A Galaxy of Emptiness

Right.
Well it's been a while. Far longer than I intended but an absolutely shite start to the year is pretty much to blame. Writing has not so much been put on the back burner, more like locked in the garage with the rubbish barbecue set.

But that's not to say I've been completely idle. I submitted a synopsis for a competition and used it as an opportunity to flesh out my ideas somewhat. I had already planned on a fantasy realm made up of islands - a pretty common setting, really. But now I know that certain objects in this realm are deemed important enough to have souls. Ships are one - literature is full of examples of ship's 'personalities', particularly in science fiction. I'm going to take this one step further and make it literal. Ships are so important in this island realm that certain magics and the actions of their crew can give a ship something like a lifeforce of it's own.
I'm also thinking the same will be true of certain other items, most notably legendary weapons.

This isn't generally apparent, though. But quite early in the story the main characters are going to find themselves dead on the shores of the land of the dead. Here the 'spirit' of their ship is manifest, and it will assist our protagonist in a quest for revenge.

So, that's the bare bones of a plot. Time to add some details I guess. Hopefully a little sooner than 3 months...

Where do I start? Where do I begin?

So, I've been writing short stories for about ten years now, mostly sci-fi and fantasy stuff. It's a lot of fun and I enjoy creating these little snippets - small and perfectly formed. They all pretty much follow the same format; starting "in medias res" with the final twist that makes them interesting and stick with you after you've read them. And there's a lot you can get away with, too - stereotypes and generalisations work to the author's advantage when you're only holding the reader's attention for ten minutes or so, plus there's the freedom to play around with those writing conventions, try out something a little bit different.
But the thing about short stories is that they are short - 2,500 words, or 5,000 or maybe 7,000 at a push. So, if you'll permit the analogy, short stories are more like a pencil sketch rather than the oil-on-canvas giant of a novel.


Which leads me to the purpose of this blog - taking that step from short stories to something bigger, maybe even a novel, but I'm not making any promises. I won't be able to rely on those 'sketchy' characters so much, I'll have to really flesh them out into living, breathing people. "Interesting" perspectives which might work in a 3 page story will quickly become gimmicky over 300 pages. A sudden plot twist at the end is more likely to leave the reader feeling cheated and annoyed rather than appreciative of your genius writing ability. Or something.

Quite honestly I don't really know what I'm doing but I'm hoping it'll be fun to find out.

The main reason for setting up this blog is to give myself some sort of structure because without deadlines I'll just drift merrily along without actually writing anything. And if any folks out there in Internet Land want to follow along, well, you're more than welcome.


Where do I start? I have some ideas (always helpful). It'll be a fantasy story (probably), I have a setting worked out (sort of) and I have an idea for an opening scene (which will probably end up occurring 4 chapters in).

One thing is certain, however; there will be dragons.