I recently spent a great deal of time plotting out the storyline behind a planned series called The Pillars of Enlightenment. I had pages and pages of storyline, notes and backstory. The idea was good. There were some really novel ideas, and the magic system was pretty unique, but I had a problem; one which I could not shake. Worse still—I could not live with it.
Supurfulous ideas aside, the story was just too cliched: protagonist grows into some magical power/ has a mysterous, yet powerful legacy, and eventually battles the great evil which is infesting the land. Yeah, yeah. I’ve read dozens of books that have gone down that route. It’s not a bad route, don’t get me wrong; you can still make a pretty cool novel out of it, but I wanted to be unique. I wanted to capture the readers attention with something new, something different.
Luckily for me ideas are something I am not short of. One such idea was a whodunit type fantasy novel that leaves you guessing who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. But I didn’t want it to be some bait-and-switch type plot either. Remember, if I wanted cliche I would have stayed with The Pillars of Enlightenment.
So, about two or three weeks ago I began frantically scribbling ideas down and slowly expanding on them. My first session I wrote about 2000 words of story, taking the simple premise of “what if being a God wasn’t all you expected?” and expanding upon it.
The great thing about this phase of storyboarding, you can quickly see the overall storyline, identify holes, maybe discover inconsistencies as you add backstory and worldbuilding, and start all over again.
After three story sessions, each of about 2000 words, I finally nailed down all the moving parts. I had the basic premise, the rules of the world, the primary characters, and of course, the twist.
Next I spent some time adding my first cut of scenes, putting them into three general storylines. I suspect that these scenes will morph over time, but if I have done my job well in the planning phase, I should not need to add any more storylines; perhaps just more scenes as inspiration drives me through the writing process.
Today, in the early morning as the fog still clung over Monterey Bay, I crept out of bed and put the first scene of my new book, currently titled Godsent. This one is going to be great!
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I have worked hard on the storyline and plot for this book as, like any good mystery, there are a number of twists and whodunit moments. When I first wrote the outline the story focused around Satisfaction, a god of his namesake emotion who was, well…unsatisfied. Apparently being a god wasn’t everything he was told. While the story still is about Satisfaction, much of my writing so far has focused on the God responsible for solving the mystery: the God is called Suspicion