Entry 2, it’s turtles all the way down.
Where last I left off, I explained how Project Paisley had a faulty start. The idea behind the project was burning brightly, but I lacked the fuel to keep the fire going. The solution I came to was easier said than done: don’t surrender an idea just because it’s become difficult to navigate. Pull back, regroup, assess the situation, and start preparing for the second try. {read Storytelling 1, here}
I set the original start of Project Paisley aside and let it rest while I prepared for my college graduation. I had a lot on my plate back then, but I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a friend. I told her that with distance from Paisley, I felt as if the world I wanted to explore was too large, too empty, too colorless. I specifically recall using the phrase “it’s too big, I think I need to think smaller.”
That was my problem. And it was a big problem. Like Matryoshka dolls, further issues nested within the larger problem.
The world felt monochrome with no distinct cultures, flavors, or religions. Without a world to shape them, my characters were the generic adventuring party seen the world over. And because my characters were generic and boring, I wasn’t interested in them. Interest for the author is paramount. If you’re bored, so is every one else. [Note, this isn’t strictly true. Not everyone is as interested in 15th century Florentine politics like me.]
With this revelation finally admitted I was able to address it.
My first order of business was to figure out what kind of world I wanted to build. From there I could mold my characters around the cultures they came from.
I spent my last semester in college reading dozens upon dozens of medieval history books. When I had exhausted my public library, I delved into the poetry and narratives of the same period. I made a laborious study of the Divine Comedy which has endowed me with a deep reverence and appreciation for Dante and his works. As I learned more about the man himself, things started pulling themselves together.
Stupidly, I never dated my notes, but as I graduated and settled in to life outside of school, I wrote my first set of notes that would become the background and backbone of P1.
P1 was never my intention. Or, I should say, P1 was meant to be a short foray into a small, condensed version of the world I originally intended for my failed prototype. For this short story, I had two things in mind; the quasi-erotic, spiritually rich relationship between Dante Alighieri and Beatrice; and the doomed, overtly sexual relationship of Tristan and Isolde.
What I ended up producing was a courtly romance with the symbology of Tristan and the philosophy of Dante.
But that was a future realization because the first thing I worked on was written on a piece of plain white printer paper. On it, I wrote two cities, London and Paris. From those two cities, I made notes about the things I liked about them. I liked the idea of an ancient city with multiple former masters out to make it on its own, I recycled a name from an unfinished D&D campaign. That in and of itself was a lesson in keeping notes. Even failed ideas are great fertilizer. I keep what I’ve previously written, even if its terrible.
The way I tell this story makes it seem as if these thoughts happened independently of each other or in sequence, but all of these thoughts and ideas were cooking at the same time. As I thought about the city, I thought about what kind of people would live in it.
I began the first part of P1 in the summer of 2017, nothing serious, just some scenarios. I didn’t yet have an actual plot. Mostly, I wanted to get a feel for the world. I still had blanks to fill in, the major deity didn’t have name, none of the counties really had names, I wasn’t certain what shape religious worship took, or how it would affect the daily life of people living in the world.
To this day, when I begin a project, I draft certain scenes or events I want to occur. It’s usually a climatic or tense moment. I find that the scenes are typically dialogue heavy or action oriented, either way, it’s a pressure scene. By placing the characters under immediate pressure, I find that I get a feel for their basic stress reactions. I’m able to determine personalities from there.
I conceived two characters for P1, E and R. The more I learned about E the more I understood about R. I’m not going to sugar coat anything and play the will-they-won’t-they card here. E and R were made for each other. I lampshade this almost immediately.
As I said in my last entry, when I conceived this idea, I was a virulent anti-plotter. I never worked out a true timeline or plotted the events as I would inevitably do in the future. But I did try some new things.
I drew something like a flow chart. I wrote E at the top of the page and drew lines connecting thoughts, wishes, and ideas to various traits or backstory events. Not everything I wrote on the chart made it into the story, per se, but it helped me set certain personality expectations. I was able to use this chart and come to basic conclusions about how E would respond to different scenarios.
Writing is an organic process. Inevitably, what you start with is not what you finish with.
Again, what was meant to be a short story turned into a multipart fantasy with a wide variety of characters and stakes that seemed to rise with each passing chapter. I worked on P1 from mid-2017 through 2018 and finished the first draft in August of 2019.
At P1’s completion I came upon a new set of issues. It was enormously long and it had a narrative thread that, while it was cohesive, meandered in some places. But I had done it. I had written a full-length novel. It wasn’t my first (I completed one in high school for National Novel Writing Month), but it was—to date—my best.
However, finishing a novel brings a lot of things to light. Now I had to shift focus, I needed to swap my writing hat for my editor’s cap. That was a tall order for someone who, up to that point, hadn’t done any serious editing outside of term papers.
At this time in my life I started a new job, I met a boy, and I was dabbling in philosophy that would soon point me to Holy Mother Church. It was a time for change. I was older, more mature. I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. So, for the first time in my life I picked up a book that was supposed to help me become a better writer by teaching me to edit.
I took its advice and shelved P1 for a while to gain some distance. I turned my attention to actual short stories, which is a different topic entirely.
Now that I’m able to properly look back on that part of my life, I see more clearly the lesson learned. P1 was a massive detour and it was going to take some time to fit it into my original intentions for Project Paisley. But it was worth it. I returned from that trip as a better writer. I still lacked discipline, I still needed to pick up a new set of skills, but I had climbed the first mountain in this range of madness.
From this experience I learned:
Trust your instincts. Just because the solution presented is contrary to the writer’s intentions, doesn’t mean that it should be ignored. Following that string might lead to something greater.
Above: Korean water dropper in shape of a turtle, Koryo dynasty, 12th-13th century, porcelain with molded and incised design under celadon glaze, Dayton Art Institute.
The Salon at Elfland 