This post is going to be about my thought process and what goes on behind creating one of my stories.
I never want to imply that this is the only right way, there are many. But, a couple people have been asking about my personal process, so here it goes.
For all examples I will use A Scholars Journey: Book 1 as an example.
When I sit down and think about one of the ideas I want to put into writing, my first reaction is to sit down and think about the world, the setting, the place where this will take place.
What time equivalent is it? medieval/Renaissance, without guns.
Magic? Yes.
How does magic work? Through sacrifice of energy. transfer of energies. Magic does not appear, it has to come from somewhere.
Gods? Yes, 16 of them that represent different aspects of life.
Peaceful or at war? Unease, no war...yet.
Autocratic? Democratic? Dictatorship? Peaceful, government is run by the different religious sects.
Time frame of the book? one day.
Now, the next question that I wanted to ask myself was about the conflict
What conflict was I going to have? Well, this was a tough one. Every conflict has been done over and over again and at this point, so the real task I had to come up with was how would I arrange it in such a way that the conflict in and unto itself remained unique.
So, the first thing that I did was think about the bad guy. The main antagonist of the book is Diametries.
Why is he bad? That is the thing, he is not. Well, he is and is not. To me, the scariest bad guys are the ones that act upon right and wrong, seeking to do the right thing, but in so doing so, they cause damage.
This is what I set out to do with Diametries. I did not want him to be a sympathetic character. He had to be remarkably evil, not just sort of evil. One interesting fact is that you never truly see him fight in the book. In contrast to Penndarius the main character, he also does not engage in the conflict directly, instead acting through proxies.
More coming soon.
I never want to imply that this is the only right way, there are many. But, a couple people have been asking about my personal process, so here it goes.
For all examples I will use A Scholars Journey: Book 1 as an example.
When I sit down and think about one of the ideas I want to put into writing, my first reaction is to sit down and think about the world, the setting, the place where this will take place.
What time equivalent is it? medieval/Renaissance, without guns.
Magic? Yes.
How does magic work? Through sacrifice of energy. transfer of energies. Magic does not appear, it has to come from somewhere.
Gods? Yes, 16 of them that represent different aspects of life.
Peaceful or at war? Unease, no war...yet.
Autocratic? Democratic? Dictatorship? Peaceful, government is run by the different religious sects.
Time frame of the book? one day.
Now, the next question that I wanted to ask myself was about the conflict
What conflict was I going to have? Well, this was a tough one. Every conflict has been done over and over again and at this point, so the real task I had to come up with was how would I arrange it in such a way that the conflict in and unto itself remained unique.
So, the first thing that I did was think about the bad guy. The main antagonist of the book is Diametries.
Why is he bad? That is the thing, he is not. Well, he is and is not. To me, the scariest bad guys are the ones that act upon right and wrong, seeking to do the right thing, but in so doing so, they cause damage.
This is what I set out to do with Diametries. I did not want him to be a sympathetic character. He had to be remarkably evil, not just sort of evil. One interesting fact is that you never truly see him fight in the book. In contrast to Penndarius the main character, he also does not engage in the conflict directly, instead acting through proxies.
More coming soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment