Writing a New Story: Where I Start

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books in lots of weird genres like fantasy (Blood of Kings and Kinsman Chronicles), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). She has a podcast/vlog at www.StoryworldFirst.com. You can also find Jill on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website. Tagboth (Tag for short) is a goldhorn dragon from Belfaylinn, a hidden fantasy realm on the western end of the Sargasso Sea. Jill is working on the first book of this tale for this year's Grow an Author series.

Happy 2018!

I am ready to write. Are you?

I'm so excited about our Grow an Author series. As we move through 2018, Stephanie, Shannon, and I are each going to take you through our process of writing a new story. Because I am me, I can't do this without having a story to work on. So I dug through my files and pulled out Onyx Eyes, the book I was writing on my author blog back in 2014. I had to stop because I sold the Kinsman Chronicles. And four years later, I have completed that epic saga (whoo hoo!), and Onyx Eyes is still calling to me. Especially, Tagboth, the goldhorn dragon in my picture above. Tagboth is an important part of the Onyx Eyes story, so he is going to be sitting on my desk, reminding me not to forget him.

Another perk to writing this story? I named my main character girl Kaitlyn, after my daughter. Four years ago, Kaitlyn was ten, and this was all silly fun. Today, Kaitlyn is a month from turning fourteen, a bookworm, and she will have her say as to what happens to her character in this book. She has already vetoed several things I had planned to do back in 2014 and insisted that Kaitlyn's character get to have a romantic storyline with hero Drake. So, yeah. Buh bye, fairy princess love interest. The human girl Kaitlyn is calling the shots for herself this time around.

This shall be fun, methinks. *grin*

Where I Start

I'm the kind of person who always has a dozen story ideas I want to work on. All the time. I pine over old story ideas I've had to put down. I wish I could write everything that pops into my head. Alas, I cannot, and so I must choose.

How did I choose this time around? Well, I narrowed it down to the top two stories I was desperate to write, then I chose the one that best fit my target audience: you, teen writers. Onyx Eyes is a YA fantasy, so it best fits my needs for this year's blogging plan. Not only will it help me to have a story to work on as I explain my process, it will help me work on a story that for the past five years, I've been desperate to write!

Now, if I had narrowed it down and all my stories were YA fantasy ideas, then I would have chosen the one I wanted to write the most. And if it was a tie, then I would have chosen the one that I felt was the most salable. The one that would appeal to the greatest number of readers. (Because while I do write for fun [and because I can't not write], I also need to make a living, and I really, really, really don't want to have to go and get a part-time job to help my family pay the bills. So, sometimes—many times—I have to think business.)

That decided, let me tell you where this idea came from. Five years ago, my husband was working as a youth pastor with me as his trusty sidekick. This also meant that I did a lot of volunteer work with our church. One of the things I did was work with little kids, teaching Sunday School and making crafts. One such craft was a bracelet with beads that tell the story of Jesus. This craft has many incarnations, like colored jelly bean "jewels" in a jar or the wordless book version. I'm sure there are more. The point is, as the littles and I were crafting, I got thinking about the themes each color in the bracelet represented. And I thought, What if I wrote a series of books in which each story had one of these colors as a theme? And that got me thinking about color as a magic, which got me thinking about gemstones having power, which got me thinking about what kind of people would use natural stones for magic, which got me thinking about fairies.

Yes. I would write a book about fairies in which magic was powered by colored stones of all kinds.

Epic, right?

I started with a list of the themes from the colored bracelet craft. They are: black = sin, red = sacrifice, white = rebirth, green = growth, and yellow = eternal home. There are several variations as to the order. Some start with yellow, some end with green. Some include blue and purple. But knowing how long it takes to write a series of books (I still haven't finished the Mission League series yet, which has six books), I decided to stick with five themes.

That decided, I was itching to draw a map, but I wasn't ready yet. I needed a basic story to give me a foundation to plan from. Since the first book would have a theme of black = sin, and since I didn't want to start out the series with a lawbreaking antihero, I decided to have my main character break a magical law out of desperation and lack of trust in those around him. I came up with the idea of two nations at war. One kidnaps the other nation's princess, and my hero, her guard, must get her back. As I thought more about my fairies, I wanted them to be the size of humans. I pictured something more like Tolkein's Legolas than Disney's Tinkerbell. This led me to creating two races of fae, which I tentatively called aerials and grounders. (Still not sure I love those terms.) Aerials have wings. Grounders do not. My hero, a grounder, must sneak into the aerial kingdom to rescue the grounder princess. He believes he can only do this by impersonating an aerial, and since he does not have wings, he sets out into the mountains with the intent of wielding a forbidden bonding spell with a dragon (enter Tagboth), which will enable him to grow wings.

That was a good enough start to get my brain working hard. Next week I'll show you how I make lists of the things I will need to worldbuild for this series as I gear up to create a map.

Have you chosen a story to work on in 2018? Share in the comments what you're working on.

And let us know where you start planning a new story.