Strange Corners

Now that we’ve taken the Ghost Story all the way through to an ending (of sorts) it’s time to circle back to the beginning and take a second look at the people and events that kick the whole thing off. And it’s turning out that these people are much more interesting than we realized.

It’s like this is a place that we’d driven past on the freeway, which allowed us to spot a few landmarks but not really get the feel for it. So, this time we took the exit so we can tool around some of the neighborhoods. It’s allowing us to look around lots of corners, and we’re seeing unexpected sights down many of these side streets. On our next visit, we’ll get out of the car and wander around, really soak up the atmosphere.

Our main point of original inspiration for the Ghost Story was, as it happened, characters who figure in the middle-to-late portion of the saga, so as we sketched in their history it led to sketching in the histories of the preceding generation, and then sketching in their ancestors’ stories. So stuff was getting pretty sketchy.

Thing is, what we knew initially about those earlier characters was just what our later characters knew of them — or, thought they knew. Once we focused on them we discovered  that the most interesting moments from their lives were the ones they were least likely to tell their nieces and nephews about. They tell us, though. If we give them the chance.

The biggest worry at this point is that the timeline will keep growing backwards and we’ll never be able to pick a starting moment for the story. When all the history was sketchy, it didn’t feel like we had to incorporate much of it. But now it’s more vivid, and we want to tell that part of the story. Which means we need to sketch in a deeper layer of backstory, which we’ll want to enrich, and then the temptation will be to tell that part, too. And deeper down the well we could tumble.

A writing partner is someone who’ll go deep with you, but who’ll also guide you back to the surface when it’s time.