Writer Wander 012 - A Road Trip Story

In this Writer Wander, Wander talks about how he's realized that his novel is a Road Trip story. What exactly does that mean for his story?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Rider Wander twelve, a road trip story. So hello everyone, we are back for Rider Wander, and I just got done with a little bit of the outline, and I've made a lot of progress this so far. Um I've had a few days where I've written like a lot of scenes in quick succession, and I haven't even recorded because I was I was in a good flow state. And when you're in the flow state, that's not something that you want to break because it's not very easy to get into the flow state. But once you're in it, things just well, it's in the title, things just flow, right? And when it comes to that, I've been slowly realizing, and this is something that I've already alluded to when I mentioned the Odyssey-like structure of the story, but I realized that the kind of story that I'm trying to write has a genre on TV tropes, and that genre is called um the road trip story, or something along that line, and that is basically the template that I'm trying to go for with the story that I'm writing with Echoes of Heroes, right? Because so far, the way that the story has developed, right? You know, these are the major beats. My main character leaves his home, and the ship that he leaves his home on gets assaulted by pirates, they escape slavery from the pirate uh enclave, they go through a creepy marsh, they head over to a city, and there the city they hear the hear the summons of an adventuring party that is being led by a a miraculous healer that is growing in popularity, and she wants to go to the citadel of the elves in the region to try and help one of the one of the elves be healed of his melancholy, right? Because I don't know if I've mentioned this, but in this setting that I'm currently building, since it's going for a fourth age vibe, the idea is that most of the elves have already sailed to the west. Alright, so for those of you who are familiar with the Lord of the Rings and with a lot of elves uh fiction in general, there's there's this idea that the elves, for whatever reason, they have to leave the world that they are that they are currently living in as the as the magic is slowly being drained away because it is no longer the age of the elves, and if they stay, they become ghosts. So, for my own mythology, what I made was that the last ship to go west has already sailed away. So all the elves that have chosen to remain in the land, right, are basically elves that are doomed to to a you know to fade away uh into well, I'm not exactly sure what that looks like, but it's something very deep and and melancholic. So the faded glory of the elves is even more faded in my own fiction that than it will be in uh as it was presented in The Lord of the Rings, right? And part of that, right, is that you have multiple elven families that are split apart by the West, and the person whose melancholy these this miraculous healer is gonna try to get rid of is an elf lord whose entire family except himself left West. So he is very much alone in his citadel for all intents and and purposes, and there's this other elf lord, Elarian, who wants to gather the remaining elves to form them up into something, you know, into a stronger nation that can defend itself in this fading age because he sees that since the elves are so small now, they will be easily bullied by their surrounding their surrounding neighbors. So he's trying to get them all to cooperate. However, uh this other lord who's stuck in this deep melancholy, who is very influential, since he cannot reach him, uh, he needs to try and heal his melancholy so that they can cooperate together and get across his goal. So basically, uh Finn and his companions are gonna head over to this citadel, and in this citadel, it's going to be revealed that Ken was originally one of the companions, and obviously he faked his death, but his original name as a companion was Talisin, which, for those who don't know, that was a legendary bard from Celtic mythology, which is quite appropriate for an ancient hero coming from Ramak. And that's where a lot of reveals are gonna be happening inside of this citadel called Ilaris, right? And I'm re I really enjoyed this Illaris sequence, and while I was writing, while I was planning it out, I was thinking to myself, what exactly is it that I really enjoyed about this? And it gets back to my point, right? Like this entire story up until now, there has been no overarching villain. I've been putting in like little bits of seeds of of things that are that are going on, but unlike the Lord of the of the rings, or really most other fantasy, so far in this first book, there has been no mention of an extant evil that currently exists. And I guess one of the things I'm debating with myself at the moment is do I do I want that or do I want something something else? Because I've already resolved to have like the main struggle in the story to be about the companions, specifically Sigismund in the long term, trying to find a way to wake up Aldamiria Luciana, who is his beloved, but that will trigger the end of the world, and you know, it will basically undo the entire purpose of his heroic actions. So he's faced with that paradoxical decision of either saving the person you love most or protecting the world that you and your companions and she sacrificed so much to be able to do at all in the first place. So though those are the things that you know considerations that I'm currently going, but for this first volume, that that hasn't even come into question. Like this first volume has literally been it's just a road trip. It is just Finn going from point A to point B, and there's uh I guess that the biggest narrative arc for Finn is like trying to find out the whereabouts of his brother, but again, that's not even like the main focus, and to me, it's just very refreshing because I feel that in a lot of the fiction that I read and in a lot of the fiction that I write, oftentimes, yes, there there's a lot of travel by the characters, but they're being chased everywhere, like they're being chased by some evil forces that are that are tracking them down, and you know that's fun. That you know, you can have a lot of fun with that. The issue is that it it doesn't, you know, that's a completely different vibe from you know you just traveling somewhere and you're not you're not in a rush to get there, right? Because that's another thing. When I first conceived of this story, I was thinking of maybe adding some pressure in that maybe the expedition that they were going to be arriving to was going to be leaving very soon, so they had to take a quick way to the city that they had to go to. However, I decided against that because I I want this story to have a very leisurely pace by its very nature, and I want the characters to yes, there there's an expedition that they want to join up in, but I made it so the expedition itself is going to be convoked in about a year or so, which gives our characters time, and Finn especially time to take long and circuit circuitous routes around the setting, so that he can grow he can grow more accustomed to the world that his own brother left to to see, and also so that it gives Finnegan or Ken or Talis uh Talison more time to go around and pay visits to the old companions that that were part of his uh of his friends uh of his friend group, right? And it's just it's been very soothing, right? And it's very soothing in a way that only classic fantasy can be soothing. It very much feels like the Hobbit in a sense. It has that happy-go-lucky, well, not well, not happy-go-lucky, but it has that lighter atmosphere, relatively speaking, but unlike the Hobbit, there's an undeniable darkness that is present within the setting. There's not you know, it's not like there's always jokes and stuff, but I guess you know, imagine the plot of the Lord of the Hobbit, but with the tone of the Lord of the Rings. That that's so far, that's what I'm you what I'm really going for, right? Or it's also it's a lot like the fellowship of the ring in that regard, which you know, even though they were being chased in that book, I felt that the chase did not take away from a lot of the leisurely aspects of the journey that they were going on. Like it still felt that Tolkien was taking his time to truly appreciate the setting. And I think that when a lot of people say that they they miss classic fantasy, that's one of the elements that they miss the most about classic fantasy, right? A lot of modern writing advice, the idea is that you know you just rush through the plot. You know, if something is happening and it's not directly related to the plot, well, you know what, bro? You're just wasting your fucking time, you're wasting everyone's time, you're waiting wasting the reader's time, you gotta get going, you gotta have a breakneck pace in all things, and you know that that that kind of plot works. That's how the thriller genre works. Uh, one of my one of my favorite novels that I wrote has that kind of pacing, and it has a very breakneck, very tight pacing, and I'm very proud of how that worked out. But usually the kind of stories that I personally gravitate to are not stories that are like that at all. I gravitate to more slow burn stories or just slow in general, right? And this is uh this is along that line, but uh it's like a lot of like interesting things are happening, it's just that none of them by design, none of them are being tied to a grander narrative quite yet. It's it's just a character venturing around the world, traveling around the world, stumbling into things that either get in his way or learning more about the world around him while he's on his way to reach a particular objective. And again, what's interesting about this, and uh, I guess uh this will be the second time I bring a Pokemon in this podcast, that's one of the things that I also like about Pokemon, even though I I don't play any Pokemon at all, but I like this idea of you know you're just in this world and there's a bunch of like 13-year-olds just traveling around going on this, you know, uh going trying to all of them become like a I think it's like some championship title or something like that. Like they're all just going on adventures, trying to uh trying to attain a specific goal, and you meet people on the way that are seeking the same thing that you are. And that's what happened that's happened so far in this novel, right? The main character and his uh his mentor, Ken, those are so far the main staples of the party, but most of the other people that they have met on this journey are just temporary friends on the road whose you know whose paths coincide for a time. The first their first companions was a a Northmen uh called Herald and a dwarf called Tosted. However, they once their paths diverged, they uh they said farewell to one another on amicable terms, and then now they came into contact with a larger party uh that is composed of the miracle worker, her attendants, and a young knight, uh young failed knight that is enamored with the miracle worker, right? And they go on this quest to go to the elven the elven citadel, right? And it feels it just it really does feel like a journey, right? It feels like a journey, but aside from feeling like a journey, it feels like you have a bunch of characters that also have their own goals and their own motivations that are striving toward attaining a particular goal. Whether in the case of the miracle worker, that she wants to heal the met see if she can heal the melancholy of the elves and sort of uh stretch the um the extent of her power to see just how far her press strength goes, or the Northmen who does want to also go on the on the journey, or the dwarf who's healing the summons of the dwarf and hiking, you know, all these are characters, and if it it gives the world a very living sensation that goes beyond just world building, right? Because you know, comparatively speaking, the world building for this world is very is very light, especially compared to the prior version of this world that I had, where you know I went into intense detail on the world building. I tried to come up with a bunch of unique concepts that were that were cool, but again, it wasn't it didn't make the world feel alive. And I think that one of the interesting things of keeping world building light on purpose is that it forces you as an author uh or it sort of motivates you as an author to a lot of the things that you might have originally thought to include as a piece of past history, it sort of forces you to think, hmm, what if this was something that was happening now and it was having it was currently having an impact on the setting, and that usually leads to a much more interesting setting, uh, all things considered, right? You know, haven't we all had that situation where like a fantasy author is describing the history of a setting and you're like, man, you know, all the cool shit already happened, like what's what's going on here? And in this setting, yes, it is true that all the quote unquote cool shit already happened. The heroes already went on the epic quest, right? But since that epic quest is already a narrative that most people are accustomed to seeing, I think most people will be refreshed by by me focusing on what happens afterward, right? And since there's a lot of places that I don't have planned out ahead, I I have more excuses to linger in them within the context of the narrative and to reveal information concerning them rather than to have it all tucked away into notes, right? You know, it's very fun to because when I entered this novel, I knew I basically I knew that Namak existed, and I knew that there was a kingdom that had taken over Namak, and I knew that Paragost existed as a as a setting, and and there were like a couple other countries, but I barely fleshed out any of them, and what I found out is that on the journey that Finn is going on, that's given me the flexibility to come up with interesting countries that uh since I didn't have them in my in my plans for scene, I'm able to improvise and it feels a lot more organic than my than my prior approach, especially the fact that I haven't drawn a map for this setting yet, which is a little bit new to me because I usually do write the map for before I get down to to writing. But what I find out is that having left the map to later on, it has given me the flexibility to design the story uh at with uh with freedom, right? You know, I don't have to feel the need to make up for some you know fantasy cartography, right? And I can once I draw the map, I can adapt the map to the setting and to the story that I have already written, which is probably a much more organic technique than uh than otherwise. And it's just been it's just been very fun. And I think that really a lot of the key to good writing is that oftentimes we are our own worst enemies, and this is just a lesson for life in general. We are often our own worst enemies, and a lot of the obstacles that we think are holding us back are really just things that we sort of made up on our own, right? They're just things that we think are holding us back, but in reality, you can just walk around them. They're not they're not it's not really something worth fretting over. It's something that you can you can push through, right? And that's something that I've been learning a lot with this road trip structure. And again, what's really helped is that I took a radically different approach from the other novel I was outlining, which was very plot heavy, and I was like, you know what, I'm not having fun with this plot heavy book, so you know what? I'm gonna write a book that had basically has no plot, though it does, technically, it's just very light. And you know what? It's in fun, it's allowed characters just in the outlining process, right? And I can tell, I can tell, because my outlining notes for the other book I was writing were very sparse compared to this book. In this book, I am I am writing very large entries concerning what happens over the course of the story, whereas I wasn't doing that in the previous one because it was almost like I ah man, I just wanna I just wanna get done with this, right? But you know, I'm I'm enjoying it a lot more as a result, right? So that's Rider Wanderer. Remember to get past any obstacles that you might put over yourself and to not limit yourself over things that you think are important but in reality are not. Ride or wander, out.