Behind-the-Book: The Forgive My Fins Novel Notebook (Part 1)

Thanks to the votes in a little Instagram poll I did recently, today I’m going to be sharing some scans for my original Forgive My Fins novel notebook. These are pages from the actual notebook that I used to brainstorm the first Lily and Quince book, including a mediocre doodle and an aha moment.

Warning: This post is image heavy, so it might be slow to load. Also, it has some Forgive My Fins spoilers. If you don’t want to be spoiled, go read the book first.

The Cover

I used to LOVE using the Miquelrius spiral notebooks with the pretty, pretty covers. The paper texture was perfect and the sections defined by colored page edges made it easy to organize my thoughts without tabs or sticky notes.

I eventually moved on to Moleskine Volant notebooks (and am now trying to brainstorm digitally in GoodNotes) but the Miquelrius will always have a special place in my heart.

The Sticker

This sticker might have been a gift from Sophie Jordan’s daughter (who would have been about 4 or 5 at the time).

The Title Page

I always have to make a pretty cover page for each notebook. I can’t really dig into brainstorming a story until I have (at the very least) a working title. Sometimes the titles change (Growing Up Godly → Oh. My. Gods.) but sometimes, like with Forgive My Fins, they really stick.

Now for the good stuff…

The Kiss

It all started with the kiss. (In truth, it all started with me fantasizing about a kiss, but that’s a story for another day…) So even though I hate writing out of order, I wrote this scene draft early on because it was pivotal to the entire story.

The Rules

When you’re writing fantasy (whether it’s epic, otherworldly fantasy like Game of Thrones or something more rooted in our world like True Blood) you need to establish the rules of your magic. Things your characters can and can’t do, unless breaking the rule itself becomes a significant plot element.

The Blips

Sometimes a line of dialogue or a character action pops into my mind. If I don’t know where it belongs yet, I’ll scribble it down on a page/in a file called Blips.

The Drawing

I’m a very visual person. Sometimes it helps me to do a quick sketch of a character or a place to help me really get a feel for them/it. Especially when it’s a fantasy creature that you can’t just Google for pics.

The Timeline

Keeping track of the story timeline is super important and, for some reason, always something I struggle with. I always to create a chart of the days/weeks over which the story takes place so I can put events in a chronological perspective.

Land vs. Water

This goes back the elementary school English lesson on comparing and contrasting. When you write a story that has two very different worlds or choices (like, say, two romances in a love triangle) then it often helps to make a list showing which traits/element align with each.

I did this a lot in the Sweet Venom series to make sure that each of the triplets was really unique despite the fact that they are genetically identical. I can only imagine that the writers of Orphan Black did something similar to the nth degree.

The First Line(s)

The first line of a story is probably the most important line an author will ever write. (The last line is a close second.) On this page, I tried out some versions of a first line. I didn’t end up using anything like these.

Here’s the real first line:

Water calms me. It’s like chocolate or hot tea or dulce de leche ice cream.*

* This is before I went vegan and Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche was my be-all-end-all ice cream. Now I would say So Delicious Salted Caramel Cluster.

The Backstory

Sometimes, when I get stuck in a story, I like to write out the backstory of one or more of the characters. I think about pieces of their history that the readers will probably never know, but that help me put together a fuller picture. And something important almost always comes out of these free-writing exercises.

If I need to dive really deep, I write it from the character’s first-person point of view, as if they’re writing their memoir.

Note that, by this point in the notebook, I’ve changed Aunt Lori from the Land vs. Water page to Aunt Rachel (named after one of my cousins).

The Aha Moment

This is what it’s like when I have a story breakthrough! It’s like fireworks going off in my head, and pink-filled stars dotted all over the page. Honestly, I don’t even remember if this became a part of the Forgive My Fins story (Quince is pretty much the undisputed champion of pushing Lily’s buttons, so it’s probably in there) but these kinds of breakthroughs always lead to better, more exciting story threads.

Also note that I got IMMEDIATELY bored trying to write a synopsis, and instead let my mind wander to this aha moment. There’s a lesson in there somewhere…

This feels like a good breaking point. I’ll share more highlights from the Forgive My Fins notebook, including some character and world-building development and my self-editing process, in another post.

Let me know in comments if you want to see more posts like this. I have boxes full of this stuff in the garage and would love to share it with you.