Kid in a Candy Store

By Maegan Beaumont

When a writer lands on a story idea, it usually happens one of two ways. It's either like being hit by lightening or like watching a seed germinate. Either way, once the story takes root, your head starts to swim in The Sea of Possibilities...

This is good--possibilities always are, but if you're not careful, you start to look like this:

or like this:

and then, eventually... like this:

Having a fiction writer's imagination can be both a blessing and a curse. We can spin straw into gold but sometimes, we get carried away. Every idea we have is a good one, every plot twist we come up with is absolutely vital to the outcome of the story (or so we fool ourselves into believing) so, we pile it on. We're gluttonous. Greedy. We have what I call Kid-in-a-candy-store-itis.

Before we know it, we're working plot points for a paranormal, dystopian, sci-fi,western about a half-vampire, half-werewolf who falls in love with a time-traveling mermaid... which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with our initial story idea.

Just remember to keep it simple. With roughly 1,100 years between us and the first printed page, an original plot is damn near impossible. Originality comes from our voice. Don't let it become cluttered and bogged down by an over active imagination or you'll end up like this guy:

And remember: friends don't let friends write paranormal, dystopian, sci-fi westerns about a half-vampire, half-werewolf who falls in love with a time-traveling mermaid.

Maegan Beaumont is the author of SACRIFICIAL MUSE, the second book in the Sabrina Vaughn series (Available through Midnight Ink, summer, 2014). A native Phoenician, Maegan’s stories are meant to make you wonder what the guy standing in front of you in the Starbucks line has locked in his basement, and feel a strong desire to sleep with the light on. When she isn’t busy fulfilling her duties as Domestic Goddess for her high school sweetheart turned husband, Joe, and their four children, she is locked in her office with her computer, her coffee pot and her Rhodesian Ridgeback, and one true love, Jade.
She also writes a blog dedicated to helping writers with plot woes and answering writing questions. Check her out – http://maeganbeaumont.blogspot.com/