A look into the mind of an Author.

How I Write (and sometimes not write)

Between public school, college, and chatting with fellow writers, I have heard of many different ways authors write.  Some prefer to have the entire plot outlined with all the varying subplots and twists and reveals and turns figured out and waiting to be fleshed out.  Some determine the goals of various characters and write out how their methods of attaining those goals conflict and breed conflict in a natural way.  Others just wing the first draft and fix it later.  I think of myself as the later most type of author, except that I'm really all three fighting for control of one mind and one set of hands.

When I the novel living in my head first started to form in the early 2000s, I could have told you everything that was going to happen in modest detail.  How my Main (how I'll refer to him for now) was this outcast loner with dead parents and a bad attitude and how he was protecting the little town he lived in despite no one liking him and then getting pulled into the larger plot when the brother of a princess comes looking for his sister in town and how Main had to go find her "or else."  He finds her, she tells him of the badness happening in her city and how her brother's okay but he's misinformed so Main and princess sneak out of the town and out of the valley to the city.  Then they confront the bad guy but he's got control of the city and now the Main and the princess and the motley crew they end up assembling have to go to the...

Are you still here?  If you are, welcome to an author's mind.  For me, it's just like that.  This string of events that are like points plotted on a chart, laid out in my mind with varying alternatives leading to other events that sometimes interconnect with the connections of choices not made because the bad guy is making things happen, too.  And when I first started, I thought I knew them all.  I thought that making my Main a lizardman version of a hobbit with his petty coats and houses and taverns and blacksmiths in his Valley home made sense.  Until I started to write.  And as I wrote, I would struggle to get to each event.  So how exactly does Main get into the forest to get confronted by the Brother to get roped into finding the Princess to get roped into going to the City to...

Ugh.  If poking a hole in my temple and letting the story bleed out on to the page as I've imagined it it would be so easy!  But instead I would fuss over everything:  What my characters wore;  How to describe the way lizard people sit; how to describe The Sword (I'm going to write an in depth article about The Sword soon, stay tuned.)  All these things would basically stop me from writing because I was so conflicted about what or how to write that I wouldn't do the thing I wanted to do: write!  (And you might even say that now I'm focusing too much energy on writing a blog instead of my book.)  

During these times when the book isn't coming easy, I would focus on world building.  Sometimes that would unblock the writer's block because it gave me time to figure things out, like world history, or an area's culture, or even try to explain how lizard people sit down.  A lot of the evolution of my story took place when I was writing this information that most people probably won't ever know unless it becomes relevant to the story as it's being told.  For instance, when I initially started working on my book I was so enthralled by "The Lord of the Rings" and by Peter Jackson's movie interpretations of Tolkien's epic story that I literally lifted the idea of the Valar and Maiar from "The Silmarillion!" (and if you didn't know, the Silmarillion is literally the entire history of Middle Earth.)

Gandalf & Saruman,
two of the five Maiar from Tolkien's world.
Photo credit of New Line Cinema and Wingnut Films

Not even kidding.  I took the concept of each one of the Valar (the Gods/Goddesses) and just gave them a different name and some of my own tweaks to better fit my story (like gender swapping or altering their theme/domain).  More recently, I've revisited them to make them fit my story better.  That mainly involved fitting them to the world, and since pantheons of deities are common place in fantasy literature, I've never looked back.  I don't pretend to be doing anything that hasn't been done before (apart from featuring lizard people as my protagonists).

The Valar, Couples Edition
By wolfanita on DeviantArt.com

Then, at some point, it's back to the story itself.  Sometimes I then return to writing what was otherwise unwritten before.  Other times I let myself be drawn into revisions and edits that would be better saved for later.  But I can honestly say that if I hadn't been fussing over certain aspects of my story, it would be nowhere near as 'figured out' as it is now.  I have a much better vision of what I want to write and how I want to portray the characters and the world than I did as the insanely inspired but directionless teenager I once was.  Now I'm just struggling to wring the details out of a very busy and distracted adult brain.

I think today's post went tangential to my original purpose but that's okay (I think!)  Tomorrow I may write about something a little more structured.  Still figuring out this blogging thing.  Should I be professional and very structured or just let thoughts pour out of my head?  Feel free to tell me what to do in the comments.  I may take it under advisement.  Or not.  Thanks for reading!