I just shared the initial WIP for a story that I intend to grow into a full-length novel. Against my editor’s wishes (which she also said this wouldn’t be that big of an issue in the end), I am sharing the building of the story from start to finish. I supposed it would go without saying that there are spoilers ahead.
So…where do we begin?
I suppose the best place to start is where I got the idea for the story. I was at the one of the university libraries looking for genealogical information on a relative when I noticed there was a 19-step guide on how to find exactly who you are looking for up to 400 years ago. It was hand-written on a wire-ringed notebook, but in the most beautiful script I’d seen in awhile. I never could figure out who penned it, as there was nobody in the area where I was doing my research.
Upon returning home, I saw a blurb about a found body on one of the news sites, and everything just fell into place, so far as the major plot arc goes. I tried to imagine the kind of character who would fit in place as the protagonist, if they had a sidekick/partner/coworker/et cetera, what their relationship would be like… It was in this brainstorming that I stumbled onto the secondary story (and the third), and how all of it tied together. Lucky for me, it was during the process of discovery that the characters appeared out of nowhere, in a way.
As of now, I have a protagonist, her best friend, her boss, the two baristas at the coffee shop, two peace officers, one detective, an emergency room technician, a doctor on call, and an older gentleman.
Next, I had to settle on when and where this would take place. According to the ideas I had in the outline, I saw that there would be a need for little if any instant (cellular) contact, limited internet (LANs and WANs maybe, or even a BBS or MUD/Telnet setup) or very rudimentary internet (a la AOHell back when 14.4kbps modems were all the rave) — just enough to host a site with pictures like a newspaper, where anyone could edit pages if they were registered. It seemed to me that the best time for this would be anywhere between 1990-1996, and a remote village just to make things a little more contained. The further out I could make the place, the more recent I could make the timeline.
Location, Location, Location
I chose a fictional town on the western coast of England (near the Scotland border). Except the more I thought about the town and what it could look like, I ended up going further north until I reached the very real Kirkcudbright Cove. The area along the coast looked rocky and jagged enough to host a potential grotto or series of them. I wanted to name the town Gannet’s Hollow, and I wanted it to host no more than 1,500 people at best, but only because the town was home to a community college of sorts. The grotto would be a potential tourist attraction, but it was still not very well known outside of the locals and people who lived in the larger area, since nobody knew who Sir Gannet was, or if he even existed in the first place.
However, my family’s history isn’t too far from the area. (read more about my family’s colorful history here — and tell me you don’t think my family is cursed somewhere, because every generation seems to have at least one high-profile degenerate.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my heritage, but holy hells, people…lots of money, and lots of wtf.
Anyway, since I had family there, and there is a very strange tarnish on every generation, I invented Sir Abraham MacLeod (I could not find one) and decided he stowed something in the grotto that apparently was a)extremely valuable and b)allegedly belonged to a gentleman named Gannet. Whether this treasure is stored there or not, nobody’s dared to find out, since the grotto is completely submerged and the current is so quick that it would be certain death. Which has nothing to do with the story itself, but what of a town without a history, right? Ol’ Abe was so insistent that he guard it until he could get it back that he built a small inn and tavern on the hill above the grotto and essentially established camp there, which eventually grew into the small town of Gannet’s Hollow, due to it’s perfect location along the coastal road nearby.
As of “present day” in the novel’s time, there’s a large and beautiful library that Sir MacLeod founded himself, which is a part of the small college that meets on the upper levels in said library and in an adjacent building next door. There’s a single strip mall which features a coffee shop and local fineries, a market and fishmonger, and I’m sure there’s a Boots (which is the UK equivalent of Eckerd, now CVS) or something similar just to ground it a bit. There’s definitely going to be at least one nice restaurant and definitely a small pub that’s open 24/7/365. I have a cemetary and a church, too, but it’s literally “the church” and there’s no specific denomination, as that may provide more conflict than desired at the time of making the list. I didn’t really go too deep into everything, instead making a list of shops one might find in a small hamlet. Just enough to potentially send characters for items if they need anything.
What about the characters?
I guess I should introduce my protagonist. Rose is the genealogist’s senior most assistant at the library, as you read in the previous post. She’s meticulous almost to a fault, which highlights one of her major flaws – she’s a born perfectionist, and takes mistakes so personally that it can disrupt her normal daily activities. She’s extremely intelligent, which is not always a good trait. Her offset is a slightly younger lifelong friend simply called Kilroy, whose line of work isn’t clearly mentioned for story purposes. I’ve envisioned him as either a staff writer or dockhand. He’s light-hearted and upbeat, has a sense of humor that gets in the way of Rose’s attempts to be serious quite often. He’s also quick-witted and has a tendency to see the forest for the trees where Rose tends to only see the pine needles across the forest floor. Where he lifts her spirits up, she keeps him grounded.
It’s Rose who discovers the mystery of the dead man, and the two that discover the body, and it’s Rose who ties everything together. Kilroy plays hero at least twice, and there’s a fire. But then…that would be giving away the plot, and that’s not what this post is about. That’s for the next post.
Until next time, folks!