When I moved from Boston to Los Angeles in 1996, the plot of what would become “The Elect Stories” was already (more or less) fully formed. While many of the characters and most of the world-building details have changed over time, the plot was already clear to me from beginning to end. But…
I was too scared to write it. In retrospect, on a subconscious level, I think I wanted the story to mean something beyond the action of the plot, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to say with it. On a far more conscious level, writing a novel just seemed like an awful lot of work. I could tell that the story was going to yield a long book and I was intimidated. Around that time, I was just learning to write in the screenplay format and, foolishly, I believed that writing a screenplay would be easier than writing a novel. True, screenplays are shorter, but they sure ain’t easier. Brevity, man. It’s a whole thing. Anway, I cranked out an unwieldy 140 page screenplay adaptation of a very truncated version of the plot of “The Elect Stories,” and because I was a brazen 26 year old, I showed it to my boss, the Director of Development at an indie film company. His response was simple and direct: “Fantasy is about coming-of-age. Nobody wants to watch a bunch of 40 and 50-year old adventurers.” He was speaking in chorus with my fear. I filed away the screenplay on a disc (which also used to be a thing, kids) and eventually I lost it. I refused the call to write the story in any format for a decade.
By the time I returned to “The Elect Stories” again, I was so skittish that I started by writing “around the plot,” just focusing on character moments that are wholly separate from the main action. Before long, I had written several short stories that were like character portraits. They weren’t at all the story that I had plotted, but… I liked them. They felt true. They meant something. Once I started to connect that material to the existing plot, the story started to mean something, as well. I’ve written before about the themes that my beta readers pointed out to me; themes like the weight of grief, or the responsibilities of parenting. While unintended at first, those veins of truth running through the fantasy opened up layers of meaning that enriched the story in ways that I never could have predicted in 1996. Back then, I had not yet come of middle age.
I look back on the advice that I got from my old boss and think it was both wrong-headed and necessary. Fantasy is all about “coming of age,” but there are many “ages” to “come” to. Indeed, the second coming of age that we experience in our 40s and 50s may be even more crucial / useful to our personal growth because we (hopefully) have a better sense of perspective with which to learn from the lessons presented. “The Elect Stories” tells two parallel adventure tales – one about the heroes’ youthful exploits, and one about their mid-life reassessments. I feel like I have quite a bit to say on that latter subject. Or, at least, I do now.
This month’s installment is Chapter 5, “Argument, or, The Raising of the Elect.” This one is definitely a coming-of-age story in the traditional sense. It introduces a young would-be hero whose mundane life is disrupted when he discovers that he is… well, I reckon those are spoilers. You can read Chapters 1-5 today on Amazon’s Kindle app and devices. Still just $0.99! Free with your Kindle Unlimited subscription!
