An insight into the writing process of a fantasy novel, exploring a realm very different (but still fundamentally similar) to our own; with its own lore, races, incredible and unique geographical features, and problems which threaten to destroy it, the way such realms usually do.Don't take these posts as any indication of a) my ability to write and b) my ability to string together coherent sentences. I'm saving that stuff for the book :P
Oh and talk to me in the comments :)
Writing Laeoren
So yeah, I’ve pretty much given up writing here. Concentrating more on the books, the lore and the map.
It’s really all coming together brilliantly and I know people are really going to enjoy it; the problem is that I don’t want to reveal any of it until it’s all finished. I mean, anyone could just decide to follow my blog and I will serve as their imagination for their writing, and it will spoil pretty much everything for potential readers.
What I might do is wait until book one (Laeoren) is finished, then I’ll start blogging about it.
See you guys then! (Probably next year sometime).
I know I haven’t been writing much here. It’s difficult for me to write about something I can’t really talk about. And it’s even more difficult for anybody to care about a story or world they know nothing about.
What I might do is start releasing a few select pieces of lore which will be available on the website to complement (but hopefully not encroach on) the books.
Stay tuned.
The one driving force behind Laeoren, is a desire to make the story, the world, and it’s inhabitants, different.
But, as I’m starting to realise, too different is not good.
Take the races in Laeoren’s universe. One thing I never liked about Star Wars is the plethora of hideous creatures which look nothing like humans, but are still sentient and interact with humans on the same level. While that’s not to say that wouldn’t be absolutely realistic, I just don’t like it for some reason; it creeps me out and I’d prefer not have such things in my story merely for the sake of originality.
I think that this sub-conscious-now-conscious stance has actually been of great benefit as a tool to make the world interesting.
In constructing the world and some of the related lore (which I’m doing first; I’ll explain why in a later post), what I decided to do in Laeoren is throw some twists on certain subsets of the human race; make them really cool, but still, fundamentally, human. The reasons why these branches of the human race have become what they are, has turned out to be some of the most interesting things about the world in the book’s universe.
I think the most interesting thing is, while I could have just chucked it and decided to come up with a race of talking insects or something, I didn’t, and not only have I created some races that I actually like, it’s all turned out way, way better.
The ‘hook’ of Laeoren - the thing that’s going to (hopefully) interest a potential reader enough to become an actual reader - is that a strange, unnatural coldness has settled over the village where our main character is based, and all but a few people in said village are weary in a similarly unnatural way. Not even the rumours of colossal fissures spontaneously opening in the ground to the north are enough to incite some activity in the town. It’s all very mysterious.
You’ll eventually find out that all of these mysteries are linked, in a way that’s utterly (and I mean, utterly) impossible to predict.
Think about religion and the bible, as well as climate change for clues. Not that doing so will really help :D
Now that I’ve almost completely worked out the plot of Laeoren, it finally struck me where I’m getting a lot of my inspiration - Lost. The TV show, that is.
Like Lost, Laeoren will be filled with really interesting happenings and areas (think the four-toed statue and MiB). For example, the book will open with rumours of an entire battalion of soliders being swallowed by a colossal fissure which spontenaeously opened beneath them, and there have been reports of many other such cracks. Another is the INCREDIBLE way the mages of Aeoland decided to repel an armada waiting to invade their shores, the specifics of which I’m currently not willing to give away just yet, but it will be incredible :) Not to mention that as the landscape is so interesting I’ve decided to rewrite much of the plot to keep the world largely intact (I’ll post a map later but won’t reveal any of the backstory yet :P).
I’m being really creative with the mysteries and they all serve to make the audience literally crave an explanation.
The difference between Laeoren and Lost though is that I’m going to provide explanations. Good ones; as well as letting the characters get their moments (I have a beautiful, beautiful ending (well, ending-adjacent) that will serve the characters in a big way, and not just the story).
And I promise none of the answers will be that someone was thrown in a cave of light.
Laeoren will make sense.
Unlike Lost.
I thought I’d do the easiest thing first and share what I’m using as concept art for the lands around the Maenstride (the town under a great mountain of the same name where the main character grows up). Some of the trees glow like candles at night, which is really beautiful in my head so I have to make that translate to the page. Great place to have a festival of some kind.
The actual area is in Australia; a place called Mountain Lagoon (Google it). I like Australia because it’s not full of generic landscapes like, say, Canada. It’s normal, but it’s kind of weird, which appeals to me for some strange reason.
Oh and if anyone can tell me what type of trees they are, I will love you forever.
This blog is going to kinda document the process of writing my new book - Laeoren.
In essence, it’s your standard ‘an unknown girl finds herself having to save the world’, but the world in which this all occurs is dramatically different to any seen before (at least to my knowledge). The lore will be different, logical and extremely entertaining, the races will be different, there will be extremely unusual geographical features present in the world (a few of which we’ll get to see in this story), and by the end of the novel, I hope you will be left with memories of an experience mostly unlike any other, which most novels purport to do all the time but fail.
And now that I’ve found a sponsor, I now have time to write it :D
And write about writing it here :P
