As you may recall, I knew that I wanted to write a high fantasy story about an anti-hero, a thief named Cirellio. And that’s about it.

So … where did I get ‘Cirellio’ in the first place?

Cirellio’s humble beginnings:
2:00 AM. In a cold basement. With friends of the more … geeky persuasion. All of us were wired on Mountain Dew, and we were crowded around coffee tables, seated in old folding chairs, only a little worried we would get too noisy and wake up J.J.’s mom. I needed to name the thief I had just rolled, and I was always picky about decisions like that. With everyone else impatiently waiting to get started, I had grown desperate enough to start rummaging through a pile of nearby Magic: The Gathering cards as a possible source for inspiration. An artist’s name caught my eye: CIRUELO. Derived from that name, the word ‘cirellio’ just … sounded like my rogue (pronounced – Sir-el-ee-oh).

So yeah … Cirellio was a thief I created for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I would love to tell you I created Cirellio out of thin air instead of on a character creation sheet, but, this, my friends, is truth. Poor Cirellio died that same night to a nasty spell called Melf’s Acid Arrow. But no matter what his humble beginnings were, I fell in love with his name and the persona I developed for him, which incubated over the following years in my mind (even though I wasn’t playing AD&D any more). He was my all-time favorite character, so I reclaimed him from the grave for this book.

Armed with only a name and profession, it seemed the only way for me to progress was to just swallow my pride and start writing. After all, I had nothing to lose, and if I didn’t ever write my stories, who would?

Getting ready to knock on my muse’s door for the first time in years was hard. My heart felt like it going to leap right out of my chest. Would my muse turn me away? I took a deep breath and created a text file simply called ‘book.txt’. A double-click later and I was staring at a blank white landscape which, with persistence, would soon be filled with my imagination.

Hmm … a blank, white landscape?

With that thought, I closed my eyes and visualized. I didn’t worry about deleting. I just let it flow, letting the keyboard mine the depths of my imagination. When the trance-like flow finally ended, I found I had written a total of 3,253 words! I had chills.

Later, I would find out this wonderful technique was something already well known in the writing world … called ‘freewriting’.

The opening paragraph of my freewrite looked like this:

“The Great Nareth Ocean eddied around a dozen or so whitestone rocks, each half submerged near a white-hued shoreline. Parts of the Diamond Coast, like this one, had tendencies to play tricks on the eye. The coastal sand created the illusion of blankets of snow. The Nareth’s water and occasional gusts of wind subtly changed the pattern of intricate grooves that intertwined up and down the shore. The sand abruptly met up with a cliff of sheer whitestone that stretched as far as the eye could see, known as Whitewall. It stood nearly 40 paces high and was topped with grassy overhangs. Looking in from the shoreline, it was hard to tell exactly how far inland the sand met with the cliff. Higher still above the grass, tree canopies were evident. Breaching the canopies to the south-east, a feint white tower held a commanding presence over everything below.”

Remember that nobody has to see what you freewrite. So don’t ever feel embarrassed by using this method. I have found that I never know what will end up transposed to my monitor while freewriting. It surprises me every time and always seems to provide useful story elements.

All-in-all, I felt like what I ended up with was pretty decent for somebody years out of practice. Maybe it was a little pretentious and too padded in places. Maybe not. Just like with art, It’s hard to step back from your own work and properly judge it. The only thing I could do was pretend to be confident and move forward. In order to do that, I had to be my own worst critic. I had to honestly ask myself what I did and didn’t like about what I had written.

1. ‘Nareth Ocean‘: Where in my subconscious did that come from? A quick Google search confirmed it had never been used as a name for an ocean before. Phew! Surprisingly, it was a fairly uncommon foreign first name. Kinda cool. Another funny thing: Cirellio turned out to be a rare foreign last name.

2. ‘Whitestone‘: I wasn’t so sure the concept of whitestone was such a good idea. (I was trying to make it part of the nearby city’s (Joun’s) industry. I could always keep whitestone around and make it less important…)

3. ‘Diamond Coast’: Hm. The Emerald Coast immediately comes to mind. This could be dangerous – the last thing I want readers to be thinking about is real world equivalent locations if I’m trying to keep the illusion of escapism alive. Still, it wasn’t bad. If I ended up changing my mind, putting another similar word to use might have been a better way to go instead. For now, it has remained the same.

4. ‘Whitewall’: What, like whitewall tires? That had to go.

5. I also didn’t like how I used the word ‘evident’.

6. I liked how I used ‘paces’ as a measurement, suggesting a more primitive culture.

After cutting the fat, getting rid of redundant wording, and weaving the information of paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 together, my opening became much better:

The Great Nareth Ocean eddied around thousands of black porous rocks, each half submerged near the white-hued shoreline of the Diamond Coast. Incoming coastal winds and tides shifted the intricate lines, stretched out atop the snow-like blankets of sand. Difficult to tell how far inland from the shore, the sand met with a sheer wall carved of whitestone known as Heavengate.

An instrument of war, Heavengate was a sight to behold despite several centuries of weathering. Forty paces high and spanning the length of the beach, the wall was covered with friezes recanting countless battles over crimson sand; a fitting stalwart warning for the city it defended, known the world over for its impenetrable defense: the legendary Joun, ruling city of Mherna. The top of the wall was garnished with grassy overhangs. And beyond that, through the tree canopies to the south-east, a white tower glistened in the sunlight, holding a commanding presence over the skyline.

So, it’s not perfect. But I believed it was clear and descriptive enough
without managing to bore the reader.

Bear in mind nothing you ever write will be ‘perfect’. If you strive for perfection, writing will drive you insane. You just have to have faith in what you wrote, have faith you will always get better every time you write, and learn as much as you can from critiques.

That said, the name Heavengate created much more striking imagery than Whitewall did, don’t you think? And the warring nature of Joun is already very apparent here, instead of being explained by an all-knowing narrator in a later paragraph. The famous adage “Show, don’t tell” came into play for me here. If you tell your readers the mechanics and rules of everything you are writing about, you will probably lose them before the End of the Book. Most of the time, ‘telling’ can be avoided – especially through dialogue when one of your characters doesn’t know what’s going on as well as the others do.

Beyond the opening paragraph, Cirellio indeed walked into this white landscape, but lo and behold, he did not come alone! A new character emerged from the freewriting named Aeriallas, who introduced a skeptical Cirellio to the mechanics of crystal balls. Their exchanges were both entertaining and delightful to write.

A snippet of Cirellio and Aeriallas’ dialogue from book.txt:

Searching her eyes, it didn’t seem like she was lying. But then, Cirellio was sure he could lie to anyone straight to their face without so much as a flinch. But how well did he know her, really? And there had been far too many uncomfortable coincidences by that point, causing his stomach to turn. Had he imagined the sensation of horse-riding in his head, too? Or was she somehow planting suggestions in his mind? No! He had always prided himself on not being gullible. And he certainly wasn’t about to start. He would not be conned into something like this. “You … could have easily made all that up,” he said. His voice was much calmer than he expected.

Aeriallas raised an eyebrow. “Did I?” She held out the other marble. It was the same size but completely clear. “I charged the orb you hold with my essence. Just like the daggers. The orb I’m holding is how yours started out.”

Composure mostly regained, he hid behind a foxy smile. “So I’d take it you don’t hate me, then?”

She scoffed, “Orbs don’t cut like blades, Cirellio.” She placed the clear orb into his left hand. “Notice a difference?”

Cirellio lifted both of them in either hand like he was comparing fruit at a bazaar. He even tossed one into the air a few times. “Hmmmm … the white one is a lot heavier and warmer.” He would hate to admit it, but he was starting to have fun with her and her little games.

“Yes! Just like the dagger!” she exclaimed, so enthusiastically it was as if she half expected Cirellio to do backflips out of his seat in joyful revelation.

Instead, he arched an eyebrow himself. When he was satisfied nobody else was close enough to hear, he explained, “Whitestone is known to be heavier than steel anyway, so that explains that. And both of the daggers were close to your body, which warmed them up. As for the orbs and their weight, one is a real marble and the other is blown glass. It’s simple”.

“Have you ever seen a fortune teller’s crystal ball?”

“Of course I have. At festivals mainly.”

She responded in a very matter-of-fact tonality, “Well, they are just clear orbs charged with essence – just like that orb and just like my daggers”.

Cirellio grumbled. There was really no convincing her she was delusional.

For me, the best way to find out more about a character is to introduce them to another character you know well.

As an aside: Dialogue can be a tricky beast. Showing everything characters said to each other during an entire trip may be realistic, but it is no way to successfully approach it. I find it is best to show exchanges only when it will reveal more about the character’s personality, a character wants something important, is hiding something important, or is revealing something important. All other dialogue should usually be implied.

After all was said and done, I finally had more to work with than just a name! A tangible world had started to develop. ‘Book.txt’ had provided me with no less than five characters to work with, three cities, and many other elements, such as a set of rules thieves are honor-bound by. It laid the brickwork I would ultimately need to design a full-fledged novel, all because I had the gall to start typing!

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