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Friday, April 8, 2016

Every Project Starts the Same Way - Or Does It?

Every one of my books/series (now up to 15/5) truly begins with a character.  In the Books of the Rai-kirah, it was the arrogant, the-world-is-mine-to-enjoy desert warrior Aleksander (not Seyonne!).  The Bridge of D'Arnath rose from the bitter, exiled duchess Seri.  The novels of the Collegia Magica were to be a home story for the brooding necromancer Dante (nope, not Portier). Lucian, the non-renegade, the upright believer in pureblood discipline, was the whole reason for the Sanctuary Duet. Only for the Lighthouse Duet did I have ideas about the world and the world's problems before I had an idea of that character. But I didn't write a word until the image of a lanky renegade drug addict came to me. He was face down on the floor of an abbey church taking holy orders, and I could hear an unforgettable voice, saying, "What the hell am I doing here?" Anyone who's read those two books knows very well that Valen shaped and drove the story of Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone in the same way that Aidan, the visionary musician, shaped the story of Song of the Beast.

Even my pieces of short fiction that now number more than nil took off with the idea of a character. Gareth, the talentless farmer, was the inspiration for Unmasking, Girl told of her experience At Fenwick Faire. Valen, my favorite blackguard, was the seed for Seeds. The encounter of a novice constable with a familiar unnamed necromancer was the starting point for Uncanonical Murder (now out in the spring issue of Pulp Literature ).  And Saverian from Breath and Bone demanded to star in an almost-novelette for a new anthology to be announced later in 2016.

All the other characters, the world, the settings, the plot grew from ideas about that one person, even if, on occasion, a character I believed secondary became the more important than the instigator.  So there.

But when I started noodling around with a new (big) project last month...



I settled on an ensemble cast, each person with an unusual skill. I had a whisper of an idea about each of four people and then I ran into a wall that seemed near insurmountable. This will be a different process. Maybe.  I'll tell you how it's going next time. 

7 comments:

Ellen said...

Thank you. This added to the stories. I love your characters and seem to suffer all the pain you put them through.

carolwriter said...

So do I!

Kimberly said...

I too find it interesting to hear more of your process. I am especially intrigued at how Transformation didn't initially start out with Seyonne, he hid from you for a while behind the blinding light of Aleksander. I do love that book. I am greatly looking forward to reading your new story in Pulp Literature, and am anxious to hear what this big new project is! I need to brush up on my remembrance of Saverian for the upcoming story as well! Thank you as always for giving us great worlds to delve into and character to carry us though, care about, despise, and feel right along with.

Deborah Blake said...

More Carol books, yay! (Also, I'm pretty sure you meant WORLD, not WORD in that first paragraph...unless he was a writer.)

carolwriter said...

OK, Deborah, typo corrected. And more Carol books - we'll see. Research and Development doesn't always lead to a viable project.

And yes, Kimberly, it surprised the heck out of me when the guy I had created to be Aleksander's storyteller turned out to be the heart of the story. And it didn't take long to figure it out. I think he possessed me - which is ironic, yes?

Kimberly said...

Most ironic, Carol! Love it!

Anonymous said...

I love your books, Ms. Berg, especially the the Collegia Magica, and the duets. I must say though that one of the things - apart from the writing and world building - that I love is the fact that the focus is usually one character, or perhaps a set of characters over several books, as in the Collegia Magica.

I've grown very tried of the current trend in sci-fi/fantasy of having as many characters as there are chapters. Most authors really can't pull it off, and the reader is left feeling that by creating a jigsaw puzzle of a novel, the author took the lazy way out of doing any character development.

That said, I know I'll enjoy whatever you write, but still... In any event, I look forward to your next book as always.