Caffrey Conversation Background

Today I’m starting the outline for my next project, after taking a brief break from writing – although I spent quite a bit of time in research and upgrading my hardware and software in anticipation of the new project. In other words, it didn’t always feel like a break…

I suppose it isn’t surprising that I’ve been thinking back to prior writing projects, pondering what made them fail or succeed, in the hopes that I’ll go in the right direction this time. The Caffrey Conversation series is absolutely something I think of as a success, and here are some things that I think helped me get off on the right foot with the initial story.

First, I wrote a story I wanted to read. Quite literally, I had enjoyed White Collar fan fiction but found myself looking for specific story elements and running out of things to read with those elements. That inspired me to write my own pre-series sick!fic set mostly in a hotel room, where Peter and Neal had a chance simply to talk and get to know each other. I didn’t focus on what others would think of the story, and in fact originally didn’t even intend to post it.

Second, I started with something simple. The core elements of the more complex stories like Flashback and Disclosure were already in my mind, but I let them simmer while I tried something less challenging first. This allowed me to hint at a backstory to add depth, without boring us with a brain dump of everything I had in mind. This let me get a sense of accomplishment with some shorter stories while giving me time to sort out those bigger ideas.

Third, I did research. As a student, I hated doing research. Maybe I simply wasn’t finding projects that were a good match to my interests, but for whatever reason it was something I dreaded. For Caffrey Conversation, it felt different. It started with selecting the objects to be stolen from the museum, and looking into Louis Comfort Tiffany and the items he had produced. I found it fascinating. Then I needed to select some songs, and a hotel. And then, there was the travel…

This was one of only two stories in the series which involved travel for me. (Caffrey Aloha took inspiration from an earlier trip to Hawaii.) Neal’s cold in Caffrey Conversation was based on one I was recovering from on a trip to Dallas, and the doctor’s recommendation not to fly came from my experience on a flight before I was fully recovered: “the changes in air pressure would be extremely uncomfortable. I had another patient describe it as having her ear canals squeezed shut and then twisted.”

More importantly, as I was wrapping up the story I needed to get away and decided to visit St. Louis. Being there and wandering the streets of the city led to several tweaks to make the setting in my story more realistic. For instance, I made the hotel shorter to fit in with the actual height of buildings in downtown. I also added more specifics about the area around the Gateway Arch, including the benches where Peter sat and the bridge he saw there.

Of course, that first story had flaws, and hopefully I’ve learned from those. The worst flaw in my opinion was the original ending. I forced the characters into a rather contrived amnesia scenario that didn’t really fit with the rest of the story, all because I thought I needed to return these beloved characters to where they were in the White Collar pilot. When I let go of that belief and instead focused on taking the characters into an AU that allowed them to live out my other imaginings for them, the new ending felt like a much better fit.

When I wrote Caffrey Conversation, I had in mind that Neal had met someone named Shawn who had acted as a mentor after Neal ran away from home. I was still on the fence whether Shawn would be just a friend, or a member of the Caffrey family I was dreaming up. The name Henry Winslow was only meant to be an alias. I was most of the way through writing the story when I realized that Matt Bomer actually has a son named Henry, and I decided not to change the name because it was just an alias for the one story. Just a minor element. Oops. Little did I know that Henry and Shawn were going to become the same person.

It was a pleasant surprise how often I was able to refer back to the original story throughout the series. I enjoyed having that sense of consistency, especially given that I thought my other ideas – if I ever wrote them down – would be stand-alone stories rather than a continuing series. One element that was an inside joke for me was the name of the company Henry works for. When I made up the alias Henry Winslow, I started with Winston, thinking Neal would like an alias with “win” in it. But then I decided I preferred Winslow instead. To me it meant that Neal would win, but it would come slowly, taking patience. In the following stories, I’d start to type Henry’s name and then pause at the last name. Did I pick Winston or Winslow? Winston-Winslow. It sounded like a law firm or something. Thus when I needed a family company for Henry to work for, Winston-Winslow immediately came to mind, and finally I could remember what Henry’s last name was.