creative process |

Breaking the Wheel

By Nick Hayden
June 7, 2013

I still hear that voice, faint but constant. I force the door to the next room open, the hinges protesting. The floor above is visible. Two more dead, and one alive beneath the rubble. Grigor. He likes tea. That’s all I can remember of him at the moment, all that sticks. He stares up at the third-floor ceiling. His legs are pinned beneath a cabinet. He’s cut somehow; I see blood pooled beneath his lower body. His lips are moving, and sometimes they make noise. I come to him.

“Do you know where Calea Lisan is?”

He stares at me, confused. Suddenly, his hand is at my neck, fumbling for my collar.

“I had a dream,” he says. “I knew I would die this way.”

* * *

I read this passage during one of my last edits of The Select’s Bodyguard, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember why I wrote it this way. This throwaway character had a dream about his death? There was a story there, somewhere. (This is how I write, with random details I can come back and unpack later if I want.) (more…)

June 8, 2013 - Tags: creative process, Nick Hayden, The Select's Bodyguard, The Wheel Is Broken Posted in: Blogs

We Built This City

by Nathan Marchand
May 10, 2013

While Children of the Wells is a character-driven saga, all characters need a world to live in. Last week, my partner in crime, Tim, wrote about how we created the magic system in CotW. But magic is just one part (albeit a big one) of this world.

Once we determined that magic pooled in wells, we realized that civilizations would develop around them, much like cities formed around bodies of water in our world. The larger the wells, the larger the cities. Because of this, we decided to have city-states as opposed to countries, each one with a distinct culture. After much discussion, we settled on having three large wells, which would be the hearts of the three most powerful cities on this continent, all of them warring and/or competing with one another for dominance.

While all the staff members contributed ideas for each city, much credit must go to the writers of our earliest stories for creating the different cities and the characters who inhabit them. (more…)

May 10, 2013 - Tags: creative process, Nathan Marchand, The Fall of the House of Kyzer, The Select's Bodyguard, world-building Posted in: Blogs

What Calea and Rumplestiltskin Have in Common

Not Calea

by Timothy Deal
May 3, 2013

Since we had a request for some spoiler-free insight into the world and magic of Children of the Wells, I will talk a bit about how we developed our system of magic for the series. Of course, if you’ve read the latest chapter, you may think the timing odd, but bear with me. After all, this discussion may shed some light on previous or upcoming flashbacks (hint, hint, tease, tease).

One of the trickiest things when it comes to fantasy world-building is setting up a system of magic. If your world is going to feature magic at all, the writer typically needs to establish some rules for how it will work. Even the TV show Once Upon a Time — which follows fairy tale convention where spells can or can’t do things according to the needs of the plot — always follows at least one underlying principle: in the Enchanted Forest, magic always comes with a price. The price varies according to the power of the spell (and again, the needs of the plot), but the price is always there. Consistently following this rule helps the writers keep the fairy tale magic a bit more grounded and believable within the context of their story. (more…)

May 3, 2013 - Tags: creative process, magic, The Select's Bodyguard, Timothy Deal Posted in: Blogs

And Then What?

Nick Hayden

By Nick Hayden
April 19, 2013

Shock. Disaster. The world ending.

And then what?

That was the primary question I had when I started writing The Select’s Bodyguard. In our world-building meetings, we had created the event that demolishes much of Jalseion. But that’s not story. That’s setting. What was the story?

Bron and Calea are the story.

I won’t try to recount how exactly the two came about. (Well, it’s not the first time I’ve written an initially unlikable, domineering woman, oddly enough. Or a somewhat, what shall we say, “single-minded” man.) In any case, from the beginning they were intertwined, two powerful personalities rotating around each other like binary stars.

The duality of Bron and Calea, in fact, structures the entire novel–the way the chapters jump in time and perspective and tense.

You’ve just started to uncover the details of their relationship with one another. Hopefully you’ve started to love them or hate them or feel something about them. Because, in the end, as much as I love Jalseion and the various aspects of the world, this story is about them.

But they’re fictional. You, dear reader, are not. (I hope.) What questions do you have? What would you like to hear about in these weekly blogs? About the world? The art of creation? Why that fellow Rodion’s name reminds you, somehow, of Greedo from Star Wars?

You’re behind the scenes with the author. What intrigues you?

I mean, besides my handsome face and charming wit, of course.

April 19, 2013 - Tags: creative process, Nick Hayden, The Select's Bodyguard Posted in: Blogs

Agreements, Disagreements, and Rifftrax

Nathan Marchand

By Nathan Marchand
April 12, 2013

“Novel Concept” was a name Nick—the author of our current Children of the Wells novella, The Select’s Bodyguard—had used for the “publisher” of his self-published books. Then I snagged it for mine. I told him we should make something of this name, though not so much a publishing house as a network for writers to help promote each other and their works.

So, Nick called a meeting in January of 2012, but it wasn’t quite what I expected. He wanted to make Novel Concept into a web serial. We could promote each other while working together to produce new material. Then Nick shared an idea for a fantasy-based serial. I would tell you about it, but as River Song is fond of saying in Doctor Who, “Spoilers!” Regardless, we latched onto his idea and went crazy.

And quickly relearned about the perils of group projects. (more…)

April 12, 2013 - Tags: creative process, Nathan Marchand, The Fall of the House of Kyzer Posted in: Blogs