Conversations with Em (Part 2)
My visions vs. reality plus world-building for The Allegheny Chronicles
Welcome to part 2 of my article series, “Conversations with Em.” This is where I answer your questions regarding my writing process, my characters, my plots, and whatever it is you ask (within reason.)
Last conversation we covered questions about my most challenging character to write, and the character I feel closest to; what I wish I knew before I published; the strangest or most interesting research I’ve done for a book, and what I’m working on now. You can find that here, in Part 1.
Today we’re going to talk about my visions of the story vs. reality; if the path is different; and how I developed the clans of the Allegheny Chronicles series.
Q: Did you envision a story line that is similar to where you are currently in your books?
A: Sometimes I do start out with an ending and figure out how my characters get there. Most of the time, it’s pure chaos and flying by the seat of my pants. I write using both the keyboard and pen and paper. My stories go in many different directions and I write those down with pen and paper. The majority of that will never get seen or read by another living person. I may write the same scene four or five different ways until it’s “right.” Most of the time the scenes are duds and don’t feel right.
When I write with the keyboard, on my laptop, the chance is greater that it’ll end up in the novel. If I try to direct my story the way I want it to go, it fails miserably and my characters quit talking to me. If I do write an outline, it’s after the fact so I can make sure my dates, timelines, etc. line up.
Q: How different is the path you are on from where you thought you’d go?
A: As far as writing the books, it is always different from where I think it will go. I surprise myself with the path my books take. I never intend for those events to happen or my characters to do or say what they do or say. To give an example, I never thought that my Oscar Company Novels would end up being a series, let alone spawning one. I didn’t expect to introduce a new generation, to introduce the Enlightened, or the Hollows. I don’t ever intend to have ‘message’ or ‘meaning’ behind my novels like English teachers love to think novels do. Sometimes the writing just happens and I’m along for the ride with zero expectations of where it’s going. While I can’t say the path is different, the path is where it is meant to go, regardless of where I want it to go.
Q: Specifically with the Allegheny Chronicles, how did you come up with the clans? Are they fact based fiction or more based on local legends?
A: In true Em Brooks fashion, the clans just happened. The number of clans, their names, their hierarchy, all of that was made up (pure fiction and imagination.) — World-building is what it’s called. Clans seem to be a fairly worldwide term in history, including ancient history, so that’s what I went with.
As for the building of those clans, I am well aware that in mythology there are the tales of giants. There are tales of little people, shapeshifters, ghosts, people of the forest, feral people, and so on. I asked, “We all know these things are based off of real life things to explain something… so what if… they really were what the myths say they are?”
And then the Earth Keepers and Spirit Walkers… What if the idea of magic was based off of stories of what these people could do? And from there it all spiraled into the clans.
After my “what if” writings, I did do some research on locations for the clans — where should these sacred sites be?
I looked into mythology of the indigenous people of the areas, discovered all sorts of history I never knew, and just tried to respectfully incorporate some of that information with fiction. For instance, the Miwoks have a story of a ‘giant’ called Yayali. They also have tales of other giants including Ke’-lok, Uwu’lin, and a rock giant. Other tribes throughout the US have similar tales of giants —the Paiute, Choctaw, Cherokee, Iroquois, and Lakota are examples. Recently, while watching season 11 of the television show Expedition X, I learned that the Navajo had stories about defeating a giant called Ye’itshoh in modern day Arizona — it was a stone-skinned cannibal defeated by warriors of the tribe.
The giants are random in description —stone-skinned humanoid; seven-to-ten-foot tall red-haired cannibals; or being ‘taller than the pines’ while leaping from mountain peak to mountain peak. Most of the time the giants had bad attitudes, hate for humans, and the habit of hunting them —the bad guys of the stories. The Cherokee apparently saw their giant as something that controlled the forest animals and needed to be appeased in order to hunt the animals. Of course, there are many more stories just like these all over the world.
So…what if these stories were real and what happened to these giants? What if they were able to shrink down and blend in with humans?
That’s where parts of the whole Earth Keeper and Spirit Walkers come in. It’s all fiction, I made them all up, and give them their abilities and such based on my ‘what-if’ ponderings.
There are bits and pieces of fantastic sounding ‘theories’ that pop up in random areas across the internet —we used to call these things tabloids— including there being an ‘alien’ race who has hidden out in Colorado for generations and ‘identify’ as having Germanic or Scandinavian ancestry but they’re really aliens who have blended with humans. So, the hunters of these aliens are using DNA to isolate the alien genes and hunt them down. Things like that I hear and think, “What if that was really happening? What would that look like? How would it be hidden? Would it be in the tabloids?” And there we go. For the record, I just heard this theory for the first time a few months ago so sometimes I’m ahead of the game on these things. That’s how it works for me. Often I will have written the story down and think, “Nah, no one would ever believe this.” And then the internet does not disappoint.
Do I believe any of these ‘fantastic’ and wild ‘conspiracies?’ Nope. But I do find them intriguing…and what if…What if the story is real and calling it ‘fiction’ is just a way to deflect from that reality?
I’m sure you get the way this author’s mind sees life.
Stay tuned for the next installment of this Q&A article series. I will answer more questions on my process and my work! Please subscribe, comment, and/or share these articles to help this grow! If you have questions, please ask!
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