first!!!

My first post here. How exciting! Still has that new blog smell. Now that I’ve said that, I can’t help but wonder: what does the internet smell like? Not sure I want an answer.

That’s the kind of quality unstructured musing you can probably expect to be a regular thing here. I’ll also use this space to post my less polished thoughts on movies, video games, music, and writing. Maybe I’ll even provide updates and peeks behind the curtain as I develop new worlds and fill them with stories.

Actually, that can be the first one. I write most of my fiction by building the world and filling it with characters first. Then I follow them around to see which ones lead to the most interesting stories, and it’s rarely the characters that look the most like protagonists. Sweet Benny was originally made to be a minor comic relief role in another character’s story, but the brilliant con artist with terrible luck quickly hustled his way to top billing in my first novel. The legendary gunslinger Dodge Hardin began as just a supporting player in Benny’s story, before graduating to a novel of his own. And the character I’m writing about now, Marshal Galaxy, was initially conceived as a secondary villain to provide a narrative obstacle in another, admittedly less interesting, hero’s story.

In my experience, building the world first eventually makes it much easier to generate characters and storylines. Your mileage may vary, but if you’re suffering writer’s block or are just bored and want to try something new, give it a shot.