People, Places, Things

An interesting side effect of writing is that one begins to look at people in a completely new light. For instance, persons who might have a particular face, or a certain style can easily become templates for characters in one's stories. The old caution 'Watch it, or you'll end up in my novel.' is not without precedent!

Dante, when writing his 'Inferno' tale, used various politicians he didn't like as occupants for the lower regions, and those who wrote in the 1920's, playing off of H.P. Lovecraft's creations, put either their author friend's characters into their own tales. It became quite a thing for your protagonist to appear in someone else's horror story, even if they did die horribly before chapter two.


Those who write historically based tales are commonly putting figures from the past into their writings, many times 'filling in the blanks' as to what said persons might have been doing, when we do not have specific information on what that might have been. The movie 'The Raven' does such with Edgar Allen Poe, depicting him in a way that may not be too terribly far from the truth. The mysteries of history are ever up for grabs when writing.

An even bigger world opens up when one writes fantasy. There, the question 'what if' comes into play, and the plot can take off in any direction one can imagine. As I was world-building for Edge Walker, I thought for a long time why his world had certain differences than the one I live in. Subscribing to the theory of Infinite Earths, I decided that his broke off from ours when 'his' Alexander the Great did not die on the Indian campaign, but survived to created a stable dynasty.

As I've found out, selecting that one point of departure is only the beginning. Like dominoes, one change leads to another to another to another.....and each needs to be logically included in the background of the world one has built. For instance, since I've chosen to change the history of Ancient Greece, would Rome ever rise to be the powerhouse it was in our timeline? What of religion? The various wars, science, women's rights, slavery, and so on? While I may not deal with these issues directly in my stories, they do need to have at least a bare-bones framework. Otherwise, if I *do* run into something that needs to be said on these subjects, I run the risk of contradicting part of my own creations.

While these things may keep one up at night, fretting about consistency, they also open up avenues of research that the author may never have considered before. This, in turn, opens up new possibilities for story arcs, which can lead to even more discoveries. It may seem like a vicious cycle, but as one who loves to 'run and find out', I couldn't be happier with the way things are turning out.

See you at the library!