Someone asked me what made me want to write Finding Jane, my most popular story up to date. Somehow what should have been a simple answer turned into this long comment that I replied back with. I've decided to let you guys read it, because, seriously, I bet you all have wonderd at some point the same thing this girl wondered. The reply isn't exactly what made me want to write Finding Jane, it's actually more how I wrote it. So, I hope you guys enjoy this (:
Honestly, I made the layout, thought it was pretty, wrote the summary, and then waited for an idea. Right before I went to bed one night, I just thought of the line that Alex says, "Your eyes shine like the ocean when the sun hits the waves." I woke up in the morning and was SO upset that I didn't have time to go on the computer and write it down before I went to school. So the whole day I was repeating that sentence in my head, praying that I wouldn't forget it.
So when I got home that day, I immediately went to the computer and wrote it down. I wasn't sure how to incoporate it into the story, so I let it sit there for a minute, and I just stared at that sentence. Then, I put my fingers on the keyboard and it just all came out. That whole first part, about how Alex was quiet, how he was like a puzzle, how they found each other when they needed each other the most.
And I don't think it was until after the second or third chapter that I realized I wanted Alex to be a mute. It had occured to me when I wrote the first chapter that he was a very quiet, possibly shy guy, but when it hit me that he could be a mute, I just knew that was how I wanted to write him.
Honestly, I never, ever had a clear plan for the story. I knew a timeline, but that was about it. I didn't know what kind of emotions would come out, so when I wrote the chapters, it was really just me wanting to write a chapter, but not knowing hardly a thing about what was going to happen in it. So I opened a Word document and just let my fingers do what they wanted to do.
I'm not sure how that approach actually worked, to be honest. I mean, how often is the outcome of doing something like that so--with hope of not sounding like I'm bragging--amazing? It never really hit me how emotional the story was until Vicki, 100% my number one fan of that story, told me how well I wrote emotion.
But it never really hit me, much. Like it says at the end of Chapter 17, I sat down, opened up a Word Document, and just typed. I had no plan whatsoever. But, to me, that chapter was one of the most emotional chapters in the story, hands down.
I used a lot of one-lined paragraphs throughout the story, and I think that really brought it together. Like in Chapter 17, when Jane says, "I wanted Alex." Or in chapter 5, when Jane says, "And for the rest of lunch, it was silent." I think that, with the short chapters, really made the story what it turned out to be. I never actually intended to have the chapters be that short, at least at the beginning. In the Author's Note of Chapter Two, it says that "I'm the queen of short updates." At that point, I still didn't realize that the chapters were meant to be that short. (At least, that's what I think.) The short, powerful chapters were really what made the story so wonderful. According to many commenters, it is a really rare thing to have the ability to accomplish those short, powerful chapters, and especially at my age. I was only 15 when I wrote the first 15 chapters!
Probably the most clear example of how I really had absolutely no idea what was going to happen in the story is in Chapter 14, when, after Alex says that his mother was in heaven, and Jane asks, “How..uhh…how did it, you know, happen?”, I literally sat there for at least five minutes, contemplating how I wanted his mother to die. I had no idea. And going along with that, I didn't even know why he was mute until Chapter 7, when Jane realizes the connection of the notes, the one her dad wrote and the one Alex wrote. And then she talks about how Alex has been mute since he came back from the one week of absense in 7th grade. I honestly have NO idea how that idea came to me. Like I said earlier in this comment, my fingers did the writing, almost as if my brain was in overload and I couldn't even comprehend what I was writing until after I had typed it. But when I was reading over that chapter (as I always do before I post a chapter; I'm quite a grammar and spelling freak) it hit me that his mother had died that week. And when I was sitting there, writing Chapter 14, I still didn't even know how his mother had died. And that's probably crazy for you to hear, because it seems as if the story fits perfectly together, and you probably thought I had everything planned from the beginning but that's so not how it was.
So, yeah, that's how I wrote Finding Jane.
Not registered?
Create an account