“A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.” —W. H. Auden
“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.” —Neil Gaiman
When I was writing a sequel, I knew who my characters were. At the beginning of
Pride and Prejudice, the wonderful Mr. D. is reserved, silent, and rather contemptuous of his surroundings and the people in it. A pretty easy write-up. All he has to do is stand around looking hunkilicious and disdainful, and shoot off a few zingers at our heroine once in a while. And, since I was writing pretty much from her perspective, I really didn't have to do that much to change it. (Which actor did delicious and daunting best on the screen is a topic for another day).
Even though I was writing a prequel as much as a sequel, it was pretty simple. Little Miss Put-Upon went through her trials year after year after year, and the white knight popped in on occasion to ruffle her feathers by being the man of mystery who refused any intimate acquaintance. He gets a few of his own scenes, but they are only snapshots, as opposed to Miss PU's live satellite feed. Then, voila! The next time he appears, he's all soft and gooey, giving into his
lustier more tender inclinations and marrying her. The biggest problem I had was keeping on the path. The more I wrote, the less the love birds resembled Jane Austen's characters and became more my own.
Before I decided to abandon the sequel idea altogether, I had brought the first novel to submission stage. The one-edit run-through I began with my brother did the dastardly deed, it died an ignominious death, and the manuscript was declared dead in the water.
