With a Little Help from my Friends

I had brunch this morning with my friend Rosemary, who is about as crazy as I am but on just a different enough axis that we stimulate each other to new heights of silliness, rather than bogging down because we’ve each had exactly the same idea and can’t build on it.

Anyway, Rosemary is one of my best noodling buddies. Noodling is what I call the process of tossing ideas around with someone else. When I’m just starting off on a story, a lot of the noodling has to do with background, character backstory, and possible plot directions – the purpose being to flesh out the original idea seed-crystal until it hits critical mass and demands to be written. Once something is well underway, the noodling changes to things that enrich the story, even if they may never actually get into the story.

I tend to do plot-noodling with my friends whenever I get stuck on where the story is going next (and of course I do the same thing for them, when they ask). But it’s hard, sometimes, when the other person is also a writer. Many of us (me, unfortunately, often included) have all too much tendency to go “Ooooo, shiny!” when presented with someone else’s story notions, and proceed to take them off in a completely different direction from the one the author actually wants. One of my dearest friends can, in seconds, morph one of my minor characters into a protagonist and then construct a detailed plot outline for an entire novel featuring him. Which is great fun, except that once she’s done that, it’s really hard to get her to talk about the novel I actually want to write instead of the one she wants to see. 😉

Rosemary hares off after alternate plots just as often, but that’s part of plot-noodling. What she’s brilliant at is letting go of them and coming up with something totally different. She’s also a good test-reader: if I can put one over on her, it’s a safe bet the plot twist won’t be obvious to most readers.

But I digress. Because the other thing Rosemary is brilliant at is the off-the-cuff remark that leads to a sudden waterfall of cool plot or background, whether it gets into the story or not.

Like today, at brunch. We were talking about tea, as we often do, and she commented that she’d always pictured the steam dragons from Thirteenth Child as whistling like a teakettle. Within moments, we had a whole new  bit of steam dragon development worked out. See, steam dragons are aerial predators, so whistling while flying or diving on their prey would be a Bad Thing. But the young ones need to stay safe in the nesting area until they’re old enough to hunt (and fend off other dangerous critters). So they are born with some kind of blowhole-like thing that lets their steam escape so they can’t fly; it gradually closes up as they age until they are old enough to be safely airborne. And of course, it whistles like a teakettle.

You can tell how old a young steam dragon is by how loud its whistle is. (Possibly also by the tone…or maybe the tone varies slightly so that the steam-dragon parents can tell their offspring from all the others.) And if a whistle suddenly cuts off, it will attract every adult steam dragon within range, looking for whatever is threatening their babies. Among other things, this means that whistling tea kettles are an extremely bad idea for settlers who live anywhere close to steam dragon hunting grounds.

None of this has anything to do with what’s going on in Book 2 right now. It is unlikely to get into Book 2 at all. I might have an opportunity to mention it in Book 3, but I’m not sure; it depends how closely things will parallel my original, now defunct, plot outline. But I had to tell somebody.

And I wouldn’t ever have thought of it, if it hadn’t been for Rosemary. Thanks!