The
Scribernauts
The Journey to Writing our Novel
We're writing a three-book series plus a prequel. It's a historical thriller set in ancient-Rome-time, with an element of fantasy thrown in. The idea for the story came about a couple of years ago and since then the plot has been a rollercoaster of ideas, dead-ends, passionate disagreements, forks in the road, reorientations, branches of a tree, walking in treacle, hitting a brick wall, and sometimes even a flash of brilliance.
So where have we got to?
Interesting Story?
Powerful theme?
Compelling characters?
Protagonists and Antagonists?
Inciting Incident?
Genre?
Nearly finished?
Believe it! We have a compelling, emotions-driven story, combining historical fiction, fantasy, and references to the classics such as Homer's The Odyssey.
There are multiple sub-themes around the environment, conflict, traditional gender roles etc but the central one we keep coming back to is Faith/Belief. The key to our story is what specific Faith/Beliefs drive the central characters, and how these influence their decisions, experiences and outcomes, good or bad.
In itself 'stuff happening' doesn't stay interesting for very long. What is more interesting are the consequences of stuff happening, ie the impact on something or someone the reader cares about. We've got those.
You betcha. There are some good characters and some bad ones, although which is which is not necessarily obvious.
Definitely, although there may be some misdirection here. Spoilers.
We like Gothic, and the novel definitely has more than a touch of this. There are also elements of Fantasy, WhoDunit, Rite of Passage, and Road Tip.
We're getting there and aim to have a first draft by August 2024.