Wolf

The chapter I wrote tonight was somehow missing from the novel until now, despite being the inciting incident of the original novel. You see, in all this writing, I somehow managed to forget the title of the novel and the whole twilight of the wolves aspect to the novel. And though that was not the original title, nor was it ever meant to be the title, it did describe a theme quite clearly and succinctly, of a world passing.

There was an elegy, originally.

A dirge.

Anyway, I take this as a moment to give some insight into writing process. I usually drop a few words as notes when I get an idea for something. So the notes for this chapter were that a certain character needed to give a speech.

I knew the speech needed to convince a bunch of people to come with him to hunt and kill a god.

Quite a big ask! But all of that was left for future me to solve. And then future me became present me and I had to sort out how to accomplish this task.

First, I needed a reason for this character to give a speech. Why would anyone come to listen to them give a speech?

And so I had to invent a holiday. What holiday? Well…I don’t know. How about a harvest festival? Well, no, because then I need to rewrite the season of this novel thus far, which isn’t hard but is messy. Okay, well, what about some random holiday, like the patron saint of this town.

Well, are there saints here? Am I going to add this to the culture and let all the ramifications spill out from there? Thus far, this has been a more animistic place without a strong theological sense. At the same time, the foreign religions are not looked upon kindly here. So, no, I don’t want to suddenly establish a strong religion and religious identity where they have saints and so on.

A founding myth. Let’s make it a founder’s day celebration. Okay, grand, perfect. And so now I whip up a mythology to how this town came to be and why it was significant. Add some layers to it, maybe bury a secret in it, and then go from there. So now this character who is not of the town or region needs to get up and give a speech, which involves him basically taking over the celebration and holiday.

A foreigner stepping up and taking over an indigenous holiday does seem thematically nice for a novel that is about colonization, so that’s a nice happy accident. And now the speech, well, that’s a fun challenge. Get the blood rising and convince a bunch of people to kill a god.

Some of this involved dialing up the general mistrust towards magic and religion among these people. Which works well.

But this is how a chapter goes from a phrase of an idea into a real scene. By running into complications, I build the world out. By running into further complications, I adjust culture and contexts. And from there, we have a successful scene that then clarifies a whole host of things I hadn’t given any thought to or perhaps not enough thought to.

There are those who make outlines and solidify their worldbuilding beforehand, but this is how I do it. I tinker and assemble on the go, on the fly, and often I run into happy accidents at every turn.