Sunday, January 28, 2018

Writing The Gloaming ...

This story came from a weird place in my head. I've sat on it for most of a month, mostly writing notes, revising the setting and so forth. The basic building blocks of the world began with pondering why gods wouldn't be in a pantheon and then coming up with an answer. One that immediately made me go: 'Oh, yeah, this is probably unpublishable via any traditional means' ... and then seeing that as something of a challenge. The world has grown from that, in odd ways. It's less an exploration of magic and more one of monsters. (Similar to Ghoulish Happenings but with a better-defined world. I love the characters in that story, but the world and character relations never fit properly. Some day I need to work on it again. Definitely.)

This is also one of the few times a setting came into my head well before the characters did. Normally I start at character and work outward from that; this story worked toward them in terms of interesting things I could do with the idea, and character relations. And finding myself going 'no, that won't...' and realizing the 'no' meant I had to write that instead.

So there is an entire school dedicated to, well, schooling for preternatural students. Which also means a cast of 40+ characters between students, teachers, security and family Stuff happening outside the confines of the school. The trick in saying 'oh, the supernatural has always been around and real' and marrying that to the real world has been an interesting challenge and a lot of the reasons are buried deep in the world building. The revelation behind that is going to throw Crane - and Exen - for a  loop in a lot of fun ways.

There are antagonists, actually planned and considered in-depth early on, which is a change for me. The fun will be seeing how it all plays out and if I can actually pull this off :)

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