I finished a new short story! It is entitled “Here Be Monsters.” I tried several new things with this story, so I wanted to do an in-depth Author’s Note about the story to detail some of the things that I tried.
AUTHOR’S NOTE – HERE BE MONSTERS
Title
“Here Be Monsters” is the title of the story that I said that I was working on under the name “Project Monster.” I’ve always had HBM in mind as the title of the story, but I used Project Monster as a code-name in case I decided to call it something else during the creation of the story (I rarely change titles once I decide on one, but it has happened.) My concern that the title, when paired with the epigraph, may make the story’s theme too on the nose, but I like the way it works with the theme, so I’d rather not change it if I can avoid it.
Theme
This is the first story that I’ve called out what I think the theme is based on an epigraph (quotation of a famous person at the beginning of the story). I’ve only used an epigraph once before–an article that I wrote on rough drafting–but I like the fact that Brandon Sanderson uses made-up epigraphs in his Stormlight Archive books. Every story that I can find a suitable epigraph for it will probably have a epigraph from now on out. I will definitely create a theme for every new story in the Rough Draft phase–I really like the way I create when I know the theme ahead of time.
Length
So, this story isn’t the shortest that I’ve done, but it is the shortest that I’ve done recently. This story clocks in at approximately 4,100 words. HawkeMoon was 5,600 words by comparison. Considering that quite a few markets have a 5,000 word cap, this story would be able to be submitted, while HawkeMoon wouldn’t. It has a beginning, middle, and end, and that is the way I created it. I didn’t try to do a 5 scene structure and I think the story works better for it.
Time to Create
So, this took as long to create as other stories–but that was because I was sick for most of the month. I finished the 1st scene right after Labor Day and then didn’t come back to it for nearly 3 weeks. I finished it in the last week of Sept., and 1st week of Oct. I think that I would have finished it in about 2-3 weeks.
Research
So I’ve mentioned it before, but this book is one that I’ve been reading that directly influenced this story. I minored in History, but I don’t think that I’ve really used my history degree. I have quite a few books on history, but this is the shortest one that I own, so I thought I’d try to give it a read to cut down on the stress of teaching. I really liked the book and the series and I’m looking to buy more on Amazon. I have a book on Florentine history (much longer) and a book on Scandinavian history, so I can definitely try to mine those for ideas, but this was a revelation. Instead of trying to create everything from scratch and ending up with a generic pseudo-european mishmash fantasy, I was able to give specific names to armor and weapons, the setting was influenced by real life and I was able to really get into the characters and their emotions.
Characters
So, I limited myself to 3 characters–the protagonist and his 2 companions. I tried to keep the enemies fantastical, but keep the characters grounded in reality. As I mentioned above, I wanted to really go deep into my characters and emotions. I think these characters are as complex as the ones I wrote for Dragonhawk. The characters have an arc and they seem to react appropriately based on their natures. What I didn’t want to do was be disrespectful. The culture is not my own, so I wanted to portray the conflict in an “everyman” kind of way, so as not to be disrespectful to another culture.
UP NEXT
I liked writing this way so much that I plan to revise a story (Rocket-Man) and put it in this 3 scene structure and give it a theme (already looking for an appropriate epigraph). Once finished, I’ll start submitting it again. Then I’ll start on a new project (probably a Weird West project that has been percolating since I started Here Be Monsters).
Sidney
- Read Skin Deep for Free at Aurora Wolf
- Read Childe Roland for Free at Electric Spec
- Read Faerie Knight in the anthology Fae, Rhonda Parrish, Ed. or the Kindle Edition
- Read Ship of Shadows in the anthology Visions IV: Space Between Stars, Carrol Fix, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
- Read WarLight in the anthology Visions VI: Galaxies, Carrol Fix, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
- Read Dragonhawk in the magazine Tales of the Talisman, Vol. 8, Iss. 3, David Lee Summers, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
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