Nick's Journal · Craft Decisions
As a new writer one of the things that I quickly learned as I wrote my first novel was how impactful certain decisions are. When you first sit down to write a novel, the possibilities are endless. Your mind races with all the different directions that you can take a story and you likely will begin with only the barest outline of where you are headed with your story.
In my case, that initial direction was the desire to explore a complicated weaving of timelines and to see what could be done narratively with the additional freedom that this would grant. Flashbacks, flash forwards and a rotation of points of view would all allow me far greater ability to build out a world than by what would be offered by anchoring to a single character.
And from this initial root decision many of the most consequential directions that the series would take started to take form. The decision to build an alternative world rather than rely on a modern day or future Earth became a logical choice. When provided with all these additional ways to explore a world it would have seemed wasteful to spend them focused on cities or countries that readers were already familiar with. My imagination demanded more.
Similarly, the very first few chapters would essentially take the limitless possibilities that I had started with and constrain them to what I would later come to understand was a far more narrow subset of choices. With the setting determined, a theme was needed. I went with a spin on a modern Oxford England type of country. My main character was going to be a Hero’s Journey archetype, a safe choice if ever there was one, but based on his specific characteristics that were unique to him. Each and every significant character needed a place, a purpose, and a personality.
With every chapter that unfolded I began to realize that what had started as a novel with unlimited choices, was slowly and surely becoming one that demanded certain directions. The more you build out your characters, the more they begin to tell the story themselves, with you along for the journey. Each chapter is an exploration of what the character would do in the frame that you place them and sometimes you are as surprised as the reader.
I distinctly recall having my chapter map laid out for twenty chapters in advance whenever possible. Each chapter would have a list of three or four bullet points of plot progression, character development or world building that was meant to be achieved. And each and every time, the initial chapters would closely adhere to those bullet points and by the time I had reached the furthest chapters on the list I was now lucky if even one of them still fit. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As I work through the final third of the second book, I can see so many ways in which the plot points have come together in a manner that seems meticulously planned, but is anything but that in practice. In fact, had I actually planned it, and stuck to the plan, the book would look nothing like it does.
The biggest joy I have found in writing this series is the understanding that the world that you create becomes a board game of sorts. The world is the board, the characters the pieces, their personalities the rule set. You place them in positions that will lead to interaction, conflict, romance and mischief and watch it all unfold. And if you do it well, the stories they tell are ones that will capture the imagination of your reader and earn a spot alongside all the other iconic characters that we each carry with us, as real in their own way as any human we know.
My takeaway for aspiring authors is that the decisions you make when you first begin your book are in many ways the most impactful ones that you will make. And yet, in other ways, they are just the boundaries that you are putting in place for a story that you can only help to guide and nurture, but never command. Choose wisely, choose deliberately and stay true to those choices, but also know that even the most stringent of confines is just one new character away from a whole new path, a path that may be the most enjoyable of them all.
Critics and cynics will often decry the lack of novelty in stories, citing the endless parallels that exist in each. And yet, there is only one Narnia, one Middle Earth, and one Tatooine. Ask them to find you the endless parade of Tyrion Lannisters, Matt Cauthons, or Ender Wiggins and they will come back empty handed. So while it is true that you will find your story walking on paths well tread by the many talented writers that have come before you, if you are doing your job, you will be walking your own path just the same.
Much love as always,
Nick