We recently connected with Melissa Banczak and have shared our conversation below.

Melissa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Oh if I could go back. I always wanted to write but I could never make myself sit still long enough to get any of the stories in my head down on the page. I had no computer and writing by hand just wasn’t cutting it. When I finally could afford a PC in the early 90s, I suddenly had a job. A friend’s literary agent needed a reader. Less than a year later, I was an agent and all of my time was focused on getting my client’s work out there. When the agency closed, after the owner retired, I was so burnt out, it was more than a year before I could read anything longer than the text on the back of a cereal box. I didn’t even have characters living out their lives in my head anymore.
Then, one day I was watching a TV show about aliens on Earth. One character saved another by holding their hand over a gunshot wound and it miraculously healed. I looked over at the dog and said, “That’s dumb. Just being from another planet doesn’t give you superpowers.” The dog didn’t disagree and a lightbulb went off. I fired up my PC and I wrote a short script called Lilah and the Alien about just that. (we won a best actor award at Sidewalk Film Festival in 2004) For the next ten years, I worked in film churning out scripts and always saying, one day I’ll write a book. It took a bad experience with a shady producer to kick that plan into action and I published my first novel in 2017. But, if I could go back. I’d say no to that job and just write. I could have been in Kindle at the beginning.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

What am I most proud of? My Roll-A-Prompt series that I co-author with my friend Lisa Mahoney. You roll dice and create prompts from sets of elements. This started because I was having trouble finishing things. I spent a year rewriting the first 13 chapters of one of my mysteries, and Lisa, an award-winning short fiction author, suggested I spend some time working on things I could finish quickly to get a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, every time I sat down, I’d start some epic story that couldn’t be finished in 500-5000 words. I even tried writing a monologue for an actor friend and ended up with 60 pages of an unfinished screenplay. When Lisa suggested prompts, I tried a few but still had issues. Then we brainstormed on how to get me outside my head and came up with a few sets of elements that used dice to create a prompt. I had so much fun, we sat down and wrote a whole book of element sets. And then a whole series. We use them on my podcast and have a blast with visiting authors. I’ve even had people tell me they start their days with one of our prompt sets or are writing a book or series based on a prompt they did.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I come from screenwriting where every single word on the page is valuable real estate. As an agent, I never looked at a screenplay over 90 pages. (It may have changed since my time) On any given day, I worked my way through a box or two stuffed with screenplays or fielded cold calls from authors. We were a small agency, and this was before the internet, so I took any call I got. You never knew where you’d find a great script. One afternoon, I was pitched an exciting screenplay with romance, and adventure and best of all, it sounded like it could be produced with a low budget. I requested the entire script. And when it came, I was horribly disappointed. The adventure was dull and the story meandered. Nothing ever got to the point. And the romance? The hero met the girl in an early scene and 60 pages later, showed up at her place to declare his love. They’d had no scenes together in between. I called the author to talk about the fun movie he’d pitched. What had happened? Turns out, he’d thought about it for so long, that he filled in the blanks every time he reread his script and thought he’d created a masterpiece. I urged him to create a detailed outline, rewrite the story, and resubmit. Sadly, I never heard from him again. But, the idea of outlining became my mantra for screenplays that had any potential. Outline. Rewrite. Resubmit.

When I switched to novels, I brought this same notion to my work. And failed miserably. Because while screenplays only have so many minutes to grab a viewer’s attention and tell a good story, books can take their time. Because I was still clinging to that idea of outlinging, I spent ten years writing my first book. And sadly, it took me all that time to realize that I didn’t need a detailed outline. I just needed to start writing. Now, when I begin work on a new book, I have only a basic outline of things that can happen. As I complete chapters, I start an outline on one of my whiteboards (I made four whiteboards for my office, 39×50) and can see at a glance how any of my stories are progressing. I’ve also learned to lean into change. For one of my mysteries, my heroine is reluctantly helping her arch nemesis investigate a missing coin. I needed a small distraction in an early chapter and suddenly my book was about semi-professional wrestling.

The only advice I offer now to anyone asking is to listen to your work. Have your computer read your story back to you as you follow along. You’ll catch awkward wording, misspellings, and missing words. Reading aloud won’t do it. And for those folks writing screenplays, arrange a staged reading. You’ll discover the same issues.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Having someone read one of my books and then talk about my characters like they’re real people. It’s an amazing feeling. A person who only lived in my head now exists in the real world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://melissabanczak.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissabanczak/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissabanczakauthor
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MelissaBanczak
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@melissabanczakauthor

Image Credits

Miblart created the covers. The photo of me in the red dress is by Barb Krewson. All other photos by my husband, Mark Banczak