Story Ideas from Readers

Well before the lockdown, social distancing, and masks (which make it hard to hear conversations at other tables in a restaurant), I listened to two women talk about a circumstance that seemed ordinary until one said, "Can you imagine if . . . " With those simple words, she flipped over the situation and I saw a story.

This is how stories come to me, when I'm listening to someone else talk, or reading an article that holds a twist that isn't meant to be one. The Boston Globe regularly revisits the theft of art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a stain on our Yankee preserve that shows no sign of being removed. The story included a note on the brief interview some years earlier with one of the guards who lived very modestly in another state. Pressed with the old news that some wondered if he'd been involved, he replied, "Would I be living like this if I had been?" 

Once in a while a reader will ask a question that opens up a possibility I hadn't thought of. At a mystery conference in England a fan of the Mellingham series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva wanted to know about Joe's family. She asked about what I was holding back from readers. She was convinced there was a secret in Joe's life because I never said much about his family. The details were scant--a Portuguese son in a large family who had fished with his father and brothers during his earlier years. His parents were alive, and he spoke to his mother regularly (as did his landlady). That was about it.

Unlike many other writers, I never did a full backstory on the main character of my series. I knew who I wanted him to be but I didn't flesh out a lot of detail about his life before he became a cop and was hired by the town of Mellingham. But her question startled me. She had read closely, she had questions, she wanted answers. I thought about her for years until an idea came to me. The result was Last Call for Justice, when Joe drives south of Boston for a family reunion that his elderly father has insisted on. The old man is convinced he has one last chance to see all his children before death comes for him, and he draws them all home. It is a story of old fears and grudges, a settling of scores, and a discovery no one wants to make.

My new series features Felicity O'Brien, a farmer who has inherited the ability to heal with her hands, a gift passed down from mother to daughter through several generations. Her gift is on display in the first book, Below the Tree Line, but plays only a small role. One editor wanted more of that part of Felicity's life, and another wanted less. In the second book in the series (now under consideration), the healing plays an important role, but in the third book, which is now taking shape, Felicity's ability to read through her hands a person's state of health plays a pivotal role. 

The difference between an acquaintance offering a story line they just know would make a good novel and a question from a reader is obvious to me. The engagement with the series means the reader is thinking about who these characters are and what they would do, how they would engage the world. They can see what I've left out, and are curious about the missing backstory, or they catch on to an inkling I've had but haven't wanted to develop just yet. I'm grateful for these kinds of reactions from readers, and look forward to them. They always lead to a good idea.

Whose story is it?

My current project is rewriting a Mellingham mystery from Chief Joe Silva's point of view. I first wrote the novel as an extension of a short story centered around a day spent sailing along the coast. I liked the idea of the discovery of the attempted murder so much that I decided to turn the story into a novel, making the intended victim the sleuth. This went along well, I thought, until my editor rejected the novel. (Another editor is reading the short story.)

For several months I felt stuck with a novel whose basic story I loved but whose lead character didn't seem to rise to the necessary heights. Something was lacking. At the same time I came to be interested in writing more about Joe's family. Readers like hearing about Joe's birth family, and I thought it was time to write more about the blended family he created when he married Gwen, who came with two young children, Jennie and Philip. I'd already written about Jennie in Last Call for Justice, and I thought now it was time for Philip to make an appearance. I decided to rewrite the rejected novel with the focus on Joe with his family in a supportive role.

When I taught writing courses, years ago, I used a variety of exercises to make various points. One point I liked to get across is that each story depends on who is telling it, or, in my case, who is the protagonist leading the investigation, however informal or formal that may be. I assigned students the task of writing the first few paragraphs of a story from the point of view of each character in the story, to find out whose story it was. Students were almost always surprised to find that the story differed according to who became the main character. I'm learning this lesson again. The story of a woman who drowns while out sailing told from the point of view of the surviving sister is a very different story from the one told by Joe Silva in his role as chief of police of Mellingham.

As I recast each scene, expanding some and eliminating others, and add more, I can see where I went wrong with the creation of the protagonist in the first version. Annie Beckwith, given a name I thought would lead to a great career as an amateur sleuth, seemed stunted and edgy. Under the astute gaze of the chief of police, however, she is emerging as a woman grappling with the loss of a dearly loved sister and her sister's husband, and learning things about her sister's life that she'd never known and never would have guessed.

Here I imagine the reader is thinking, "Ah, dark secrets are uncovered." Well, the reader is partly correct. Not all secrets are dark. But any secret can change the one who discovers it, and faces the challenge of abandoning old assumptions for new truths.

When I began the rewrite, I wasn't sure it would be worth the effort, but I felt compelled to see it through. I love the Joe Silva/Mellingham series, and willingly block out stories to write when I have the time. But now that I'm deep into this story, I am once again hooked. I think about Joe and his little family, Gwen and Jennie and Philip, and the life they have created for themselves in the small town on the water. In this installment Joe teaches Philip to sail, and Philip turns out to be the son the townspeople of Mellingham might expect for their beloved Chief Silva.