I shall begin my blog here because without this one single thought, there wouldn’t be a Scriptorium, or an Inkworld. There wouldn’t be Nathaniel or Tommy or Juli or Brandoveii – that awesome elf. The initial premise for the story came to me in the fall of 2009 in literary form but came to me much earlier in art form as early as 1984 and even earlier in experiential form in 1978. In other words this story has been in and around me in various forms since I was seven years old even though I was not able to connect the dots until recently. For the sake of this entry I will start in 2009 because that is when the premise became a sudden reality in my life that was worth pursuing.
The premise was simple – a boy gets a magical pen from his great-grandpa and draws a drawing and goes into it and has an adventure. That was it. That was the single line, the single thought that I began building the story around. That premise raises many questions that need to be answered.
Who is the boy?
Where does he live?
What nationality is he?
Who is his great-grandfather?”
Why did he give the pen to him and not the boy’s grandfather or father?”
Where does his great-grandfather live?
Is there a family tradition that holds them together?”
What makes the pen magical?”
Where did the pen come from?”
Who had it before PaPa or did he invent it?
What did he draw?”
How does all this work?
That is only twelve questions that were raised that had to be answered. Those answers would be the story! But they couldn’t be a simple answer, in other words the answers could not just be an info-dump. Those answers had to come in story form, long-hand. Those answers had to be massaged and revised again and again.
That is the writing process.
This is what you must go through if you want to write a great story.
Technique and writing style will emerge over time.
Literary devices will come in their proper time.
New characters will emerge to help shape the story and give fresh viewpoints and new voices.
All I had to do in the beginning was answer those twelve fundamental questions. Then other questions arrived and those had to be answered.
Did my character have siblings?
Was he a loner or popular?
Was he a nerd or a jock or drug addict or drinker?
Is he me? Is he a self-insert? (he is not by the way)
This is how The Inkworld Sagas came into existence. The story came into being by answering those fundamental questions. But there is one question that had to be answered above everything. I learned it from a literary agent at a SCBWI conference in 2010 or 2011 or somewhere around that timeline.
That question is this: Why do I care about this character? What is it that is compelling me to read further past the first five pages?
When a literary agent reads a query and the first ten pages that is what they are asking themselves. “Why do I care or why should I care?”
I would say that is what every reader is asking also. Why do they care and why should they care, especially with all the content that is available now everywhere.
What is the takeaway of this post?
If you want to be a writer your story hinges on the premise. The premise is linked very closely to the promise. And the promise is the delivery of a story that you care about.
