Why I’m Making Lists ~ @AuthorKristina Knight

 

I’m a list maker. Always have been. Probably always will be. I make lists for groceries and places we’d like to visit and things we can’t forget on our next trip (whenever that might happen). I also make lists for my books. This will probably come as no surprise to our regular readers because I’ve told y’all (likely ad nauseum) about my music playlists. What you don’t know is that music playlists aren’t the only lists I’ve made. 

At the beginning of the pandemic I started making other lists - places we wanted to go post-pandemic, lists of favorite movies to watch when we were sick of quarantine, things to do at home, video games to try, books to read (and re-read)...you get the picture. Somewhere around the beginning of fall I started to make these same lists for the characters in the book I was writing. Their favorite comfort foods, comfort music, comfort movies...and along with some of their favorites I added to the lists why these things appealed to them. 

I know, it’s a little frou-frou...what can I say? Pandemic, man. But these lists spoke to me in a way that traditional character interviews didn’t. Character interviews always feel...well, awkward to me. But here lists were just ... lists. They weren’t awkward, but I still felt as if I was getting a better handle on what these characters wanted and who they were. So I made more lists. 

Anyway. As I was making their lists, I also started making my own - hero’s I’ve loved from movies and books, genres that call to me, tropes that I love...all of those emotional-crack type things. And along with the straight-up lists, I noted down what about those things appealed to me. I looked at it as a way to get even more familiar with Core Story - I’ve blogged about that before...but Core Story is basically the story that always draws you in, as a reader or as a writer. It’s that one element that is ‘you’. For me, core story is all about acceptance and found family. 

Now, before you go thinking I’m the first author to ever do this, think again. There is an author, Alexandra Sokoloff, who suggests doing this to get a better handle on our core story - that story that we, as authors, love to tell and return to time and again. No, I didn’t know about her before I started making my lists, but since finding out about her (her writing series of books is fab and linked above), I’ve started being even more detailed in my lists. I’m deconstructing a few favorite movies and books...and I’m going to use these breakdowns as guideposts for my own writing. Not to imitate what other authors have done, but to make sure my books are also hitting all the right notes.  

What about you? Have you identified what tropes and hooks and story types make your heart flutter?