The inciting event
A few years ago, I was at a writing class at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) in the middle of writing a serious book when I looked up and saw that the world had become grim. Too grim. I knew that to save my sanity, I wanted to laugh. I needed to laugh. And that decision changed my writing forever.
But at the time, I didn’t have any ideas of exactly what to write. All I knew was that I wanted to laugh and hopefully write something that would be funny.
We’ve all heard of the inciting event. Mine was the evening I had dinner with a friend, and we were having our usual scintillating, fascinating conversation:
“What do you want?”
She said,
“I don’t know. What do you want?”
As I say, a sparkling, scintillating conversation.
I asked again and my friend said,
“I want to eat wall to wall food and never gain weight.”
I laughed and said,
“Wouldn’t that be fun?”
And then suddenly I had an idea; you know how the hairs on your neck and arms rise when you have a special idea? I said,
“What if you could? Seriously, what if you could?”
She said,
“I’d love it.”
I remember saying,
“Wait a minute. You’d lose your friends. No one will want to sit with you, holding a carrot in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and watch you eat the entire dessert tray. You’d lose all your friends!”
She looked straight at me and said,
“I don’t care.”
We laughed again, but I felt something stirring in my brain.
When I got home, I called my daughter, and had the exact same conversation,
“You’d lose your friends; they’re sitting there a carrot and a cup of coffee while you eat all the desserts.”
My daughter said,
“I don’t care.”
So, I knew something was germinating. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
The characters started speaking to me
That night, at twelve midnight, Joanna, the star of my book, woke me up out of a deep sleep. I had to run to the other room, where I have my computer, and I wrote non-stop for two hours.
Joanna, after telling me her name, told me that she worked for a local tv station in Beverly Hills, and had been told to lose weight or lose her job. She said she loved her job because she showed people decorating tips that cost little or nothing, and that still made a big difference in their homes.
She joked that in Beverly Hills, being overweight is frowned upon, but in show business it’s practically a felony, and she had been found guilty!
However, Joanna admitted she has a “slight” problem; she loves desserts. Chocolate chip cookies wink their chips at her, tiramisu sings its siren call, beckoning to her, and she’s helpless against the seductive allure of the forbidden: bittersweet dark chocolate.
I also loved Joanna relaying her attitude about life. She said,
“Reality, my friend, is highly overrated.”
I loved her quote so much that it’s on the cover of the book. And so is Joanna, holding an award in one hand, and a chocolate chip cookie in the other hand behind her back.
During the two hours the character, Joanna, was talking to me, I learned a little about the two other characters, her friends, Lauren and Nikki, and their wants and desires.
Lauren is a successful illustrator, but her dream is to paint, to place her own ideas, her dreams, her soul on canvas. Her responsibilities keep her from taking the leap from a paying job to the uncertainty of the art world.
And Nikki suddenly realizes that time is running out for her dream. She has always wanted to be married and have children. She has become keenly aware that marriage may not happen, but she is determined to have children. No matter what.
Those two hours of the characters speaking to me were the start of my writing Once Upon a Time in Beverly Hills.
Suddenly dictation!
And then, the character’s direct dictation started. After about six months of writing, I thought I knew my character’s arc and when a character asked Joanna’s friend, Lauren, a question, I had Lauren respond, “No.”
After all, wasn’t I the author? Wasn’t Lauren coming straight out of my imagination? Didn’t I know what she wanted and needed?
Apparently not. After I wrote Lauren saying “no,” she stopped talking to me! I waited and waited, and she refused to talk.
You know how your fingers are poised on the keyboard waiting? Well, I sat there, expecting her to talk, and nothing! I couldn’t understand it.
Finally, on the third day of silence, I felt kind of desperate. Why was Lauren silent – why was she not speaking to me? I went back to that section of the book and had her say, “yes” instead of “no” and that appeased her. Lauren started talking and talking to me again, dictating and dictating!
All I had to do was write down what all my characters were telling me. It was the strangest feeling, but I trusted them to tell me what I needed to write.
The character Marc, Joanna’s husband, told me that he would explain to the women why men don’t seem to want to get married in this millennium.
The characters kept talking to me and showing me around
The characters kept telling me their stories and took me all over Beverly Hills, into the studios, showing me a few secrets, and going to studio luncheons where the actresses do everything but eat the food placed in front of them. How the paparazzi operate with complete impunity, racing in front of cars to take photos, and if you’re the driver, you’d better slam hard on the brakes or you’d run into them (it happened to me once in real life – it was a scary incident).
I didn’t know if I should mention the “dictation” to anyone (I thought something was wrong with me). However, I started reading about other authors who’ve said they think that their characters are telling them what to write.
One author said that he felt there was someone in his brain, typing away. Someone else said there were two people sitting at their desks somewhere in his head, writing the story.
I don’t know where the characters are inside me. I only know that I’m thankful for them and gratefully look forward to taking more dictation from other characters in other books to come.
What both surprised and thrilled me is how funny the female characters were as they spoke to me! I would sit at my desk and laugh out loud.
That’s never happened to me, and it’s a fabulous, joyous feeling. I hope my new friends hang around, in my brain, or left shoulder, or stomach (where’s there’s plenty of room!), or wherever they feel most comfortable and keep chatting away.
And when I said that my writing changed forever, I mean that after writing this book, I realized that’s what I want to do: write more books that will hopefully bring smiles and laughter to people.
The other surprise? I was told to know my audience. I thought my audience would be women, from 19 to 99. However, men are reading and posting reviews. So, we never really know who will respond to our books. Have any of you been surprised by your audience?
*I was thrilled to have been invited to the Los Angeles Book Fair this April at the Putnam-Smith publishing booth. It was great chatting with all the book lovers! Another thrill was finding out that I’m a finalist in the 2024 International Book Awards. The books chosen are from HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and dozens of other publishers.
About the author
Elaine Franklin has always loved writing, and while she was busy raising her two girls, she went to UCLA to study writing. At first, she tried her hand at a spy novel because her husband likes them, but the research depressed her. She’s always preferred lighthearted books and movies that made her feel better about everything. She delights in “meeting” playful characters and going along with them on their journeys.
Because Elaine takes joy in making people laugh and finds laughing to be a cure-all, she decided to write a book that would brighten people’s lives. She maintains,
“When life gets grim, snuggling up with a fun book is like a massage for the heart and soul. It’s a vacation that you can take again and again. The other great cure-alls are chocolates and delectable desserts that send out their siren call.”
In fact, in Once Upon a Time in Beverly Hills, the fun way her characters react to desserts come straight from Elaine’s personal experience with tantalizing treats.
The idea for her book began with a casual dinner conversation where her friend expressed her wish to eat and never gain weight and Elaine chuckled and responded, “if only.”
That conversation never left her mind. She noticed more and more people say, “if only” about a lot of different subjects. She began wondering what could happen when an “if only,” came true and, of course, in her book the “if only” had to include chocolate!
And so, the story began. And, as it unfolded, it included many anecdotes from real life.
Along with her friends, Elaine has been to movie sets, elaborate parties, and wonderful restaurants where they’ve observed actresses and actors eating the show biz way, in other words, not eating! At one premiere party, the star of the film spent the entire evening clutching a glass of wine, never sipping from it, and certainly not putting a bite of food in her mouth. This is part of the Hollywood ethos as are designer clothes and paparazzi-chasing celebrities.
Elaine has taken her friend’s fantastical stories of tinsel town, along with her own memories, and featured them in the book. She hopes readers will thoroughly enjoy following the three 40-something female friends and their wild adventures in Hollywood!
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Loving how this story started and Elaine’s thoughts on where our characters can take us.
The only thing I can think of is maybe my ‘if only’ was giving up a long time ago, as it would have likely played out the same.