You can read the prior three parts here:

• Part #1 – How a polite email led to a new Elan series
• Part #2 – A School for Wizards: From card houses to Hogwarts
• Part #3 – Secret Identity Revealed

STARTING THE BOOK

For the next month or so, Lorian and I talked about what we’d like to see happen in the three books that cover the first heir and guardian pair: Nevrik and Jerish. I had only a few necessities that had to be in each book in order to keep them consistent with Elan’s history, or to lay foundational work for The Cycle. Other than that, I let her go where she wanted. 

The following is a heavily redacted transcript (to avoid spoilers) of the posted conversations Lorian and I had leading up to her submitting the outline for Out of the Ashes.

Michael J. Sullivan — 11/14/22, 4:16 PM

I like your thought process. Let what you want to write about be your guide and search for those scenes that will be powerful. First step is the idea or the necessary events to be filled in (if it is a book to complete a series.)

NEBULOUS STAGE/OVERALL CONCEPT

Keep it vague. Sketch lightly. Come up with the sort of things you’d like to write about: What sort of mood/setting/attitude? Horrorish? Mysteryish? Adventurish? How might you achieve what you want? What characters? What setting? What time of year? What sort of events?

Erase and rebuild: Consider crazy ideas and new concepts. First person? Third? How will this book be different from all others? How will it be better? Continue to work out ideas in your head, throw them away, retain what you like, toss the rest and build again. Keep everything in a notebook to revisit later.

(When creating Winter’s Daughter I thought of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson hunting Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains. Setting would be Alburn, an old Byzantine Eastern city of legends and creepy folklore. It would be early spring because the fog and wet slick streets would impart the mood I was going for. Then I needed a mystery to solve and a client to come calling. In the development stage, I ran through my head what would happen. To answer this I asked myself what would be the first things I would do after arriving in Rochelle? I realized I would likely want something to eat, but to first secure a place to stay. I considered an inn or tavern, but thought—hey, wait…what else could I do that’s different? Then because Holmes and Watson had a prudish landlady I put the two up in a bed & breakfast-style rented flat. It was at this point I knew I had something.)

CREATING THE FOUNDATION

Listen to music and watch movies in the context of your embryonic story. Let them inspire you. This is the foundational period. Take your time and get it right because once the foundation goes in, changing anything to a major degree will not be good. Once you have a “system” or vague general concept, stress test it. 

STRESS TESTING

Envision major scenes and play them out in your head. Jot down anything really good, but just play them out for effect. 

MOTIVATIONS

In doing this you will need to work out the motivations for each major and some minor characters.

• What are they striving to achieve 

• How do they plan to achieve it 

• What problems must they overcome 

• How will this effort ultimately work out for them

LOOK FOR PROBLEMS

You should already be facing a huge number of, “Okay sure but exactly what does THAT mean?”

Or “How do I fill that placeholder?”

Or, How do I actually make that happen and not break that other thing?

SOLVE THE PROBLEMS

These don’t need to be worked out in detail, just put a solution in place to detail out later, but you must have a potential solution ready because as the foundation is locked and you build upon it, fixing big problems is…well, it’s a big problem that could have been fixed faster and easier and more eloquently in the nebulous stage. 

CONSTRUCTION PHASE

Pour the foundation and start building.

Just some thoughts that ran through my head this morning that I thought might help you…sorry no time to proof this.

Lorian — 11/16/22, 11:42 AM

Yes, they helped immensely! Especially because I was feeling like I should be moving more quickly.

Lorian — 11/23/22, 10:00 AM

I’m still here. I’m having trouble answering some questions that need addressing. Rather than continuing to bang my head against the wall, I’ve started an outline in the hopes that things will become more clear if I put scenes in order.

Michael J. Sullivan — 11/23/22, 10:17 AM

It’s nearly Thanksgiving. Don’t you have birds to kill, cooking to do, football to watch?

Lorian — 11/23/22, 10:25 AM

None of the above. I’ll hide out in my little house and write outlines, thank you very much.

Throughout this time we discussed ideas which for spoiler avoidance purposes I did not include.

Lorian — 12/7/22, 9:15 AM

I should be sending you my so-called “outline” tomorrow. 

Lorian — 12/8/22, 11:19 AM

I’ve written a chapter. It’s still very rough and short. It’s not yet in a state that I would submit it to the group (if that were even possible), but I’m liking how it’s shaping up. Yes, it’s out of order, but I went ahead and jotted it down because ideas for it came to me.

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/8/22, 4:07 PM

That’s fine, and good. This is the part where you learn what works for you. As tempting as it is for me to try and turn you into a clone of me, you need to find yourself and a huge part of that is finding the method that works for you.

Lorian — 12/8/22, 4:12 PM

And yet your explanation of why you write in order made perfect sense. I’m going to strive to do that as much as possible.

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/8/22, 4:17 PM

I do keep a notebook, as I believe you know. In it, I will write snippets of scenes as they come to me, and in that process, I get new ideas that I jot down as comments or even questions to myself.

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/9/22, 5:09 PM

One of the tricks I use to achieve emotion in stories is that I find a song that impacts me emotionally, and I imagine one of my characters singing it—sort of like a musical. Most every novel I write has one or more songs as their source. Redacted and Reacted’s love admission scene was taken from a song, as was the novel Farilane. And there are many more. Finding the beauty in a song and applying it to your story is a powerful way to make the same emotion occur in a reader.

Lorian — 12/9/22, 5:24 PM

I’m all about music, so this is a brilliant idea that’s right up my alley! Definitely going to do this. Do you mind if I ask what songs inspired those things? I’m super interested in your notes and haven’t read them yet. My phone keeps flipping them on me. Going to upload them to the computer so I can actually read them. 

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/9/22, 6:35 PM

I imagined redacted saying the line: “That’s just the thing, the one thing I regret is the one I can still change.” The camera cuts to redacted looking confused, and then as the realization dawns, the song Feels Like Home by Bonny Raitt begins to play. In fact, I played the song at the moment I wrote the scene. For Farilane, I was thinking about the book on a walk while listening to new music and heard Inner Demons, and in it I imagined Farilane singing to the Teshlors. There’s a sadness to the song, and the words don’t exactly apply but that’s when I realized it was a futile battle she was asking for.

Lorian — 12/9/22, 7:52 PM

I just clicked on the first song and put my phone down on the side table. Call Me Maybe (“I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number so call me maybe”) came on. It was a commercial, but I didn’t know that. I was thinking  “Really? He got the redacted and redacted scene from that?”

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/10/22, 8:01 AM

How different it might have been if I had. Alas, I wrote Percepliquis before Carley recorded that song.

Lorian — 12/14/22, 9:25 AM

Okay, I really AM going to send you what passes for an outline later today. I had a couple of people express an interest in reading it and lending their imaginations. That’s what I’ve been waiting for, but they never had time.

Lorian — 12/14/22, 3:58 PM

I lied to you, as it turns out. I will send it tomorrow. I spent the day sketching out a couple of chapters instead of editing the outline.

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/15/22, 5:30 PM

Might take me a bit to get to. Esrahaddon has returned from the editor. I have been trying to get through it before Christmas, or at least the new year. This is my last “obligation novel”. I have a contract with Audible for it. Not that I have a deadline, but it is something I owe. I will likely be sending you the file my editor sent me, the one I am going through now, so you can see what to expect when your novel is professionally edited. So, Merry Christmas? 🎁

Lorian — 12/15/22, 5:32 PM

Ah, geez! I’m sure it will be really helpful, though!  Congrats on being so close to done with Esrahaddon. I’m in no hurry. Happily working on some chapters.

Lorian — 12/18/22, 3:05 PM

I pulled back the outline because I have some new thoughts to add!

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/18/22, 10:50 PM

Okay.

Michael J. Sullivan — 12/20/22, 11:29 AM

Here is the editorial letter, style sheet, and manuscript with markups I received  from my editor for Esrahaddon. You certainly don’t need to read through it all. I’m sending this to give you an idea of what to expect. It should also teach you a lot about grammar, and provide you with an understanding of the Elan Style Sheet. Also it will give you an idea of how bad a writer I am. I did not accept all of the changes, but I did accept the vast majority.

Lorian — 12/20/22, 12:16 PM

Thank you! I’m opening them now.

Lorian — 12/28/22, 2:26 PM

And here’s this. As I say in the document it’s not an outline per se. More of a guideline.