Geeky Turn On!- The writing process

D The idea behind my first novel, Geeky Turn On, first came to me way back in the year 2017 as I was teaching in China. I imagined two teenage girls standing behind a gas station at night, Icees in hand, as they talked about the latest Marvel movies. These girls didn't have names yet, or defined features, but I imagined their personalities very vividly: they were PASSIONATE about movies, video games, Star Wars, superheroes, you name it!

For three years I sat on the idea of these two geeky girls and their non-adventures, until very late one NaNoWriMo in 2020. I had always dreamed of doing NaNo, but every previous attempt had failed. I decided that THIS story, of two geeky girls, was the one. But changes had to be made.

The first big change I made was ageing the girls up. These two teen girls became adult women for the sake of the story, going from vaguely sixteen-ish to being over thirty. I made one of the girls the main character, and the other became her love interest. 

The original idea for the novel was to celebrate Geek Culture, and how everyone is a geek for different things. The MC and her love interest were both gamers, for example, and this would be very important to their romance. There would also be a very jealous antagonist who was very into My Little Pony. Even the protagonist's father was a wrestling fan!

When I wrote the prologue, I had a strong idea about who the main character was, but I still didn't have a name for her! I remembered this webcomic I read, called Powerup Comics, and how it had a character called Dorkwinkle, and I said "that's the kind of name you get being bullied in high school." And then I got a flash: Dorkwinkle was my protagonist's nickname, while Derriwinkle was her surname! I then gave her the name Daisy, because it sounded nice.

After that, I needed a name for the love interest. I chose the name Paige because it sounded smart, like her. Paige was originally conceived as this girl who had a LOT of hidden depths to her: girly on the outside, geeky on the inside. She painted her nails pink, and she could recite the entire script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

You might notice that I actually came up with much of my story and characters on the fly. Truth is, I'm a plantser: I plan parts of my story, but the rest is make up as I go along.

Another example of me plantsing is the character of Gabe Duncan. Gabe and Daisy originally weren't going to be friends, and in fact Gabe was a bit more hostile to Daisy. He was supposed to be just a guy Daisy knew from high school who ran the shop she frequented, but as the writing went on, I discovered more potential in him being more than acquaintance to Daisy. By chapter nine, Gabe was Daisy's OTHER best male friend, and who was secretly in love with her. That change eventually led me to write How the Gatekeeper Met the Geek, but that's a story for another time.

One of my biggest changes has to be April Mann. Originally, April was supposed to be a mentally unstable girl who had a fling with Daisy, but once Paige came into the picture, she grew wildly jealous and actively attempted to sabotage their growing relationship. But as the tale grew with the writing, I noticed that this direction was simply one that I didn't want to go with. Why would I want to write about the Psycho Lesbian, a very damaging stereotype, in a book that CELEBRATES people who are typically looked down on by society? So I changed that to having her be a silly fling that Daisy went with due to being lonely and horny (a dangerous combination).

Due to this change, a new antagonist had to be written. Inspired by one Jonathan "the Pop Culture Detective" MacIntosh, I created the character of Paul Jones: an online male feminist critic of pop culture who had a history of abusing women. After that, the chapters pretty much wrote themselves.

Many chapters were planned in advance, like chapter 20 (Black Bug Room) and chapter 32 (BOSS FIGHT!). Chapter 20 I had fully mapped out by the time I was writing chapter 2, and chapter 32 was fully planned before I even began writing chapter 12! Other chapters, like chapters 5-9, were entirely improvised. 

All in all, Geeky Turn On took me two months to complete; I started in late November, and I finished in early February. I'm actually extremely happy with how the story turned out, and I adored the characters so much, I actually wrote a sequel to the story! And then I wrote ANOTHER sequel, and two prequels, and I actually have many, MANY more stories in mind for these characters! But that's for another time!