Spoiler Alert: This post is about how I came up with part of the story for The Three B’s of Genie Whispering. If you haven’t finished that book yet, you may want to wait to read this until after that. Now, onto the post!
Book 6
The stories for episodes one and three (those focusing on Tavor and Illan) in this book were both inspired by playing with my niece and nephew, with both being inspired by the same place.
We went to an indoor play place that has a jungle gym/obstacle course, and while running around with my niece and nephew, I started thinking about a situation where Ali would need to display physical competence. Because of her athletic wish from the first book, she would, of course, want to hold back to make things fair, while Tavor would want her to go all out. I thought it was a fun scenario, and so the plot line with the obstacle course was born!
Having that plot line was also super helpful because Tavor talks to Ali about her capabilities involving more than just science, which is what she’s always focused on in the past. I wanted her to broaden her horizons, and Tavor felt like the perfect genie to have that conversation with her. Plus, I admit, I wasn’t sure how to keep involving science to solve the story problems like I’d been, so I wanted to move away from that.
This same indoor play place also has a little walled off area that’s kind of like a mini-dance club with flashing lights and loud music that’s fun to play around in. While hanging out there with my nephew, I had an idea for Ali to pretend to be an ice genie, while she and Illan have a conversation about belonging to each other, with Illan also protecting Ali from a master who wanted her to become his genie.
The scene above did originally take place within a dance club inside my head (one frequented by The Society, of course). But the way the story turned out, it ended up happening at a black market instead. Other than the location change, the specifics of the actual scene largely stayed the same to what I’d originally imagined. It was quite fun temporarily placing Ali in the role of a genie.