I have always been fascinated by what makes authors tick--the process by which they develop their stories and characters. It is almost as interesting to me as the book itself! Novelist Leslie D. Soule was kind enough to give us this peek into the creative inspiration for Forgetting Fallenwood.
Building A
Fantasy World
By Leslie D.
Soule
So when I was a child, I adored the movie
Labyrinth. In the movie, we’re introduced to teenager Sara, and her room is
filled with things that later show up in the actual fantasy-world labyrinth she
enters with the help of Jareth, the goblin king. There’s a book, the board
game, a statue of Jareth, stuffed animal goblins, etc. Personally, I’ve found
that fantasy writing is a bit like that. In my own fantasy world, called
Fallenwood (the old name is Terra Illumina), I’ve taken the things I like – the
things that littered the walls of my room when I was a teenager – dragons and
the wolf king, crystals and unicorns and the things of 80s fantasy. To me, the
original Fallenwood novel has a very 80s feel to it.
As for my main character, I based
her on myself because writing has always been a source of therapy for me, and for
working out my own issues, on paper. It seems to me that nowadays, people are
so eager to escape the past, forget their own histories, and always be wiping
the slate clean. But as a writer, that feels so cheap – because there’s a lot
to be gained from seeing how far you’ve come on your journey, even if it hasn’t
been a particularly pleasant one. I guess that would really be the underlying
message of the series.
But back to Fallenwood. I wanted to
add some danger to this world, and what could be more dangerous to a human than
a dragon? Much of fantasy has dealt with dragon-slaying or befriending dragons,
but I feel like if I were transported back to a fantasy land, I would probably
try and stay as far away from them as possible, because as the saying goes, “I
am crunchy, and good with ketchup”.
Basically, I added the things I
like, into Fallenwood – I like unicorns, but I feel like they’ve been made into
overly-cute things. So I created the black unicorn. That, I can handle. Of
course there is magic, and according to Orson Scott Card, you’ve got to have a
price every time it’s used, to keep your characters believable and to keep them
from becoming uber-powerful. That’s how/why I created the Curse that the
magic-users have.
And…I should have thought of direwolves,
and snatched up that bit of fantasy before George R.R. Martin could put his
signature stamp all over it. Hrmph! Oh well. What would YOUR fantasy world look
like and/or include?
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