I think everyone who enjoys writing stories has their own approach, but a couple of people have asked me about my process.

Here it is:

I start with the problem. 

Before I know anything else, I want to know why my MCs can’t be together. What social or individual obstacles make it hard for them to meet or to get along or to fall in love.

After reading a fairly small amount of ABO (2 comics, one novel), I decided to write Free Love. 

Some stuff bugged me about the genre. Mostly, I couldn’t really handle the fact that Omegas, who are the “female-adjacent” trait, were somehow worse off than females IRL. 

That made a sick kind of sense. Since males are viewed as superior, people become frothingly furious when a male seems willing to go slumming gender-wise. He is blameworthy if he, for example, adopts the appearance, mannerisms, physiological traits, or sexual tastes of women, who are the worst and grossest thing on the planet. 

Call me ANYTHING, but not a GIRL, amirite? Or a part of a girl, even. Like a tit or a boob. Definitely don’t call me the most girlish part of a girl, the pussy. 

Yes, I know we call people dicks, too, but have you noticed that a dick is often a powerful person who isn’t being gracious about their power? So we say things like “I’m gonna have to be a dick about it and do blah blah blah” and that’s cool. Guys hardly ever semi-proudly announce to their pals that they’re “gonna have to be a pussy” about something, though.

I mean the the anger towards males who in some way embrace femininity boils down to this: Girls can’t help being less-than, but what’s YOUR excuse, dude?

I guess it’s not that hard to understand. Whichever PR firm has handled pro-masculinity messaging for the past few millennia is honestly top-drawer. Masterful spin. Unforgettable branding, sometimes literally. 

So anyway… 

My ABO book was always going to be all about a feminine male Omega who was going to swim through all the bullshit of our world plus all the bullshit of his and prevail.

Ok, but which bullshit? What bullshit did I observe happening to Omegas in other ABO stories that I want my MC to overcome?

The bullshittiest things I wanted to tackle were claims and any kind of duty to submit. 

OK, what about claims?

Well, I figured… they’re like pregnancy. They can happen sort of accidentally in the course of having a good time and not planning ahead… or they can happen entirely without consent… and if you aren’t able to choose whether you want to continue with the claim, the rest of your entire life, body and mind, will be affected by it. 

In the US being stuck with a pregnancy that occurred without planning or without consent is a very vivid fear for women at the moment, so this felt like a good time and place to explore how to hold onto your power and refuse to submit to societal pressure.

So... my Omega’s going to have a claim he wants to get rid of. 

This is where my Problem-First approach really works for me. 

I now know that I have to invent a means of getting rid of a claim— that provides a whole bunch of hard, cold lore I have to figure out and write. That’s a good, concrete task. I can dig into that. As I work on developing a protocol for claim reversal, I realize… you’ll need doctors for that.

What if my other MC was a doctor?

What if he was the exact same doctor that helped my Omega reverse his claim?

It’s complicated for doctors and patients to date. 

It’s even more complicated if trauma was involved.

Oh ho ho! They’d NEVER be able to get together… 

Unless…

Unless a lot of time passed and the professional relationship had been firmly severed. (How would that work?)

Unless the doctor was a positive force during the trauma. (What would a really great doctor be like?)

Unless they were able to be on equal footing, power-wise. (What would allow THAT to happen?)

Unless the doctor and the Omega were completely irresistible to each other, which would make all the big obstacles worth overcoming. (Like if they were fated mates?)

Unless the Omega took their healing really seriously. (What kind of personality/worldview would the Omega have? What kind of upbringing and support? What gave him the mental resources to buck the system?)

In the process of figuring out all the details of the problem, Gabriel and Alex are beginning to take shape as people and I’m creating all these wish-lists and to-do lists and the story begins to grow both backwards into set-up and forward into problem resolution. 

Instead of trying to build something from nothing, I have a lot of very specific things to figure out.

How did their doctor/patient relationship end? 

Ok, well Gabriel went to law school on the other side of the country and then did a clerkship. That would be at least four years… that’s plenty of time to heal up and to call their professional connection well and truly over.

How are they on equal footing? 

Ok, Gabriel is an attorney now and he is applying to work for the same organization that was his savior during this troubled time in his life. That makes sense, and it makes him COLLEAGUES with the doctor, so there’s no power imbalance there.

How was the doctor a positive force? 

Well, he would need to be really kind, really gentle, really empathetic, and very much on Gabriel’s side… Alex’s awesome personality and motivations are born. (New to-do list item:  How did Alex get into this line of work? What would have motivated him to choose this not-especially-profitable, emotionally-difficult, fraught job?)

How would they be irresistibly attracted? 

Well, they're fated mates and Gabriel’s an Omega, so the doctor is probably an Alpha (Won’t that freak out someone who was attacked by an Alpha? Yeah, it will, so we’ll use that). I’ll make them both freaking gorgeous, that’ll help. But, like, in very opposite ways. 

What would the Omega do to recover other than the claim reversal?

Well, he’ll need a lot of therapy. Let’s read up on the aftermath of sexual assault, what kind of ongoing psychological issues people deal with, PTSD, what kind of therapies help, etc. A really fiery personality would help here, too. Someone who lacks the submission gene entirely, trait or no trait. 

Here’s a key thing for me:  For things that are real traumas or problems for real people (or adjacent to real problems), if I don’t have personal experience (and even if I do), I don’t guess. I research. The stakes are too high not to. There’s no hippocratic, first-do-no-harm oath for writers, but there should be. That doesn’t mean censorship—I think you can write about almost anything if you honor your subject matter with diligence and respect. It means feeling a responsibility to your readers and their potential lived experiences. 

So… that’s how I got started. And since then, for each book, I’ve started problem-first:

An Alpha who likes masculine guys (yeah, I know, but I’m not saying it’s bad on an individual basis, besides, this inclination will make the Alpha a minority in ABO) and a Beta who has major beef with Alphas… but who also likes masculine guys, meaning they are both effectively gay in ABO-land, and they both face prejudice for that. What would make the problem worse? Oooh, we’ll make the Alpha a defense attorney and the Beta an SVU officer. And we'll put them on opposing sides of a major case. Muahahahaha. (Free Will)

A Beta trans woman and a Beta nonbinary pansexual person hit it off. But they live 1200 miles apart and she is a hard-nosed New York City finance girl and they’re a chilled-out Florida acupuncturist. Plus, they’re Betas in an Alphas-first world. Also, there are bears.  (Raph & Yuko)

A charming, brilliant female Alpha and an ambitious, entrepreneurial female Omega meet during a crisis and quickly realize they’re fated mates… But they live in separate cities and neither can immediately move for career reasons. Plus the Omega has a little, tiny problem with deviating from her plans and with accepting help. (Mari & Bisi)

Two fated mates, a rough-and-tumble Texas Alpha and a nerdy, high-achieving, very feminine male Omega grow up together. They are perfectly matched opposites, are totally in love, and plan to always be together, but bad luck and generational trauma rear their ugly heads, leading to a break-up even though they share a claim bond. They don’t see each other for over a decade and then there is a chance encounter. What happens next? (Free Radical)

There’s this great Anne Lamott book on writing called “Bird by Bird”… picture the writing process as luring one little word-bird after another down to land on your page. 

That’s what it’s like for me when I find a really rich and complicated problem that needs solving… 

OOOOooooh! Look at all the pretty birdies! Here, birdie birdie birdie! 

Or maybe it’s more like finding a whole pile of birdseed that will cause many pretty birdies to land on my page? 

Metaphors aside… this is how I write. I start with the problem, and then I work my way towards the solution and the story and characters build themselves as I work. If the problem is a really hard one, I feel a kind of urgency to solve it so my characters can finally be together and have an HEA, so that drives me back to my laptop over and over to work on it vs do other things.

If you want to write a story and have been having  a hard time gaining traction, maybe the problem-first approach would work for you!