It occurred to me that I’ve never talked about where and how to start a new project. I’ve spoken about starting a new book, continuing an ongoing series, and other parts of beginning writing. In all this, though, I’ve never talked about starting a new project at the very beginning. Before you write, before you have characters or settings or themes or anything else, how to you begin?
This idea is in my head right now because I’m starting a brand new project. Master of Fate goes on, and next year I’ll be starting on Aloisa’s series, and Fallen Angel continues, with work on Adam and Holly resuming in the next week or so. I’ve finished with The Cold Pit Below, and I’ve been rutting around for something new to work on.
And I found it.
So, where to begin? Well, it all starts with a single idea. To be clear, I don’t mean the idea for a plotline or a character arc or a fleshed-out world. I’m talking about an idea. One, single idea. A flash of inspiration, a seed of creation. One solitary notion, that is utterly without form.
Did you know that nearly every mythology begins with uncreation? The ancient Greeks called it Chaos.
For the Egyptians, there was an endless, formless sea. The Norse had Ginnungagap, the empty, primordial void.
The Japanese believe in an ancient, unformed mass. Many Mesoamerican civilizations believed in a cyclical creation myth, one that begins in chaos, a world is formed, only to be destroyed and returned to chaos. And let’s not forget how the Bible begins: “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
Comparative mythology points out that there seems to be an intrinsic part of human belief that before there was something, there was nothing.
Most creative myths have a very similar path: something just happens, an apparently random event gives rise to the first beings, who, in turn, begin forming the world. In Greece, the primordials: Gaia, Tartarus, Eros, and Nyx emerged from the endless void, Chaos.
In Egypt, a lotus bloomed from the endless sea and, from that flower, emerged Ra. The frost from Niflheim mixed with the flames of Muspelheim within the gap called Ginnungagap, and this formed the great giant Ymir.
Particles from the ancient mass dripped into the sea, forming the islands of Japan. Creative often begins as this: a sudden flash of something that comes from nowhere and gets things moving.
Every story I’ve ever heard of has started this way. Steven Spielberg, in writing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had a sudden idea of Indy fighting Nazis on top of a moving tank.
Robert Howard had a dream/vision of a dark-haired barbarian in a time before most written history named Conan. There was this fantasy author named JRR Tolkien; you’ve probably never heard of him. He had this weird idea of little people who lived in holes under the ground. He named them Hobbits or something; it never went anywhere.
In each case, the worlds these storytellers created didn’t being as sprawling, fully-realized worlds; they all began with a single notion, a seed.
I’ve had my seed.
There’s a man who has moved to a new city. He’s walking through an alley soaked in hot rain. He’s been hired to find a killer. Overhead, a sky-city glows in the sun. The wealthy who liver there have hired him. They hired him because they can’t be bothered to come to the surface; it’s too dirty, too beneath them. His job is to deal with the murder and the murderer, to keep things quiet. Justice means maintaining the status quo. Someone important has died, and there needs to be an example. The problem is, the man has one last shred of honor, and it’s annoying the hell out of him.
The idea feels like an old detective noir story. So, where do I begin? By reading.
The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye. I need to immerse myself in the genre. Moreover, I’m diving into the scholarship around the genre. What makes a noir story?
What are the character archetypes, the settings, the essential themes? Mark Twain once said that you need to learn the rules before you break them. What is the thematic importance of the femme fatale?
Why do so many detectives have a Watson? Once I learn what other authors have done, and why, then I can figure out how to use the genre to communicate my own themes.
As I said before, my primary work will soon be shifting back to Adam and Holly. I’ll begin working on their next book, Redeeming Love. But, while that’s going on, I’ll also be starting work on this new project. Every storyteller has their own process, mine is to have three projects going at a given time. One is in active writing; that’s Redeeming Love. The second is in background development; that’s the next Master of Fate book. The third is this new project, one that is in deep research. That’s how I start.
This coming weekend, I’ll be at the Northeast Comic Con Collectible Extravaganza in Boxborough MA. Next weekend, I’ll be back in North Conway, NH.
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