We're pleased to have fantasy author Tom Kepler here today at The Speculative Salon, talking about how he builds fantasy worlds.
I
started out with a vague idea one Thanksgiving vacation, thinking that dragons
were embodiments of the fabric of creation and that gnomes had an undeserved
reputation—pudgy little fellows with long beards and pointy hats.
Suddenly,
I was seven thousand words into the novel
The Stone
Dragon,
which is now available in both print
and e-formats. This reality has grown to include a sequel in draft version, Dragons of Blood and Stone, and three short
stories published as the e-book Who
Listened to Dragons.
I’ve
been reading about the world-building process and find one can come at it from
two directions: top-down and bottom-up. Mine was the bottom-up
procedure--imagining enough of the reality to get the story written.
I
envy the top-down writers their scientific approach: imagining the entire
universe, writing notes and histories, geneologies and topographies, and then
finally writing the story. I might even try it someday.
That’s
not how I wrote The Stone Dragon, though.
At about Draft 3 I did draw a map to provide some visual unity and perspective
to my revision. That original map
focused on the area of the Stone Dragon Inn and the country northeast up to
Madrone. Although I haven’t front-loaded my writing with research, as time
passed I have written about forty “aphorisms of Mage DeVasier,” of which about
a half dozen are used in The Stone Dragon,
and I’ve also done some genealogical charting when I realized that I wanted
some family connections in the stories.
I decided during the drafting of Dragons of Blood and Stone to make the
map better, and as I was drawing a more detailed map of the larger area, I just
imagined names based on my idea of the terrain and possible life pursuits of
the people who lived there. I realized each name I chose, each part of the map,
was a possible story. For instance, the area around Seal Rock would be a
perfect place for a selkie story. I’ve found that imagination made the map and now
the map feeds my imagination.
After a while the reality began to generate its own
energy. For instance, the character Emreel, in the short story “Who Listened to
Dragons,” is the great-grandfather of Glimmer, the main character of The Stone Dragon.
Dragons
of Blood and Stone moves around in the Freelands: from the
Slag Hills of Eyre to the Eagle Caps. Places and events mentioned in The Stone Dragon are fleshed out in the
sequel. One of the short stories in my e-book is set on the Easypeace River
(“River’s Daughter”), and the short story, “T ‘Uk’s Dilemma,” provides glimpses
of Knight’s Landing and Madrone Castle prior to the time of The Stone Dragon.
I plan to write more short stories and publish them
as Tales of the Stone Dragon Inn
after publishing Dragons of Blood and
Stone. The development within those three books will provide characters and
background that allow the storyline of the series to travel across the Eagle
Caps, leaving the magic of the Freelands and entering the iron-bound reality of
the Empire. Then, God granting, a trilogy will unfold.
Anyone wanting to follow along for the ride is
welcome.
An awful
knowingness entwined Glimmer. Like the tightening coils of a constricting
serpent, an intuitive knowingness encircled him until all doubt left, like
breath crushed within muscled coils.
“Ye both’ll have
much t’ talk about,”
Cabbage-pants had said; “. . . ’tween you and the hearthstone,” he had
said.
Placing his mug
carefully upon the flagstones, Glimmer slowly stood, strode with heavy
deliberateness to that legacy of when the tower had stood alone, strode to the
ancient, reinforced door that connected the kitchen with the house’s communal
room. Opening the door, he stepped into the large room, empty and dusty from
disuse, his footsteps echoing.
He turned and faced
the room’s hearth, his eyes without surprise taking in the sight of a lively
fire crackling in the firepit, a fire of dancing and glowing light vibrant with
energy, and all this manifesting from a meager collection of sticks and
branches bunched upon the firestones. Light rippling upon the mantelpiece,
light drawing arabesques upon Glimmer’s arms, light reflecting off stone—and
then one stone high upon the stonework above the firepit—a single, oval
obsidian stone captured light . . . and blinked.
excerpt
from the short story “Who
Listened to Dragons”
I was a young man
who thought I knew the world and owned it—right up to the moment I opened my
fist and found it empty.
Twelve years I had
lived and my brother Saleef six. In the city of il-Barat, he was the strange
one, and I the brother of the strange one. Staring and listening made people
uncomfortable, and when Saleef fell to unreasonable angers and struck himself
or others, I would drag him home. Mother would hold him, father would pace, my
brother's eyes would follow, soothed by the rhythms of his footsteps. Mother
would weave, the cloth sighs of her handloom whispering to my brother, he
sitting beside her as she wove her miniature tapestries.
Biography: Tom Kepler has
been a classroom teacher for grades 7-12 for over thirty years. A teacher of
the Transcendental Meditation program, he has taught at Maharishi School of the
Age of Enlightenment, Fairfield, Iowa, since the fall of 2005.
His
current project, entitled Dragons of Blood and Stone, a sequel to The Stone
Dragon, will be available by the end of 2012. Other publications include Love Ya
Like a Sister, a realistic young adult novel, and Bare
Ruined Choirs, a book of poetry.
The Stone Dragon
Who Listened to Dragons--Short Stories
