PART II
MY FICTIONAL WORLD
In all my early stories, I used similar settings, locations and a rotating cast of regular characters that I'd come to refer to as narrators. The first narrator of them all is the current "new' entrant into the ring- James. My first major story, the one that stamps the date I said 'I'm a writer' is James' introduction story - Shakespeare, Dickens and the Bible.
That story served as a basis for the entire fictional world, a universe of killers, depressed mad-men, sad clowns, and the carnage created by the collision of lead narrators.
Each narrator inhabits a novel of his/her own, the base facts of which 'rhyme' with the ABC's of the other novels. The novels are interwoven in the following key ways:
Side characters appear in multiple novels and bring 'memory' with them in each.
A setting/home/workplace can be used many times in different capacities.
The main character must be from the 'universe' and have a home city from one of three select 'areas'
1) the Millville, Ma. area. My hometown. Most of the narrators are born in this town. Ella was born in Uxbridge.
2) City writers- Writers that live in the city, slumming it with the poor. Providence, Worcester, NYC, Boston, and Las Vegas serve as 'second characters' in those first person narratives.
3) Upstate New York - All of the villians come from Upstate New York. I have zero idea how this started.
The purpose is to create the literary version of the musical premise called 'harmonics'.
As a reader encounters similar locations through a new narrator (set of eyes), the memories from the first novel should 'ring' in harmony with the current story-line. That sure is the hope, that it all meshes together to form a tapestry worth hanging on the wall.
I hope you enjoyed this look at my writing process. In the next post, I'll introduce all the major narrators, the novels each are in...and how they all fit together. I'm trying to fix a map, but no promises.
If you liked this post, pass it on into the internets!!!
from Las Vegas,
Stephen John Moran
READ PART THREE - THE NARRATORS