Hi dear friends,
Thanks for being here again for Jay’s fourth part of his interview!

Comparing his two books…how did Jay work his magic?

Link to previous post –> HERE

How did you work for Watching Glass Shatter? Did you think the characters first? Had post it everywhere with their character’s trait? Did you write the skeleton of a plot? Something else?

Most definitely the plot. It was a dream. I’d just read 3 books which all dealt with something vaguely in the same realms, e.g. a will being read, a secret being kept, and a large family full of disfunction. As I slept, new secrets and story arcs formed. I woke up thinking about 3 brothers being impacted by them and began writing it all down… then I saw 4 brothers, then 5 when I finished writing the outline that first day. I wrote a ~30-page plot, setting, and character outline in those first few days and then just dove right into the full book. Each brother had some element of ‘me’ in them, so it was easy to start with that characteristic and flesh it out until I had a unique person formed. Go ahead, try to figure out which key component in each of them is coming from me!!!

Was the writing process different for Father Figure? Smoother? Like wearing an old jacket?
It was the same process with one key difference. I had it all in my head, but I hadn’t written it down. I was talking with Big Sis (let’s see who gets this reference) where she forced me to tell her about the plot of my next book. And I just kept talking for 30 minutes, which I NEVER do… and by the end of it, she was like “you’re completely nuts.” She might be right, but that day, I wrote it all down. A few characters changed when I saw it on paper. I debated who would die in the end, and it was changed twice. For me, shock and surprise is essential in the books I write. The bigger the better, but I have challenged myself to write a book (either my 3rd, 4th or 5th – undecided yet) where it’s not about over-top-top drama, and instead, it’s very light, but very complicated emotionally. I went from 10 distinct POVs to 2 distinct POVs between the two books, so I’m working my way down to just 1 where it will have to focus on a full range of emotions without immense plotting.

I am really amazed of your writing skills and plotting mind.

Aww, he says with a grin the size of… Pluto? Just keeping within the theme of today.

That’s all for today! More about Jay’s books tomorrow. Just come back!

Thanks for reading!

Sophie