The Boy in the Woods (2014 Wattys Winner, Wattpad Version)

My Writing Process and The Boy in the Woods

Hey everyone!

Today is a pretty exciting day for Marty and Jess fans! A brand new, never-before-seen chapter with Marty and Jess has been posted in the Wattpad Block Party – Winter Edition book!

To celebrate, I'm reposting my contribution to the Wattpad Block Party – Summer Edition six months ago. If you haven't had a chance to read this yet, enjoy, and then head over to the new chapter which you can find in the external link.

Spoiler Alert: This new chapter takes place later in time, so don't read it unless you've finished The Boy in the Woods and at least the first chapter of The Man Inside the Iron Fence. Otherwise you may be a bit lost.

~~

When I was trying to write something for my Block Party post, I decided I wanted to do something special for the readers of The Boy in the Woods, so I asked them what they were dying to know, and these were the most common questions I was asked.

Where did you get the idea for The Boy in the Woods?

When I was wrapping up the sequel to my last story, I was trying to think of ideas for a new story, but nothing came to me. Unlike a lot of authors, I don't have a million story ideas swimming in my head. But I had read somewhere that if you didn't know what to write, take a story you love, change all the details, and then write that story. By time you've finished, you'll have created something completely original.

I decided to give it a try and thought back to some of my favorite childhood books. One that immediately came to mind was Mandy, by Julie Andrews, the actress who played Mary Poppins among other roles.

Mandy is a young girl who lives in an orphanage in England where she has a good life and is well cared for, but she misses the things that other children take for granted. Not just having parents, but things like having her own toys and her own room, someplace that belongs only to her. One day, out of curiosity she climbs the stone wall behind the orphanage, and while exploring the estate of the rich man who lives there, she stumbles upon an abandoned cottage and claims it as her own.

Does this sound familiar yet? It should because this was the beginning idea for The Boy in the Woods. I changed the girl into a boy, gave him a family with a not very good home life (which gave him a different motivation for trespassing). The stone wall became an iron fence and the cottage became a cabin.

So now I had a character and a setting, but I needed more to fill out the story. It had to be a love story, because I can't write a story that doesn't have romance. LOL And that meant I needed a girl, a girl who would find the boy. As I thought about her, the pieces fell into place, her losing her parents and being brought to live on the estate (so she wouldn't have met the boy before), and what her new family was like.

Another element my story had to have was mystery. The Harry Potter series has been the biggest influence on my writing, especially because of all the mysteries that are woven throughout the books. I loved how it made me feel when I was trying to figure them all out, and I wanted to create that same experience for my readers.

In The Boy in the Woods, the back story of what happened before Jess was born adds some of the mystery to the story. It causes all sorts of twist and turns that Jess, and the readers never see coming. In fact, the back story was such a good story in itself, I decided to turn it into a standalone prequel

What was your inspiration for the 'boy', Marty?

As I continued to plan out The Boy in the Woods, I worried a lot about writing Marty's character. I wanted him to be a tough kid, because Marty has been through a lot in his short life and would carry a lot of scars. But the biggest problem I faced was that I'd just spent two years writing from the POV of a guy who was the complete opposite of Marty, and that was the first story I'd ever written. I honestly didn't know if I would be able to write a different kind of male character.