Forgiven, Love, Revenge

How did you get your novel idea?

This isn't just for all your stories, this is for your NOVEL. THE novel. The one that was inspired by a song or a dream and the one that you obsess over.

This question was posted on the OYAN forums and I answered it with a history of the Fallor/Jeline trilogy.


I have several books I'm in LOVE with. First and foremost (at the moment, mind) is Revenge. But I can't really start with that. Honestly, I can't. I really have to start with Fallor, the hero, because the story has changed so many times that it really just focuses around him.

I first 'came up' with Fallor five years ago, only he wasn't Fallor--he was Robin Hood. I wrote little dabbles of him and his daughter Brinian. They fought magicians, teamed up with sorcerers, went to the Renaissance Festival (twice!), and had various other adventures. Some of them involved Samii's characters, some of them didn't. I actually have a few of those stories lying about... I should find them.


Samii and I then started a story about an elf named Jeline and a thief named Kahil. At some point in the story, Kahil was stumped by Jeline's problem with the EOR and took her to see his cousin... guess who? Robin Hood! Of course, instantaneous romance ensued between Robin and Jeline, and they defeated the EOR and got married at the end. (What can I say? I was 11 at the time!)


I left him alone for a while and moved on to Belerion, Viggo, Mercia, and others. Of course, he was still inside my head and frequently appeared in conversations between Samii and me, and eventually sparked an idea. How in the world did he become an outlaw in the first place? I thought about the traditional Robin Hood, and talked to Samii about it. She yelled at me and told me that he needed a better "outlaw" name. I kept his first name, but changed his Great and Terrible Outlaw Name to the Fox.


THEN I set about writing down Robin's past. His name was Robert Huntingdon the Tenth, a prince of Hareem. His father let him do archery, and he was older than Kahil. Fallor's brother was named Corin, and he had an unmentioned sister... Rayon came with his son Scarlett at one point, and taught Fallor more archery. Then Corin killed their father for no reason, blamed Robin, and Robin ended up in jail. He escaped and robbed people. When he finally met Jeline, they actually threatened each other.


So that was an interesting little short story, and Samii and I continued to write about Robin and Jeline, and their daughter Brinian, in a huge project we called The Brie Saga. I still have all of it lying around on my computer and in notebooks... It's awful, but maybe I'll type it up sometime and read it just for laughs.


Then two summers ago, Samii and I decided to rewrite the initial Robin/Jeline story (originally titled The Adventures of Robin Hood: The Untold Saga). I changed Robin's name to Fallor and we took off, finishing Love in a mere week. I loved it and poured over it with much love. I loved it so much that I ended up writing Fallor's full backstory for NaNoWriMo '09. Surprisingly, it didn't deviate too much from the short story. I changed names, of course, and added a few random things. So that's how Forgiven and Love came about.


Revenge was born right after we finished Love. We had a full page of random notes and we started writing, but only got to about Chapter 7 before we stopped. I picked it up a couple months ago, applied the Snowflake method to it, and came out with the fourth novel I've ever written.


I feel like the ideals and themes in Revenge are ones the whole world needs to hear--revenge never pays. Forgiveness gives freedom. Great love has no man than this--that he lays down his life for his friends. Forgiveness is something I've struggled with forever, and I feel like God is teaching me lessons even as I write and rewrite these novels. They are very special to me and I want to use them to change the world.

~Mercia Dragonslayer 

Originality and Inspiration

Someone on OYAN posted the following questions and asked fellow students to answer them. He felt that his writing lacked originality, and so he wanted to find out how others got their story ideas and such. I figured I'd post my answers here. What works for me may not work for you, mind, but it's certainly a jumping point.


Where do I get the inspiration to write such a story? I generally get the inspiration for a story from everywhere. Inspiration for novels comes from other novels, bits of dialogue, a man I see on the street... You get the idea. I've had an idea for a short story come the other day in the form of a side view mirror in a car.


Now, just because I get ideas from everywhere doesn't mean I use all of them...

What kind of creativity is required to make something original, yet not on the lines of absurd? It's not just the sit-down-and-think creative process that really makes a good story, but the whole mulling-it-over for me. I can't come up with something 'original' in one creative session. Normally, I write the idea down in its bare-bones form and let it bounce around in my head. If it stays there, it moves on to the next process. If I forget it, then it's gone, and I may or may not go back to it later.


Then I present the idea to other people, mostly the people on the OYAN forums. Depending on their feedback, I will either ditch the story, or work to make it more original through plot bunnies, character development, and setting.

What difficulties and challenges must be overcome in order to reach this goal? Tiredness, boredness, unwillingness to actually finish the story.... etc. Laziness and procrastination are also determining factors. Some days, I just don't feel like writing.

What is your view on the concept of originality in general? There is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been done already, and there's no point in trying to create a truly original story. I think what makes a story 'original,' in our culture's eyes, is the level of emotional impact it has on the reader. Anyone can write a novel about a boy who goes to wizarding school, but the truly original one is the one that made you cry for the last two hundred pages.


Harry Potter, anyone?


I digress.


Maybe someday, I'll write a review of Harry Potter without giving away too many spoilers.


Anyway. A merry day to all, and to all a good night!


~Mercia Dragonslayer

Writing is like bleeding.

"Writing is easy:  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."  ~Gene Fowler

"There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."  ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Some people think that writing is easy. They sit down at their notebooks, typewriters, or computers and think. I think I'll write a novel about cats today, they say, and begin a line of prose. This comes easily for a while, and before they know it, they've churned out a whole page of Chapter One! Oh, glorious moment! They bask in the shining light of the freshest, brightest, most beautiful page on the planet. Now, they say, with a grin, I'll just stop here--good stopping point, after all, and just go to bed. It'll still be here in the morning.


But morning rises and they sit back down with a pencil in hand, only to find that there is nothing left to write. All the inspiration is gone and that 'glorious moment' of the previous day has left. Nothing lingers.


Writing is easy, they say, but it's just not for me.


This. Is. A. Lie.


Writing is not easy. It never will be easy. There is no special pill that you can get that will give you everything you need to write a best-selling novel. You have to grit your teeth and bear on even when it looks like you will fail. Writing is something that you love so much that you strive for it no matter what, even if it feels like you want to knock a hole in the wall with your head.


Because failure is part of being a writer. We will fail--but that's why we rewrite. And edit. And keep on writing.


Writers are failures, and yet we still succeed. That's why people want to be a writer. They admire us! We get to share our opinions with the world and change people one story at a time. We get to stare out the window to see what kind of squirrels reside there, or spend hours on Google looking up the floor plan of Nottingham Castle. How cool is that?


So. There's my little thoughts on how writing is like bleeding. To sum it all up, writing is like bleeding because it hurts. We slave over a single sentence for days, only to have editors slash it and friends kindly suggest we change it to something else. We fail.


But we keep on writing anyway.


~Mercia Dragonslayer