Building A World #3

Where ideas come from...

Building A World, Part 3

While you wait for the next free story (featuring Varushka, coming up next week—though you’ll also get the second chapter of my serial on Sunday), I thought I’d talk a bit about “where ideas come from.”

It’s a question authors get often asked, and it’s not always an easy one to answer. Because, the truth is, ideas can come from anything, anywhere, and at any time.

I believe that a writer is both a thinker and an observer.

Many of my ideas have come from looking at the world around us and going “what if?” Not necessarily in a conscious way, but if you analyze the process you realize that this question is at the heart of most projects.

But ideas are not enough. They are just building blocks. You can’t write a novel—or even a short story—with just one idea.

There are also different types of ideas. Some are generic threads that can be used as a concept for a book or series (“what if there was a school of magicians hidden to the world?” might have been the initial spark for the “Harry Potter” novels, for instance) while others serve to construct specific scenes or to add to the worldbuilding.

As an example, a few years ago (2019, or possibly earlier) I decided to build a series of epic fantasy stories like a TV show. I can’t recall now if my initial intention was to write novels, short stories, or an actual TV show, but I went through the process of creating a “TV Bible”, outlining characters, etc. All that sat unfinished on my hard drive for a few years.

Meanwhile, I started writing “The Circle in the Sphere,” a novella featuring Reikk—a character that’s been with me since the late 80’s, though this was the first time I wrote about him in English. In this particular story, the action takes place in a small town called Nelisborn. The plot did not require me giving details about where this place was, so I did not at first think much about it.

In parallel, when my brother died in 2018, I decided to write stories about some of the characters he had played at Renaissance Fairs. Because of that particular setting—and one of them (Jean-Jack Laroch) being inspired by D’Artagnan—I decided to set both their adventures in Britony, an alternate version of medieval England.

What happened next is (I think) rather interesting.

In 2020 I wrote an epic fantasy novella called “A Crossing of Fates” (which I might serialize here later this year, I haven’t quite decided yet). And as I wrote, all those pieces started coming together. First I thought hey, this should be set in an alternate version of medieval England… so OK, I have Britony, let’s go with that. Then I remembered my TV Bible and realized all of the stuff in there would fit in really well if I just made the differences with the real world a bit more stark. And then, as I finished “The Circle in the Sphere” (that one took me two years to write) I realized Nelisborn could be a perfect match for an as-yet-unnamed village in “A Crossing of Fates.”

And so, just like that, within about a week, 5 ideas merged into one. This not only led to one story, but to multiple ones, and prompted the creation of my X2 timeline (which I’d already mentioned here.)

In fact, the novel I wrote in 2020 (which I will soon serialize on Substack) is also set in X2—albeit in the far future, making it a world (or universe, I should say) where technology and magic happily co-exist.

So there you have it. A bit of insight on how it all works.

And while this is all happening, new ideas keep popping up. I usually jot them down in an “ideas” text file if I can’t work on them right away.

It was Chris Fox who wrote that an author’s brain is an idea-making machine. And I can only agree with this assessment.

Stuff to read

Have you checked out Elle Griffin's Substack yet? If not, you should! There's a bit for everyone over there, whether you’re a writer or a reader. You'll find articles where Elle shares her journey and experiences as an author, as well as writing advice and resources. There are also author interviews, and not one but two ongoing serials—a gothic novel, and a weird fictional biography of Scott Paul. Check it out!

Craving something else than fiction? Check out The Sample and Refind for a large selection of newsletters on a wide range of topics.

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Copyright (c) 2022 by Alex S. Garcia.