Episode 36: Behind the Scenes of Reconciled People

Hello, and welcome to episode 36. In this week’s episode, I wanted to spend some time talking about my process for writing my first short story collection, Reconciled People.

In last month’s Behind the Scenes episode, I talked about the process of writing my first novel, Magic Souls. I thought I’d do the same thing with Reconciled People.

Short stories are different from novels in a number of ways. Since they’re shorter, you have to economize and do more with less. You also have to follow different narrative structure. You can’t really follow most major plotting methods; most short stories revolve around a single event. I’ve always viewed short stories as the equivalent of short films to full-length movies.

Anyway, when I started writing, I said I would never write short stories. I was writing poetry at the time and thought short stories were so complicated and mysterious.

But one of my writer friends dared me to try it, and I did and got hooked.

For a while, I followed Ray Bradbury’s advice and wrote a short story every week, sometimes multiple.

I would go to local places like coffee shops and libraries, pick random people and write long sketches about them, making up details on what their lives might be like. Then I’d adapt those sketches into stories. I did this for about half a year, and most of the sketches were pretty terrible, honestly, since I was honing my craft. This was back in 2012 when I was just starting out.

I forgot about those early stories until I happened across them by pure chance several years later.

As I read through them, they were surprisingly cohesive. They were all sketches of everyday people facing a major fear.

The opening story, “Highwind”, is about a Native American running away from his culture.

Another story, “Origin Story,” is about a priest trying to console a young man who experienced a breakdown after his home burns down.

Another story, “The Lovegram,” is about a family man who has to re-examine his own biases after an act of kindness by a stranger.

While the stories aren’t perfect by any means—nothing a writer does is—they showcased my early curiosity and love of capturing everyday people on the page.

One story in particular is really memorable for me. It’s called “Aww, Shuckies”, and it’s about a girl named Shaquannah, a fifth grader who is set to go to the city museum on a field trip. On this trip, she plans to declare her love for her crush. When the field trip is canceled, she spends the day moping and failing to see anything positive. But one random incident at the end of the story completely changes her perspective.

More than any of the stories in the collection, I drew it directly from my fifth grade experience. The excitement on field trip days, the young crushes, the funny comraderie and witty banter between kids—that was all true for me. And it was fun translating it onto the page.

Anyway, I’d love to spend more time talking about Reconciled People since it’s my least popular book. I’ve sold maybe a dozen copies of it at best, and you can of course find links to it in the show notes.

Next week, since there are five Thursdays in November, I will play a sample from the audiobook version. So stay tuned for an amazing sample next week.

“I love people, watching people interact. It's a lot of psychology. We learn about ourselves by watching other people's lives on the screen.” -Tatiana Maslany

In this week’s episode I go behind the scenes of writing my first short story collection, Reconciled People. This book taught me how to people-watch, and it forced me to become a student of people and places, which served me well in my fiction.

Grab Reconciled People: http://www.michaellaronn.com/reconciledpeople

Links

Show Notes (including a transcript and sound credits): www.michaellaronn.com/episode36

Grab your copy of Reconciled People: http://www.michaellaronn.com/reconciledpeople

Check out all the past episodes on my website: www.michaellaronn.com/podcast

My YouTube Channel for Writers: http://www.youtube.com/authorlevelup

Also, join my Fan Club to get 3 free novels, early launch pricing, and notifications whenever I release a new book: www.michaellaronn.com/fanclub

If you like the show, don't forget to rate and leave a review!

Sound/Music Credits:

Intro/Outro Music: “Kick. Push” by Ryan Little: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/RyanLittle//kickpush