brains consume a crazy high percentage of the daily calories we consume. We're designed to want to shirk heavy mental loads. So along come plot bunnies to tempt us to follow them into the weeds in a day-dreamy daze. They could also just be the delight of human brains that are designed to take a bunch of disparate data bits and combine them into new and interesting patterns.

I can't say I notice that plot bunnies strike more often while I'm supposed to be working on something else. In fact, quite the contrary. For me they mob me when I'm already doing something else - something like taking a walk, washing dishes, vacuuming the floor - anything physical that requires low cognitive input. Ideas come gamboling out of nowhere. So it pays to have a strategy for handling them. Otherwise, you end up starting twenty bijillionty things and finishing exactly zero. Don't ask how I know this.

I pat my plot bunnies on their furry little heads, smile, and say, "It takes a number, and it stands in line." The idea gets jotted down in barest form - a few sentences - just enough to spark the idea back into life at a later time. The file gets a name and gets remanded to a folder with the imaginative name of "Story Ideas." 

Have I ever mined that folder? Indeed, I have. The Nightmare Ink books were an idea languishing in "Story Ideas" folder when I hauled it out and got to serious work on it. The books and the original plot bunny bear only the slightest resemblance to one another. When a bunny graduates from the "Story Idea" folder, it gets a name of its own that serves as the working title for whatever it's going to become. 

It means I have plot bunnies in various stages of metamorphosis. Some are still itty-bitty things nibbling grass. Others have turned into the Vorpal Bunny of Antioch. They've got these big teeth. I have one of them chewing on me right now. It looks a lot like Frankenstein's bunny, being a mishmash of Civil War historical, fantasy, and a little horror. It doesn't know what it wants to grow up to be, so we just keep staring at one another over the pages of the SFR I'm contracted for. So yes. Sometimes, the plot bunnies start looking a little like the clown from IT.

Where...where's the plot bunny?!

 

(me doing my version of hunting...not very well)

Shhh…be vewy vewy quiet, I’m trying to write. 

Have you ever come to a point in your manuscript where you thought you were going to reach the end, but you find out the tunnel veers a different direction? You keep digging and digging, but you can’t find a plot bunny for nothing! 

I’ve been there. Sheesh have I been there. 

Wait…we’re talking about how do you corral plot bunnies? That means you have too many of them, that you have to pick and choose which plot bunnies to keep and cuddle! And if you don't know, a plot bunny is a sudden, wonderful, story idea…that may or may not be related to what you’re currently working on.

I guess that means I find two different kinds: plot bunnies that take my current work in progress (WIP) in a new direction and plot jackalopes that are completely new ideas not related to anything I’ve written before. 

And now I wish I had some statistics on plot vs. jackalope bunnies! Looking back, I’d say I’ve caught way more jackalopes. Currently, I have roughly a dozen documents of new book beginnings on my laptop. I'm not sure about the number on my external hard drive. 

When those plot jacks bound on in I have to write out the scenes they bring, I have to. They’re intriguing and shiny, who can resist intriguing and shiny?! And once I have the scene at least sketched out they can sit and rest. The reality is because these undoubtedly show up when I’m in the middle of a project I need to finish, but also because I like to let the new ideas percolate and see if they stick around…meaning, does it stay sparkly and continue to draw me back to imagining what happens next, or do they hop away and drift into the out-of-mind zone.

Now, plot bunnies…the I-need-a-new-story-direction ones. I sure could use more of those. I’m a scientist, I follow the procedures. Beginning. Middle. End. And if I’m stuck in a tunnel that failed to stay straight I get a bit bogged down in the muck. Plot bunnies…plot bunnies…I'd be alright upping that side of my statistics.

WHERE DO YOU FIND YOUR PLOT BUNNIES and can I have some?

In Defense of (Plot) Bunnies

As a farmer, I sort of suck, but that doesn't prevent me from planting things and watering things and talking to things. In a Texas summer that stands to go down as one of the hottest and driest on record, just keeping plants alive has been an time- and worry-consuming project. And the wildlife aren't helping. Early on in the Austin Oven Season, something ate all my Easter lilies. Then they ate my strawberry plants. Then, a couple weeks ago, I surprised a wild rabbit in my herb garden. It had damaged a sproutling and clearly nibbled on some other nearby leaves. But as I watched that rabbit hop away guiltily, I saw how thin it was. At 9 in the morning, we were already well into the 90s (F). That little fur-dude was just trying to survive. After that, I left a bowl of water out and am content with whatever happens to my plants.

I know what you're thinking: Um, Viv, you've gone off the deep end. This is not a gardening blog; it's a writing blog. Also, the topic this week is not wild herb-destroying bunnies; it's plot bunnies. You know, the nigh irresistible story ideas that bounce into writer brains unsolicited and sometimes damage whatever current story headspace we're in.

To you I say, I know.

Also, there's a reason why we call them bunnies. Those story ideas might not be the garden we're tending, but they deserve our attention nevertheless. Sometimes plot bunnies enhance a story I'm working on. Sometimes they take it in a new direction. Sometimes they give me a what-if scenario that doesn't pan out but at least made me think about a character or plot point differently.

It's okay to feed the bunnies. 

I write them in a notebook, and although I almost never go back and expand those stories, sometimes I re-read them and they remind me that once in a while a story hops into my brain fully formed, just waiting to wiggle itself all over the page. My brain can do that! How cool is that? Doesn't meant I need to feed the bunny, but it would be worse than a waste of time to chase it off screaming.

In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about books kind of as if they're free-floating spirits looking for a home. If a book idea (aka bunny) comes to a writer, that writer is not always in the right place to bring it to the page. The writer might be in the middle of another book or struggling with depression or contracted to write something completely different. The bunny, Gilbert says, doesn't cease to exist. It just goes on to the next writer. This is probably why that weird vegetarian vampire idea you had in seventh grade ended up making Stephenie Meyer a crudton of money. It moved on and found a home.

So I guess my take on bunnies is twofold: 

1. It's okay to feed the bunnies. They might be a little annoying, but ultimately they don't hurt and can often help our creative adventures.
   
   
2. Don't hoard bunnies that don't belong to you. They are wild and might be welcome in somebody else's garden.

Plot Bunnies: The Coffee Test

Plot bunnies. I love them. I will hug them, and squeeze them, and call them George. The ones that really love me, I'll take to bed. If they're gone by morning, c'est la vie. If they last three nights, well, dear readers, they get their own notebook page, maybe even two, while we share the first cup of coffee. I can be generous like that.

For the ones that hit-on me while I'm "researching" on the internet? Well, that's what the Bookmarks folder is for, aka "the Plot Bunny Graveyard." Oh, and the ones that give me a little tail wiggle on Twitter? Those poor buggers end up in the limitless Likes list, never to be seen or heard from again. Tragic the short lives of those bunnies. 

Plot bunnies, if they stick around for coffee, we could have a long tumultuous future together.

Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit....

 Plot bunnies. That's what we're talking about this week.

What do you do with them when they show up? Do you keep them? Do you corral them? Do you let them go free?

Here's the thing. No matter what I'm writing, I can almost guarantee you that a plot bunny is gonna show up and try to distract me. If I'm only working on a few projects at once (like, maybe four or less) I'll let the little darlings run around and do their thing. More than that, and I'm likely to pull out my hunting shotgun, load it with shot and go to town. 

Why? Because for me at least, plot bunnies are everywhere. Hell, I watch the news and I'm likely to come up with half a dozen plot bunnies. They are everywhere, and they multiply like tribbles. 

The good news? I can kill the little bastards all I please. The ones that are good come back and remind me that they're bulletproof. The ones that aren't, end up as fertilizer in my constantly growing carrot patch of ideas. CONSTANTLY GROWING. Not kidding about that. The good notions resurface, and to make sure they get my attention, they often come back with more subplot or scenes attached. 

My very first novel ever was a piece of garbage that died a painful death. It was a hodgepodge of science fiction and fantasy that had a few cool ideas and a LOT of craptacular notions that I should have killed. I spent an entire summer writing that novel, came u with around 500 pages of absolute drivel, and then tossed it away when I realized it had no plot, just a few cool ideas. 

My second novel started off with a scene that would not leave me alone. I ignored it for over three months before I finally broke down and wrote out the first three chapters in roughly eight hours. I haven't really looked back since then.

The thing is, what works for me and my mind will likely NOT work for yours. I do things my way and if you're wise, you do things your way and take advice the same way you take pepper: to the level that satisfies you, and not one red chili flake further. 

At least on the first draft. Edits from the powers that be are an entirely different affair.

Currently, I am working on THE GODLESS, Book five of the Seven Forges series, and THE TOURISTS GUIDE TO HAUNTED WELLMAN (a collaborative novel with Charle R Rutledge), three separate short stories, one collaborative short story (again with Charles) and a collaborative novella, BLOODSTAINED NEVERLAND) with Christopher Golden. 

I tend to stay busy.  A lot. I don't have time for all the bunnies that want my attention. Seriously. The smart ones wave, duck and cover, and come back later when they have reinforcements. 

Your mileage may vary, and quite frankly should very. 

Keep smiling,

Jim

PS: just for fun, here's a few visual hints for the TOURISTS GUIDE. 

Kill the Rabbit: Death to Plot Bunnies

 

THE PROMISED QUEEN has a cover! I just love how those jewel colors pop off the screen. This is book three in the Forgotten Empires trilogy, out May 25, 2021. But you can preorder now!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about those Plot Bunnies: How/where do you corral them? How much room do you give them to grow?

For those unfamiliar with the term, a "plot bunny" is an idea that catches a writer's attention and imagination, but isn't what they're intending to focus on right then. I did a bit of (very causal, not all thorough research) and found this definition: From the metaphorical image of the writer's brain producing ideas with the abundance and speed with which rabbits are fabled to breed. There's also this: the term is thought to be related to the oft-quoted John Steinbeck quote about ideas and rabbits.

The Steinbeck quote is: “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

That makes some sense, although I'd point out that the Steinbeck quote treats the cultivation of ideas as a positive where most writers seem to use the term "plot bunny" as a non-productive distraction.

I'd always associated the term with Alice chasing the white rabbit down its hole and ending up in Wonderland, the source of our metaphor "going down the rabbit hole." You chase the plot bunny and you end up in a place where you've left your project - possibly with deadlines - behind and pretty soon you're talking to caterpillars and having tea with insane creatures.

I'm not really a fan of plot bunnies. 

But you all know me: I'm not a fan of anything that interferes with getting a book written. 

So, I treat plot bunnies as what they are to me: distractions and procrastination bait.

Writing is difficult. Writing novels in particular requires focused concentration on a single story over a long period of time. It's the nature of our minds to look for ways out of that difficult work. It's also the nature of the universe to test our resolve. I look on plot bunnies as challenges to the work. If a plot bunny is the universe's way of asking if I *really* am determined to write that book, then my answer is not to chase the bunny down the rabbit hole. 

Sometimes I jot down the idea. Mostly I just it run away. If it's a good one, it'll come back. 

Rose or Petunia? Names I've Changed

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week concerns the reality of having to change names. We're asking the crew if they've ever had to change the name(s) of a character or place in a book after we'd drafted it? Who is the character who will forever go by their "unpublished" name in our minds?

I don’t usually have to change the names of the characters or the books but I have a few vignettes to share…

My first book was Song of the Nile in my head because it involved a priestess who sang paeans to Sobek the Crocodile God in ancient Egypt. I sold it to Carina Press in the summer of 2011 as Song of the Nile. They worked on it as Song of the Nile – I even have the first cover art showing that title (which I can’t share because it isn’t “mine”). I freaking loved that title.

Then in late 2011 Stephanie Dray, a well-known author of ancient Egyptian romance published…you guess it – Song of the Nile. Since I wasn’t even published yet, I didn’t want to look as though I was trying to copy her, even though she was writing about Roman-Cleopatra time and I was back in 1550 BCE. I know titles can’t be copyrighted but it felt wrong to me to have the same title on my book. She, by the way, was lovely to me when my book did come out, in January 2012, had me on her blog, guested on my blog – a really affirming model of an established author going out of her way to help a newbie. So Carina Press re-titled my book as Priestess of the Nile. Which was fine and also fit the heroine.

Ah but the story isn’t done. In late 2019 I put out a new book in my Gods of Egypt series and rather defiantly titled it Song of the Nile. Ta da! The heroine is a harpist at Pharaoh’s court. I figured eight years later and me with 40+ books in various genres to my credit (and people being somewhat more understanding about the fact that duplicative titles do happen), I could finally have the title of my heart, even if it is for a different book that the one I first intended. Ms. Dray has moved on to writing amazing American Revolutionary era novels among other things and so I think it’s all good. Her book and mine seem to happily co-exist in the greater ebook world.

When I’m writing a book, I tend to think of it in a basic one word title, maybe the name of the planet or the main character or my inspiration. As in, “Today I did 1000 words on JAMOKAN.” COLONY UNDER SIEGE takes a part of its inspiration from an island where I used to visit as a child and so the folder on my computer where the manuscript and other materials reside is labelled thusly. One novel I wrote has a prince from an old 50’s “B” movie as the inspiration and the hero wore that name throughout my entire writing and editing process but then I changed it (as I’d always knew I would) because the name doesn’t fit the time and civilization my hero resides in. But the file folder still bears that title.

My intellectual property heirs will have fun trying to puzzle out which book is in which folder!

I have changed the names of a couple of planets because when I first went to romance conventions to do book signings I met readers who’d enjoyed my scifi romances, they were enthusiastic and complimentary but I noticed they really hesitated over the titles, which contained the (made up) planet names. I thought to myself that was bad, if readers were going to love the books but not be sure how to pronounce the names. So I tried to become less convoluted with my names and also to give my books titles that were more generic, like STAR CRUISE: OUTBREAK or DANGER IN THE STARS. I also went through a period where I deliberately gave the books sort of old fashioned science fiction titles like TWO AGAINST THE STARS (which was a tribute from me to all those old Andre Norton books I treasure to this day).

When I started my award winning Badari Warriors series about genetically engineered soldiers of the far future, I decided to go with the simple, one word title using the hero’s name – Aydarr, Mateer and so forth. I have subtitles to carry the freight of what the series is – Badari Warriors: A SciFi Romance Novel (Sectors New Allies Book #Soandso). If I had it to do over, I’d leave off the “Sectors New Allies” designator but at the time I started the series I felt it was important to show it did tie in to all my previous SFR books, in term of the same universe, which I call The Sectors.

I try to be mindful not to have more than one character whose name starts with the same letter in my books, ever since my editor tactfully pointed out that all my Egyptian warriors seemed to have names starting with “K”. Kaminhotep, Khenet etc. I’ve seen for myself how annoying it can be when the author presents the reader with three female characters who names start with “S” for example. It can get very confusing, especially if all three are shown on the same page, in action or giving dialog. I’m currently reading a long series where three of the supporting male characters have names starting with “B” (but the author has helpfully killed off two of them by book #8). And she introduced a villain whose name also starts with “B’!

I do have a thing for heroine names ending in an ‘a’ so I try to change that up on occasion, with Jill, Megan, Flo interspersed with my Sandara, Keshara and Elianna for example…

And that’s probably enough on the subject for today!

Here’s my latest one word-titled novel (and the book was IVOKK through the entire writing process and the folder is under that name too):

IVOKK: A BADARI WARRIORS SCIFI ROMANCE NOVEL (SECTORS NEW ALLIES SERIES BOOK 12)

Proud enforcer of the Badari South Seas pack, Ivokk undertakes a secret mission back to their former home, in search of a cure for a mysterious illness affecting his soldiers, now in exile in the north. He’s ready to make any sacrifice to find the answer and help his pack brothers stay strong. He’s even willing to accept responsibility for the human woman assigned to the mission, although she’s a headstrong civilian, difficult and rumored to dislike his kind.

Sandara DiFerria was once a three star chef in the Sectors, but that was before the alien enemy kidnapped the entire adult population of her colony to use for experimentation. Rescued from the labs by the Badari, she does her part to support the rebellion now by running the vast commissary operation in Sanctuary Valley. All she asks is to be left alone until she can get back to the Sectors and pick up her old life again. Her one previous romantic brush with a Badari soldier turned out badly, ending in public humiliation. Add to that post-traumatic stress from her life before moving to the colony and she’s the last person to pick for a top secret mission. Or so she believes.

The Alpha running the pack disagrees and sends her to do the job under Ivokk’s watchful eye. Thrown together by the nature of the task they must undertake, the undeniable attraction they both feel grows. Will the dark secrets of Sandara’s hidden past create an insurmountable barrier between them? Can Ivokk and the tempestuous human chef find the answer to the Badari illness in time? Or will the elements and the enemy bring disaster?

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