If you’ve started reading Chapter 9: “Delving Deep, or, The Macabre Misadventures of Misters Scrivener, Bellwether and Guess,” you’ve likely noticed that it does not pick up where Chapter 8 left off. When last we saw Mister Guess, he was sheltering the fugitives Palm and Timriel in his home...
Archive for category: Designing The World
Writers Read
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” That’s Steven King’s advice to aspiring writers from his excellent book, “On Writing.” I...
Jonathan Wild, The Real Thief Taker
In Chapter 4, we meet Jonathan Guess, a young man who rises to power in the city of Vessena as a new kind of law enforcer – the “Thieftaker General” – while also operating as the right hand of Fortunado, the nefarious “Thief Lord” himself. Playing both sides of...
Mapping Out Story (in my trusty red Maps notebook)
I am fascinated by story structure. That’s why I’ve created my own “day job” as an editor and development consultant, where I can spend most of my work life thinking about and discussing narrative structure. I totally get how this stuff is boring to other people, but I enjoy...
Designing The World: Fashion
Another reason why I drew inspiration from the Enlightenment Era, particularly the years 1780 – 1800, is because the story is about the conflict between tradition and reinvention, and few periods of history are better examples of that. The rapidly changing fashion of the late 18th century is aesthetically...
Designing The World: Muskets & Magic
A LOT of Fantasy stories have settings that are a version of feudal Europe, a remix of the more lurid aspects of the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, but I don’t identify much with that history. Maybe it’s my American mindset, but if I’m going to harken back to...
Designing The World: Art Nouveau And Pulp Fantasy
I dig pulp fiction. Not just the hard-boiled detective paperbacks of the 1950s, or even the pulp magazines like “Weird Tales,” which published Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft back in the day. I even love the old old school Victorian “chapbooks,” like “Springheeled Jack” and “Varney the Vampire.”...
Jessy = Purpose – But What Does That Even Mean?
In chapter one, Father Saren tells Cassian about the concept of “jessy,” which is the sylued word for “purpose.” Your jessy is that creative thing you do – even just privately – that makes you feel like you. It doesn’t have to be what you do for a living,...
“Dungeons & Dorm Rooms” – The Game That Inspired “The Elect Stories”
There was a D&D game that we played in my dorm room at Emerson in 1989 that we never finished. About a year later I started up a new game with one of the same players, and he asked if he could keep the treasure and experience he’d gained...