With news of our government struggling to find common ground and resolve the pending debt crisis and the NFL and NBA struggling to come to an agreement it seemed apropos to create a romance writing prompt, aka story starter, on the topic. Only your story will be much more interesting than debt ceilings and CBAs.
Your heroine is a no holds barred, powerful, negotiator. She’s often brought in to being unions and other parties to their knees.
When she’s hired by one of the country’s largest companies to conduct hard ball negotiations with the owner of a smaller company she’s stunned to find that she’s not only met her match, she also for the first time in her life, isn’t sure she wants to win this one.
Start your story as your heroine enters the meeting room and comes face to face with him for the first time. What is her reaction? Let the sparks fly!
Annette I LOVE your story starters and I never miss a Sunday for them but I’ve been dying to write a western romance novel and I have no idea how to start it or get a idea on paper with changing my mind. Do you have eny advice for me?
HI Mia,
Thank you very much! I’m so glad you’re enjoying Story Starter Sunday. I do have advice for you however I also encourage you to try different things to see what works best for you. So my advice is two parts:
1. Create a character or a scenario that is exciting for you. By create, you don’t have to sit down and write a thing. Allow yourself to daydream – this is where the best ideas come from. Take a walk, take a bath, just sit on your porch and close your eyes and allow your imagination to wander. I often get great ideas for stories as I’m falling asleep at night. Once you have the nugget of an idea, whether it is a character that you have imagined or a scene, sit down and start writing. No pressure here, you’re merely translating your daydream onto paper. Don’t worry about it being good or making sense. It doesn’t have to. Just start writing and enjoy the process of creating a story. Once you have created a scene or a new character you will likely find that your imagination begins to run with it. Sometimes I write a scene that I love and I have no idea where it should go next but a day, or two, or three later the next scene pops into my head and I carry on. I think sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to create and our imagination shuts down. so that’s my first bit of advice.
2. Consider reading a few western romances to get a feel for the general pacing, plot, and common threads. Then sit down and outline your own. Now this is a more structured way of creating a story but what I like about the outline process is that it provides me with the ability to create a full story without the pressure of writing each scene. My outlines are generally about 7-10 pages long and they’re descriptive outlines about what happens in each chapter. This way I can make sure there’s enough of a story to create a book. I can also make sure the conflicts, characters and plot all support a full book. You can allow your imagination to run free with this while at the same time you’re creating a structure that you can work from.
Consider also, once you get started writing, if you feel like changing your mind then take a break from what you’re working on and write down your new direction. These tidbits may result in a new book or you may decide to change the story you’re working on. There’s no right or wrong approach here. The key is to relax into your imagination and to allow whatever comes to you to happen without judgement. You’ll have plenty of time to judge your story and writing during the revision process:-D.
Hope I helped! I’d really like to hear back from you and read your western romance!
I’m sorry I made a mistakebut it was suppposed to say ‘any’
Hi Mia. It seems to me that you must have a story line that is nagging at you to get written? I think how you start your story depends a lot on that and where you plan the story to end. Maybe think about the ending and how the beginning might fit into that? As a suggestion, of course! Assuming it’s a romance, do the main characters end up together? Will the beginning have something to do with one of them searching for the other, or for just something better in their life? Maybe they already know each other and it’s a setting you need to find? Anyway – something to think about. Hope it works out for you soon!
Thank you so much and ill be sure to let you read my story