Getting started

So I had a few characters and a few plot lines - now what?  I put it aside for about two years before picking it up again. 

Revisiting my idea, I worried at the characters in my head, trying to figure out what stories they had to tell.  I mentioned the story to a few friends and in talking through the story with them, built more structure around the original idea.  Minor characters died off in this process before they had a chance to live and major characters changed rapidly.

During this, I started some research into the cruise ship industry.  I wanted my story to be more substantial than a light fiction novel or a thriller - I wanted there to be some meat behind the stories.  The novel needed to be realistic, and educate without boring or lecturing the reader, which is no small task, particularly for a novice writer.  I suspect most fictional novels set on a cruise would revolve around the passengers (with at best a romance with an employee).  I decided I would turn things upside down by focusing primarily on the employees, using them to show the readers how life really is on working on a cruise ship.  In order to highlight the rigid social stratification that occurs on these ships, I wanted to have roughly a character per "level" - from officer to staff to crew serving crew.  Creating realistic characters was an integral part of developing the plot lines - these employees each needed a story of their own, they couldn't just be a placeholder.

Will I be capable of showing these multiple points of view without confusing or alienating the reader?  I hope so, but that's to be determined. 

The idea

Seen primarily through the eyes of the exploited workers, a cruise turns dark as the ship confronts a deadly swine flu outbreak over its fourteen day journey.

I've always wanted to write a novel, but until recently, never acted upon this desire.  Coming up with an idea for a story wasn't too difficult - the problem has been stopping myself from trying to toss too many things into the mix. 

In early 2009, my then-boyfriend (and now recent fiance) persuaded me to take a cruise with him to the Caribbean.  Growing up, his mom took him and his siblings on numerous cruises.  My family did not cruise, but my father's career meant we spent substantial time around water and loved it.  My fiance was particularly excited about cruising because it was an ideal compromise for our vacationing styles -- he prefers to settle into one place and relax on vacation while I love exploring in great depth as many new places as possible.

Walking around the ship, it seemed a perfect setting for a story.  Plotlines fairly exploded in my head, particularly after talking to a number of the employees.  I truly enjoyed my cruise, but scratching at the ultimate luxury vacation image pedaled by cruise ships industry revealed a highly stratified society for the employees delivering this idealic product, with rampant abuses and discrimination ignored or even encouraged in the system.

With swine flu stories filling the news on our return and a passionate interest in health related news as a bioethicist and healthcare lawyer, it was a natural for me to make that the driving force of my story.  Educating the reader by exposing the gritty underside of cruising in a fictional setting through the characters was another goal.  I jotted a few ideas down and promptly filed them away for later, which did not come for another two years.