“So how do you plot your books, Mike?”
I had taken the liberty of showing some of my Literature students an extract from one of my Piper books. There are some incredibly bright kids in that group so I was pleased that I got a very favourable response.
“I have an idea. If I can keep that idea long enough to write it down, I water it and fertilize its roots. An idea has to take root before it grows. I then think about possible end-destinations for the story. It’s kind of like looking at different horizons from the top of a hill before deciding what direction you will head out on.”
“So what do you do then, do you sketch it out?”
“Usually I just start writing. I try to get ten thousand words out; those are the roots. If I have still got some steam after ten thousand words, I continue.”
“Where do you get your ideas from?”
“Up there, out there, in there. Sometimes they fall from sleep; windfalls.”
“What about the stories that run out of steam?”
“I put those into storage.”
“How do you write an entire book?”
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