Explaining how to write a novel is like explaining how to walk. You think of it as putting one foot in front of the other, but the person asking how to do it wants to know exactly what muscle groups you are engaging, and when, and for how long. And what about maintaining balance? What part of the foot do you land on first? How do you avoid hitting things?
Point is, most everything we do is muscle memory; its handled by our subconscious. It is what makes us drive toward the wrong place when we’re distracted just because we’re used to going that way and our subconscious took over while we were talking. The more we do something, the better we are at it, the less we remember about the basics. I’m learning guitar and it is clear the fella on the CD teaching me has forgotten all about how hard it is to transition between chords, or how long it takes to build calluses on the tips of your fingers. It’s the same as not being able to spell a word unless you write it out. That said, I’m going to try my best to remember. Better yet, I took notes!
When I noticed the light bulb above my head—that idea of writing a thriller in fantasy clothing—I went to my room and jotted down a series of notes on my computer. Here they are.
CONCEPT:
* Typical thriller story done in the medieval fantasy form.
* Jack Reacher film.
* Start with exciting & engaging opening.
SETTING IDEAS:
* Small local setting.
* Remote creepy castle/villa.
* Nearby village.
* Dangerous dark forest.
* Caverns.
* Cemetery.
QUESTION: Where is the threat against Royce and Hadrian?
PLOT CONCEPTS AND ELEMENTS:
* Royce and Hadrian are hired to STOP a crime: a series of murders. Royce figures as how he would have done it.
* A lord has survived two assassination attempts. Rumor has it those trying to kill him have hired a professional. So those in charge of protecting the lord, hire Royce to explain how he would kill the lord and hopefully give them the chance to foil them again.
* Turns out the person who hired Royce is the killer (red herring) - no they aren’t.
* A ticking clock.
* An orphan boy witnessed the crime and is in hiding in the village.
OTHER THOUGHTS
* Debt. Inheritance. Key Murder.
* An old man, a legend who can help.
* Enemy lures them to a false hideout as a trap.
* In the end, an heiress is kidnapped, to setup a trade for the will that Royce and Hadrian obtained over the course of the story.
* Royce and Hadrian need to rescue the heiress, but it is a trap. Royce and Hadrian are only being lured in. Only Royce doesn’t play by the rules.
* Turns out the heiress is the killer, who disappears, leaving clues she was abducted.
* Comes down to protecting one person. Aw oman, who is threatened by family.
* Chase scene. Someone chasing them; them chasing someone?
* A girl comes onto Royce. Tries to seduce him. Prostitute & a royal. A running gag. One gets killed. Royce takes it badly.
* No one in the village knows them. Bully tries to hurt them.
* Complicated noble family with branches. All want to be the next duke.
* A series of crimes are committed against a Duke, and he hires thieves to find the thief.
* Someone is found guilty. Duke isn’t buying it.
* Accused asks for Royce or Hadrian?
* There is a court wizard, or knight, or sheriff, who first opposes then joins Riyria.
* Accused is enemy of Royce.
* Royce and Hadrian are hired to protect the daughter of a Duke who has been cursed by a witch (ala Sleeping Beauty).
If some of what I wrote in my notes isn’t clear that’s because they were only intended to jar my memory. Looking back, even I can’t figure out all of what I originally intended. Having written these treasures down, I then went on with my life. At the time I was still writing the fifth book of my Legends of the First Empire series, and I don’t ever write two books at the same time. Why? Because it’s too easy for me to lose interest in one and then never finish. Every novel has low points, places of doubt where the writer second-guesses themselves. Usually it’s the middle, during an I’m-wasting-my-time section. Those are the days where the writing is hard and you begin to doubt your ability. It’s then that you question the wisdom of throwing more time into a story that you know is terrible. Everyone goes through it, and usually with every book. Doesn’t matter how many novels you’ve penned. Doesn’t matter how successful you are. Doesn’t matter that you know about it in advance...you’ll still hit this stage. You can’t help believing that this time you really screwed up. Part of being a writer is pushing through these times of doubt and despair. For me, I do so by NOT getting distracted with the shinny new idea that came to me while watching Tom as Jack. So, these ideas were left in their file and forgotten.
About four months later, I had finished my series and it was time to write my new novel which I ingeniously entitled: Book 3 of the Riyria Chronicles or simply Three. I opened the notes file and was shocked. In my memory these notes were far more complete. Looking at what I had, I realized I didn’t have a book or anything close to one. I only had an idea, or rather fragments of several ideas. I needed a real story, and since I already had the main characters, the first step was building a basic working plot.
Plots don’t need to be big or involved. They are like the engine and transmission of a car—the drive train. The plot is what makes the book go. It pretty much just has to work. You can fine tune it and put a pretty exterior on later. What I was about to do is the real dirty messy work of nuts and bolts.
I read over the notes and began tossing some things away and keeping others. I was looking for the stuff that really excited me. From these I began brainstorming various possibilities.
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The first concept became: All the Duke’s Children:
A duke has several children and they are all fighting for control of his inheritance. The duke knows that none of them are worthy since they’re all evil spiteful cruel people and he doesn’t want any of them to get his inheritance. He’s also afraid that if he allows any of them to inherit that his eternal soul will be at risk because he was also a very evil person. To save himself he has a bastard child who he keeps in the village raised by a prostitute and someone of importance like a wizard or a cleric. Then as he nears death he plots to kill each one of his own children with the idea of pinning the murder on each other. The hope is that the newly adopted heir will find the mistakes of the others and how they lived their lives and see this as a guide of what not to do. Each of his children disappointed or betrayed the father in someway and it’s in that way that each one of them end up being killed.
I wasn’t pleased with this idea. It had good parts, but also seemed unrealistic and a little too twisted.
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I tried again with, Scenario Two: The Assassin:
The king is dead. The assassin has been caught and is awaiting execution. The eldest prince is staying the execution because his father’s will had been stolen and it is believed that the assassin is the one who stole it. They can’t kill him or they won’t find the will. Years later it could turn up and the prince might lose his throne. There would always be this cloud over his rule. When interrogated, the assassin only said Royce Melborn. So they went to find him. The Assassin is a Black Diamond, who says he’s innocent. Later other members of the royal family are killed, suggesting the assassin in custody is innocent, but is he?
I was even less pleased with this as it wasn’t a complete idea, just the start of one— little more than a teaser. I needed something better. I lay on my bed, stared at the ceiling and ran various storylines through my head.
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This brought me to Scenario 3: It Takes One to Know One:
A small king is targeted for assassination. Three attempts were made. The first no one knew about until the second. The last one came too close. Rumor has it the killer has now hired a highly skilled professional killer to do the job right.
The captain of the king’s bodyguard, realizing he is out of his depth, decides to take someone’s (Albert?) advice and hire another assassin to help protect the king by advising how he might go about killing the king. The Captain is given the name Royce Melborn.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He hires Royce to pretend to kill the king. It is all hush- hush. No one but the captain knows who they are. (This allows for them to be suspects later.)
(*Red herring: Mislead the reader into expecting that the captain hired them to plan the real killing for him, and then plans to blame it on them.)
Royce and Hadrian arrive in a strange little town that surrounds the castle. They meet strange people. Uncover clues. Royce is hit on by women.
They go to the castle and meet the royal family. The king has several ambitious and devious children, all are suspects. The king is sickly and has a secret will that says who his heir will be. It won’t be his eldest son, that’s all that is known.
Royce and Hadrian become close with the youngest daughter who is doted on by the king, and not likely to inherit, but many believe she will as she is the king’s favorite. She is the most concerned for the king’s safety.
Other siblings kill each other.
Royce studies the other attempts and decides they were amateurs. He finishes his analysis and gives his method to the Captain. Almost immediately afterwards the king is mortally wounded in exactly that fashion. Then the captain tries to arrest Royce and Hadrian for the crime.
The captain believes they must be guilty as the killing was done exactly as they said, and no one else knew. Royce and Hadrian believe — as should the reader — that the captain is the killer (who had hired the professional)
The Heiress assists them asking R&H to steal her father’s will as the captain, who has it locked up, is surely to destroy it the moment her father dies.
Royce, who is in it for revenge now, agrees.
They steal the will.
The king dies.
Then the heiress is kidnapped by the Captain and held for ransom in return for the will.
An exchange is arranged which is certainly a trap.
Royce doesn’t play by the rules.
The killer doesn’t either. When they arrive they discover the captain is dead and has been for a while.
The real killer is the heiress who knew her father had learned the truth about her and changed his will. (She is a sorceress? Made father sick? Tried to get him to change will? He found out?)
Illegitimate beggar boy (son of king) in town inherits all.
QUESTION: How can fantastical elements be added?
I liked most of this. I even came up with a “sketch” of how the book would start:
Starts very small with a person having a problem with a fly, or a bead of sweat, or something. He solves that, then it is revealed that the person is about to assassinate a king. He fails.
He is chased, then captured.
In prison he mentions he was hired and says the name Royce Melborn.
Later he is killed in his cell. No one knows how or by whom.
All of this was starting to feel pretty solid. I had a plot and some of the character’s or at least the holders for them in the form of the Father, the Daughter, and the Captain. I could have concluded that this was good and moved on to character development and the actual writing, but that single question at the bottom of Scenario 3, nagged at me. I thought of a number of things: ghouls, magic, ghosts. I gave up and set the project down. Sometimes sleeping on things helps.
It did.
To explain what happened next I have to set up my thought process.
I had what I suspected was the solid basis of a book. The engine was there, and I knew
it would work. I could see how Royce and Hadrian would be drawn into this job, how it would go off the rails, how Royce would switch from being motivated by money to revenge, and how Hadrian would be happy to help the damsel in distress. I had a cool twist at the end, a setting, and the major cast was set. It was all there and I could start writing, but I wanted more. What I had was merely adequate, but it didn’t really excite me. The story didn’t have that extra kick I look for. Sometimes I start writing without that spark and hope it turns up. This is risky, but it often does reveal itself.
[START OF SPOILER FOR REVELATIONS]
[END OF SPOILER FOR REVELATIONS]
This sort of in-process change-ups occur all the time, but you can’t plan for them, and it’s best not to rely on lightning hitting, so I try and build the best plan I can, and I wanted something stronger. I just didn’t know what. Being that this was supposed to be a fantasy novel I felt something more fantastical was needed. Makes sense, right? I was relying too heavily on the mundane: politics, betrayals, straight fights. I thought that tossing in a “counter melody” of a completely different tone, a separate but connected story would add that extra level of interest. I wanted something magical.
My first thought was to make the Earl’s daughter a sorceress, but didn’t like that because . . .
[START OF SPOILER FOR REVELATIONS]
[END OF SPOILER FOR REVELATIONS].
I needed something different.
The answer came in one stroke, that flash of cross pollination that I look for. Having just finished The Legends of The First Empire series it was fresh in my head and I was looking for ways to connect the ancient history to the modern world of Royce and Hadrian. I began thinking about loose threads I could tie onto and I found one.
This is where this behind the book gets tricky. It’s easy to warn you around spoilers to Riyria books, but if I tell you the details of my solution it will also provide spoilers to my as yet unpublished new series, and I’m not comfortable with that. As a result, I’m going to dance around this topic as best I can and simply say that I found a character in The Legends of the First Empire that I was able to exploit for this novel. Because you have already read Dulgath (you better have!) you know that a supernatural being inhabits the body of Nysa. This person, who I purposely avoid naming, is also a character in the Legends of the First Empire. If you read that series, you ought to easily identify her, if you don’t it really doesn’t matter. if you can't figur it out - drop me an email and I'll let you know who it is ([email protected])
I loved this idea because of how it unifies all the stories, but also because of what it sets up for the future. It allows me to explain aspects I’m not able to go into in the new books. It also provides a wonderfully creepy and mysterious atmosphere for Dulgath that will be fantastic for those who read it after reading The Legends of the First Empire—something I suspect will happen in the future as folks often like to read in chronological order. (These are some of the things you need to think of when writing multiple series in the same world).
Finding this elegant solution, I formed a new scenario (which I will dramatically edit to avoid spoilers.)
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Scenario 4: Blast from the Past.
REDACTED is killed. REDACTED’s spirit is denied entrance into the afterlife. REDACTED’s spirit settles in southern Avrlyn in a remote forest. Miserable and lonely. Then as the First Empire rises, men cross the rivers and settle the new land west of the Bernum River. Members of REDACTED’s race settle in the area near where REDACTED’s spirts hides. (Something happens here). The early settlers are nearly wiped out but REDACTED’s spirt possesses one of their bodies and helps them. It results in a pact where the leader of this region grants REDACTED dead bodies to inhabit in exchange for help.
Time passes, the area grows in population and the leader moves to a more central location in larger city. Mehan becomes a small estate.
In modern times the lord of the land’s daughter takes sick. REDACTED is sent for. REDACTED arrives too late. (The summons being interfered with by the next in line for the throne.) The daughter dies before REDACTED arrives. She can fix the body but cannot return the spirit which is in the afterlife, and REDACTED cannot enter the afterlife. The father is so distraught that he asks REDACTED to possess her and pretend that she is the daughter. REDACTED knew and liked the daughter, agrees. Few if any know this happened, though many suspect something strange occurred.
Then the lord dies and leaves the fief to the daughter — REDACTED now rules.
The one who interfered with the summons working with a priest of Nyphron is suspicious. Investigation leads them to believe that the new ruling woman is a demon. An Assassination attempt is made. Then another.
A monk of Maribor is in the village where one of the oldest monasteries exists (established by a different REDACTED who came there investigating rumors of a spirit banned from the afterlife. She thought it might be the original REDACTED.)
The captain hires Royce. “Don’t let the heiress know. It will only scare her. She doesn’t even know she is being targeted.” (But of course she does.)
REDACTED’s spirit falls for Royce — they are both elves!
In the end, heiress is killed. But REDACTED’s spirit inhabits the replacement. Only Royce notices that she has the same habit she showed him in private. He doesn’t tell anyone.
QUESTION: What limits REDACTED’s power?
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NEW OUTLINE:
The church of Nyphron wants to appoint a king with Imperialist sympathies. King Vincent is on the fence. Their plan is to replace his vassals with pro-Imperialists and then have them put pressure upward on the king to steer him in the right direction. They have already managed this with several of the high noble lords, but Beadle of Dynydd (previous name of Dulgath, changed for ease of pronunciation) is a hold out. They bring peer pressure on Beadle but Beadle is a diehard believer in the Monks of Maribor and refuses advances from the church.
When Beadle dies without a male heir, the church (through its Maranon lord’s council) pressures Vincent to revoke the Dynydd fief and give it to...(to be figured out later).
King Vincent of Maranon, prompted by the church to replace the Dulghast (Original name changed later) family, who presently rules Dynydd. Lord Beadle Dulghast recently died leaving no male heirs, only a daughter. This is a perfect time, but the king is dragging his feet.
Church sends Malin, (name and status changed to Lord Fawkes) prince, a church taught Imperialist to handle the problem. He feels this is a great chance to deal with the problem. He first had the church try to persuade her to step down because she is young and a woman and not capable. This didn’t go over well and only made things worse. He finds out Nysa is a monster — doesn’t really believe it but persuades everyone else it is so — and arranges hunts to kill her. She kills him instead and takes his body, switching so it looks as if he killed her.
As you can see things came together in a tighter story, but many aspects were still very loose and needed to be changed. At this point I felt I had enough to get started with Three, and I was ready to proceed to the next stage of development.