Ask me anything #2 goes:
Now, Brent is one of the cocreators of the Land & Sea series. Since I’ve just finished writing Land & Sea #?? as a followup to #10, it all dovetails together nicely, I think.
Most of what gets me writing in general are the voices in my head. I get twitchy when I’m not writing. When I’m not reading on top of that, I’m downright not healthy to be around.
Then again, if I weren’t wired weirdly, would I write? Probably not. Though I’m not sure what other job would allow me to basically work in solitary confinement like this. I once thought being something like an electrician would allow me to just leave work at work and not bring it home. Though I’ve since been told that it’s not likely even in other lines of work. Yay.
Mostly, I spend a lot of time letting the characters just play. You’d be surprised how much the outline is just a nice suggestion. Even the last book I worked on, even though it was largely outlined for Blaine before I started working on it (this time) several chapters went right off the rails. At least three whole chapters emerged that weren’t even part of the outline, but probably involved interactions with Blaine’s larger world.
So yeah, it’s fun just watching things go sideways.
Some of it, of course, is just a matter of “this isn’t in the outline, but it just makes sense given all the elements I didn’t outline.”
Sometimes, there are things that work in practice that will never work in theory.
Building up a character and dropping them into a no-win scenario that they have to win can just be fun. It’s a puzzle to be worked out in grand strategy, then worked out on the ground.
Heck, I had a collection of new characters that were supposed to be throwaway in this current book. They didn’t want to stay thrown away. In fact, they took up easily ten times more space than they should have. Because “Oh, each team will get a page or so.” Nope, each team got at least ten pages. Oy.
But that’s the fun part of writing. It sure as hell isn’t the marketing.
Another way to look at it
I think that’s all I have right now.
Again, feel free to ask me anything in the comments. If you get an email, you can ping me through the comment button at the top.
And please, feel free to buy a book, or leave a book review. Either would be greatly appreciated.
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