Behind the Story with Roger Bruner

Hi, everyone! I'm delighted to bring you another "Story Behind the Story" blog post. I love these behind-the-scenes peeks into the making of a novel. They inspire me every time I read one.

Today's post is from author Roger Bruner.  The floor is yours, Roger!

Roger Bruner, Author

When Peg invited me to be a guest on her blog, she expressed curiosity about the title of my newest novel, ROSA NO-NAME. I assured her I’d be thrilled to share the “story behind the story.”

Be forewarned that my explanations are apt to run in several different directions before I make my point, however. Seldom can I answer a simple yes-or-no question in fewer than a a hundred words. And that’s the minimum. Be thankful you’re not married to me. At seventy, I’m getting worse…

One of the so-called rules every novelist learns and occasionally obeys is not to put a novel’s back story—everything that takes place before the story itself—too early in the book. Some “authorities” say not to include it anywhere in the first fifty pages.

Ugh! That’s a challenge when we know our readers are dying to understand some of the things they run into in the first fifty pages. Maybe even on the first page. Accepting the fact we aren’t obligated to explain everything as it happens is tough; we like being kind to our readers. We don’t enjoy frustrating them.

Novelists also aren’t supposed to insert a back story dump when they finally do bring out something from the past. We’re supposed to tell readers just enough…and at just the right time. But never everything at once.

“Okay,” you say. “We’ve been patient long enough. We get it. Go in another direction. Like the right one, please. Why is your novel called ROSA NO-NAME?”

I have to smile—graciously, of course. If you’re one of the 5,000 people who bought or at least read a copy of FOUND IN TRANSLATION, my first published novel, you’ve already met Rosa. You didn’t know her as “Rosa No-Name,” though. You knew her only as “Rosa.”

You knew her as the mother of Anjelita, the eight-year-old girl who was born with half of one arm missing. And as the woman Kim Hartlinger came to think of as a sister in spite of their never-broken language barrier. And as the villager Kim was most concerned about reaching with the Gospel and gave her Santa Biblia to just before leaving.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION left a number of questions unanswered, however. Concerning things that weren’t relevant to the story itself but still made readers curious. Who was Rosa’s husband and what became of him? Was Anjelita’s half-arm a birth defect or the result of an accident? Why were the villagers of Santa María so superstitious about the so-called Passover Church building? Why did the other children think Anjelita was maldita (cursed)? What did the villagers do for a living before the tornado wiped out the village?

Wonderful, tantalizing questions, I thought. So I wrote ROSA NO-NAME soon after completing an early version of FOUND IN TRANSLATION—that was about ten years ago—intending it as the prequel to FOUND—a prequel that would answer those questions and more.

My publisher never did say what she thought of ROSA NO-NAME. She just never expressed an interest in publishing it. The same thing happened with other publishers I submitted the manuscript to. So I finally stuck it away in a virtual drawer and forgot about it for a number of years.

My wife and my adult daughter, however, have always loved ROSA. More than any of my other novels and unpublished manuscripts. Six or eight months ago I dug it out and reread it. And fell in love with it all over again myself.

Click here to purchase

Although I can’t claim God spoke to me audibly and said, “Publish it yourself,” I felt a very strong compulsion to do just that. I’d used Amazon’s CreateSpace and KDP facilities to self-publish a couple of small books of some of my shorter writing, so I had at least some of the knowledge and confidence to proceed with this much larger project.

Calling the book ROSA would’ve made sense—after all, Rosa is the protagonist and she’s also the narrator of the story—but why ROSA NO-NAME?

When you read the book, you’ll learn that Rosa grew up an illiterate, unwanted orphan in the tiny Mexican village of Santa María. The villagers barely provided adequately for her most basic needs. No one loved her and no one would tell her who her parents were. That’s why they called her Rosa No-Name. So Rosa No-Name—as ignorant of her family background as she was of the facts of life—leaves the village a pregnant sixteen-year-old who’s still dying to learn her parentage.

Only when you come to appreciate how important Rosa’s need to learn her true identity was can you fully appreciate the final chapter—a single short paragraph—and weep along with me at seeing how far Rosa has come.

 

I can’t keep from quoting one of Rosa’s endorsers, “You’ll thank yourself for reading ROSA NO-NAME!”

About the Author

Roger Bruner spent his whole work life trying to figure out what he wanted to do when he grew up. Along the way he taught school, interviewed job seekers, and programmed computers. He retired from a temporary stint at Target to write full-time and wishes he could have done that years earlier.

Samples of his poems, plays, short stories, songs, and novels are available at RogerBruner.com.

A guitarist and songwriter, he’s in the church choir and plays bass in the praise team and guitar at a nursing home ministry. Long interested in missions, he’s gone to Romania, England, Wales, Australia, and Nicaragua on short-term mission trips.

Roger likes spending time with his wife, Kathleen. He has a daughter, who lives with her husband and son in Orlando, and stepdaughters in New York City and Las Vegas.

He enjoys reading, photography, web design, and playing Words with Friends. 

So where does Roger hang out?

• Website: RogerBruner.com
• Blogs: OnAgingGracelessly.com
•        AsIComeSinging.wordpress.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Roger-Bruner-author-251304258214743 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerBruner
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerbruner/
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/101208883289803245154
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/rogerbruner/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rogerebruner/
• AskDavid: http://askdavid.com/books/11509  

 

Nothing new . . . ???

Hello, Whispers readers. Long ago and far away, I wrote a weekly column called the Peg Board . Clever, huh? I knew you'd agree.


Amazingly, through a move half-way across the country, several computer changes, hard-drive crashes, and all that fun stuff, those old articles have remained in my files. I've had fun browsing through them recently, and I thought it would be neat to give that column a new life here on Whispers in Purple from time to time, as well as some new musings.

With that in mind, to kick this off, I found one I'd like to share ... though slightly modified from the original. Writers can do that, you know.

Solomon wrote: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.” Ecclesiastes 1:9-10. [NIV]

It’s not the weary and despairing Solomon behind these words I’m focusing on, but the words themselves – as they apply to our writing. It has been said, or so I’ve heard, that there are only a handful of basic plots out there upon which to build a story. Chances are that if you’ve come up with a pretty good story line it’s already been done. So…what to do?

I think the trick is to take an old plot that works and make it new. By that I mean give it a totally different location, cast of characters, twist and tweak the plot some, and you’ve got a brand new old story. 

Pygmalion by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1786, Musée National du Château et des Trianons

For example, in an ancient Greek myth, gifted sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with his sculpture named Galatea. As the story goes, eventually the goddess Venus turns Galatea into a real woman. From that little bit, do you recognize the next incarnation? The Pygmalion story comes alive in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion from which came the play, and then the movie My Fair Lady. Now, however, we’re no longer dealing with a sculptor and his statue, but a stuffy professor and a cheeky Cockney flower girl.

See the potential here? Can you think of other old plots that have been redone, refashioned and placed in a newer setting? One that stands out in my mind is the Old Testament story of Hosea and Gomer. Francine Rivers transformed that into a tremendously gripping novel called Redeeming Love. 

Liz Curtis Higgs has taken the story of Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel and woven a fictional collection of books set in 18^th Century Scotland in her Lowlands of Scotland series. Delightful reading, by the way.

Myths, Bible stories, and ancient history lend themselves easily to good plots that can be set in just about any time period you choose. By bringing the story up into more modern times you really don’t have to do a whole lot of research, either. The basic plot will be there, but you’re changing everything else. All you need to know is the bare bones of the original and take it from there. 

 I say that with this caveat: The research you need depends on how closely you wish to stay in the details of the original. I imagine that Liz Higgs had her Bible open while she was writing her series. Everyone will recognize the story and the characters, but because she changed the setting to a different place and advanced the time period by a few thousand years, the whole thing changes. It is, after all, fiction.

So, next time you’re stuck for a writing idea or need a plot, think about something old and make it new! 

Can you think of an "old" story you'd love to make "new"? Do share.

Calm the Waters, Lord ♦ Devotion ♦ Ray Hawkins

 

Calm the Waters Lord.

 a devotion from Australian writer Ray Hawkins

            My son and daughter in law own a tourist venture called Seahorse World.  They also export these fascinating creatures to various aquariums around the World. Collecting baby seahorses requires the waters of the tanks to be calm. This meant catching them before the adults stirred and were fed. Water flow and air pressure were lessened also as swirling waters in the tanks make it difficult to see beneath the surface. Often as I’ve been doing this the statement by Jesus strikes to mind, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11:28.

            Jesus didn’t promise to fix the problems causing agitation. Why? Surely He could have sorted out the issues, lifted the burden or solved the problem! In effect, He would have been the puppet master, not a disciple’s Lord. By offering us a calm spirit Jesus trusted us to evaluate what caused our weariness or produced the burden. Peace of mind shrinks a burden to a manageable size. When we have inner quietness God’s word is able to refresh our weariness. The issues confronting us have not disappeared but now we have, by the Lord’s grace, a more confident grip on them.

            Three words give directions for calming the turbulence of our soul. In the reading they are, ‘Come!’  ‘Take!’   ‘Learn!’  To ‘come’ is an act of faith in the Lordship of Jesus. You, I make a conscious effort to enter His presence in prayer, meditation, worship and Scripture reading. ‘Take’ is a willingness to identify with the Lord’s interests. The concept of the ‘yoke’ requires us to submit ourselves to Him and His teachings. In so doing it isn’t long before we realise, He is doing most of the load sharing. To ‘learn’ is expressing humility by acknowledging we don’t have all, or even a few, of the answers for what is sapping our inner being. Regardless of how long we have been yoked to the Lord there is always something to learn from His word. Only then will we be walking in step with him.

Doing this by faith enables The Lord Jesus to calm the troubled ‘waters’ of our soul. In clear mindedness our decisions and responses will then arise from godly wisdom and spirituality maturity.

Raymond N. Hawkins

P.O.Box 379

Beauty Point

Tasmania

Australia 7270.

ray.haw3819@bigpond.com 

e-mail ray.haw3819@bigpond.com

Blog: http://rayhawkinsauthor.blogspot.com.au

                                          Ray is a retired Churches of Christ (Australia) minister.

Mary, his wife is a multi-published author of Inspirational Romance, set mainly in Australia. They have three children and six grandchildren.

Live in Northern Tasmania.

Ray writes Biblically themed 31 day devotionals.

Works by Ray Hawkins include:

**Children, God’s Special Interest.

**From Eden with Love.

(The mystery and majesty of Marriage from the Biblical viewpoint)

 

**Bethlehem’s Warrior Baby. (Understanding Christmas)

**Captured by Calvary. (The wonder of the Cross)

**Dynamic Ageing. (We are never too old or infirm to be precious to God)

**Signposts to Happiness. (Beatitudes from the Scriptures)

**The Warrior Lord’s Sword. (Reflections on what the Bible says about itself).

**The Warrior Lord’s Triumph. (Reflections on the Lord’s Return to Reign).

These are 31 day themed devotional meditations.

They have been published by EBP – a division of Wombat Books, Capalaba, Queensland, Australia.

Christian bookshops have them. Also as Ebooks.

You can purchase them direct from the author.

Poems - We love Because… (a celebration of 50years of marriage.)

                The Weakness of God. (About Christ and the Cross)