They tell writers to not digress from the main plot, unless a side-plot is essential. Other writing experts tell us the opposite and to add at least two subplots. They also tell us to not introduce characters unless they are crucial to the story. Don’t name characters that only are there to serve a drink to the Main Character and certainly don’t give them a background. Or, if you do give them one, keep it to yourself.
I suppose this is very sound advice if you want to write, e.g. a thriller, a mystery, or a romance. Or if you want your book to be easily convertible into a movie script. You don’t want to pay for all those hundreds of extras, and you have on average only 90 to 120 minutes to tell your story.
As usual, I did it all wrong. I knew I was doing it wrong. More, I did it wrong on purpose, willfully, and with enthusiasm.
When I started writing the Dark Tales I didn’t just want to produce a novel—a series, actually—with a straightforward, linear story. I aimed to write a world. I wanted to write a series of books you can live in.
That was not the only problem or, if you will, challenge.
To this day, I can’t tell you exactly what genre the Dark Tales series is. In a way, they are Gay Fiction. There is romance, sort of, but that certainly doesn’t make them Gay Romance, as those who have read them can confirm. Moreover, I suspect that all the political intrigue and military strategizing will either bore readers of Gay Romance to tears, or exasperate them.
In the same way, readers of Action & Adventure, Military Fiction, or Political Thrillers will probably abhor the many gay couples that populate my series.
I conceived the books as a history of the world Anaxantis, the Main Character, lives in. Historical Fiction, then? Sort of, but not in the sense that the story is fictional but takes place in our own history. Fiction in the sense that the world is fictitious, and Historical in the sense that it tells the history of this fictitious world?
Historical Fantasy, maybe? Yeah, except there is no magic, nor are there strange races, talking animals, or dragons. The one dragon that gets talked about is heraldic.
This history of the World of Anaxantis, although imaginary, nevertheless has a few things in common with our history. Sometimes people who hitherto were barely noticeable appear suddenly. They play their part and then, as abruptly as they’ve made their entry upon the stage, they leave. Like a falling star, shining brightly, they travel fast, high in the sky, and then disappear into the darkness.
They’re gone from the stage, but that doesn’t mean their story ends. It means the rest of their story has no bearing upon the main plot, the main story, and all its side roads. And even I am not so bold that I will suspend the principal action to digress into what may have happened to a character whose further fate turned out to be not all that essential.
Not that what happened to those second or third plan characters after they leave the front stage can’t be interesting. Sometimes it is worth telling, if only to indulge curiosity.
This is the first side-story: The Conqueror
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