How Conversations Shape My Stories
I guess the above picture is the first official “artist’s” rendition of Fenrik and Dan. It was scribbled on a notepad while I was drunk and high, sitting on a toilet. I think the more thorough descriptions of them in the books are much better, but when the few artists I wanted to give lots of money to flaked out, I’m stuck with me. I used to be a good illustrator, years ago, but I got distracted by life and my vices. So whatever, and this is not what this post is supposed to be about.
After talking to a friend about my book Dan the Destructor, as well as the development of the follow-up, I figured that it’d be worth putting some of the points of that conversation to paper… or digital paper. Sorry, I’m suffering from the meat sweats and a hangover after massive steaks and lots of brown liquor like the heroes in my stories.
Anyway, let me get on with it.
Conversations are really important in my books. With that, I’m really happy that people seem to love the personal dynamic between Fenrik and Dan, more than anything else in my story.
Sure, Dan the Destructor is overloaded with action and battles featuring grandiose and fantastical creatures, sorcerers and strange armies. However, the part of the story that meant the most to me was creating two characters that people genuinely like and want to see more of. Based off of all the feedback I’ve received, I feel like I succeeded and frankly, it’s a great fucking feeling.
When I plan out my stories, I start out with bullet points of the main events in the plot. Where it starts, where it needs to end up, and a few key things in-between to make the journey from point A to point B more entertaining, engaging and badass.
However, between those key moments, my story is full of banter between characters. This serves to add context to the story, its objectives, and also the people living within it.
I don’t have conversations pre-planned in my head, though. I go in knowing what needs to be laid out in a chapter but ultimately, I improvise it and let things come out naturally.
Because of that, sometimes the conversations steer themselves in interesting directions that I haven’t foreseen. And often times, these new directions make the story better, more interesting, and provide new twists and ideas for me to explore. If I planned everything in my stories very meticulously, I think they’d be boring and a lot less genuine and personal. They’d also fall into the trap of tropes.
Tropes are fine to a point and I know that my characters often times start with a trope in mind but I think that their personalities push them beyond the mold and make them much more complex and nuanced. With that, it honestly subverts my own expectations sometimes, and I hope that also effects the reader in the same way. Based off of the feedback I’ve had, it certainly seems to.
I went into the second book knowing where it needed to end and what the general path of the characters’ journey would be. However, as they converse and meet new people, a few curveballs have just come out in the writing and some minor subplots have developed, which are only going to make the finished book a much richer and more fulfilling experience.
I’m really enjoying the hell out of this new story and while it doesn’t veer too far away from the formula of the first book, it evolves into something more and is laying the groundwork for a much larger story arc in regards to the overall saga. Through character interactions, it has also found a natural way to utilize some of the secondary characters in a way that makes them the main characters in their own plot threads.
As I write, I get more excited about where this next book is going and I’m having a lot of fun with it. The main challenge is trying to find the right balance between the multiple plot threads, but I think that it’s fine and I don’t need to overanalyze it, as I can become overly fixated on things like that.
I’m not sure if my method of letting conversations just come out naturally and dictating a plot switching gears is accepted or frowned upon by literary purists and massive corporate publishing houses but frankly, I don’t care. It’s how I write and I write for myself. I write the stories I want to read, as very few others do these days. It’s just really cool knowing that other people dig the hell out of the shit that spews out of my brain.
In the end, I’d rather write the way I want to write and not be stifled by the strict, annoying rules of a sad, dying industry that forgot how to entertain. Hell, it’s an industry that hates its customers and that’s vehemently opposed to what I ever want to be.