Hey everyone, give a warm welcome to Misha Gericke, my guest poster for the day and author of "The Vanished Knight"! Take it away, Misha!
Thanks
for hosting me today, Mel!
Since
Mel gave me carte blanche, I thought I’d share the story of a novel’s birth.
Back
when I started blogging, I was working on a WiP that I (aptly) named The Beast.
Drafting it was a difficult, often painful experience. I hated one of my main characters. Despised him. He was
disrespectful, rebellious, self-pitying, smart alec-y and on and on and on.
But
I loved my other characters enough that I had to keep going. Because one of my
characters needed James, James stayed. And he pretty much fought me the whole
way, for my entire first draft. He was by far not my only problem, though.
The
other big problem I had was working with multiple plot lines. I’d done multiple
perspectives before, but always for simpler stories, where there was basically
one plot that everyone contributed to. The Beast was different. Pretty soon in
the story, the main characters are split into two groups and they remain apart,
seemingly living out their own stories, seemingly having nothing together. And
then, there was a third plotline. A silent one. I needed to stay aware of it
the whole time, even if it remained behind the scenes. But for the entire story
this silent plotline didn’t feel right.
Yet
another major problem: I (who always planned everything out) couldn’t plan The
Beast. Those plotlines I mentioned were so subtle and convoluted that I
couldn’t put them down on paper. And since the silent plot (which didn’t feel
right) originated the other two, things got pretty hairy. It felt as if I was
trying to untangle a bowl of spaghetti. With some of the strings stuck
together. And where unsticking them would make the whole thing fall apart.
So
I did the two things I never did: First, I gave up on planning and let the
whole thing play out. Second, I trusted my gut and wrote the whole thing
without trying to fix anything. It took me five years to finish the rough
draft.
It
was pretty good, though. But (since I wrote the whole thing by hand) I needed
to rewrite it. This time I planned, using the stuff I’d learned and liked and
structuring the story around it. During this rewrite, things fell into place.
James made sense. And although he’s still all those things I complained about
before, I understood him. By understanding him, I… well… “like him” is still a
bit of a strong way to put it. But he has grown on me.
During
the rewrite, a random conversation about Snape from Harry Potter made my silent
plotline fall into place. And with that, the whole thing came right. Suddenly,
there weren’t these tangled bits of string. There were lines. And they
converged on one point. I also saw that the silent plotline was making all the
others resonate. The rewrite became the easiest thing.
I
knew what to focus on, I could tolerate James, and I didn’t need to plan,
because I could sense when I was veering off as I wrote.
The
Beast became Doorways, and Doorways became The Vanished Knight and its sequel The Heir’s Choice.
Blurb:
Since the death of her parents,
Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous
secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her
off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her
foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby
ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land...
When Callan is forced through the
doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s
shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in
service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the
two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince.
But when the Black Knight fails to
return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion
and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her
family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess.
Now with Darrion growing ever more
antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide
whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go
to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms
afire.
Bio:
M. Gerrick (AKA Misha Gericke) has
basically created stories since before she could write. Many of those stories
grew up with her and can be seen in her current projects.
She lives close to Cape Town, with a
view over False Bay and Table Mountain.
If you’d like to contact her, feel
free to mail her at warofsixcrowns(AT)gmail(DOT)com, Circle her on
Google Plus or follow her on Twitter. If you'd like to see her writer-side
(beware, it's pretty insane), please feel free to check out her blog.
Links:
8 comments:
Good thing you didn't throw that spaghetti on the wall just to see what would stick! Although I bet James would've stuck.
Congratulations on taming the Beast, Misha!
Hahaha yeah James is the sort who would have gotten stuck and wouldn't budge when I tried to clean up after. :-P
That is quite a process! Sometimes the novel dictates how you'll go about planning it, or not, and writing it. I love it that you called it The Beast! That seems like an appropriate name for many writing projects in the beginning. :)
Happy reading and writing! from Laura Marcella @ Wavy Lines
Hehe! This is a great post, Misha. Makes me think back on some of my writing processes. ;)
Haha yeah Laura, we often do feel like the project is out to get us. :-D
Thanks Mel! Glad you enjoyed it. And I think we all have a book we think of as the beast.
I love how you compared this writing experience to attempting to untangle of pot of spaghetti. I get that. 5 years and now your pretty book. Congrats!
Great analogy! Congrats!
Thanks Robin! Thanks Nicole! :-)
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