Writing Silence felt unique because the story begins at the end. The end of the world, that is. A dictator thought he was God and surprise, surprise, he wasn’t. He led the destruction of the earth, murdered many, and destroyed society, rendering the world in a state of anarchy for the past decade. That’s the world Jethro Avery wakes up to when the book opens.
It was an interesting challenge to set the stage on Chapter One, Page One, stating that the world was over. It felt like I was trying to describe purgatory, but this wasn’t an in between space where the characters would move onto a bigger, brighter future. This place was it; that’s all there was. Or at least that’s what I wanted to convey to the reader. I was also careful not to name this place other than referring to it as “earth.” I wanted the setting to transcend location, so the reader could feel as if this “end of the world” could happen anywhere, at anytime, all a result of human greed. Of course, a novel wouldn’t be a novel if it sat in that dull, monotonous state with a bleak outlook. These characters had a journey to go on, they just didn’t know it yet. Humans can be just as good as they can be evil, and that is what Jethro Avery needed to learn.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Silence began as a completely different type of novel. It was still post-apocalyptic in genre, with a sprinkle of sci-fi, but it originally had an entirely different cast of characters and plot. It started as a side project my cousin and I wanted to co-write. We plotted out a good portion of the novel, but when it came to putting pen to paper, we only wrote one page, then abandoned it to write our own novels. I don’t remember when exactly we wrote that original page, but I was in high school. Years later, in 2013, I was cleaning my desk in my childhood home and found the page and the novel notes. It’s funny where inspiration comes from sometimes. This one hit like a ton of bricks out of nowhere. I read the page, surprised by the detail we had put into it. The setting and the concept stuck with me the following weeks, so I kept what I liked and tossed the characters. Here I am, eight years later, preparing to publish this story as the first in a trilogy. So never think the ideas you had as a kid are useless.
Writing this novel was unique to me because it was the first one I wrote where I did some research before writing it. Normally, I do this during my writing process, but I wanted to put more forethought into this one. My goal was to plan out the plot before writing. (Spoiler: I didn’t get far into planning before writing. I succeeded with research, so stay tuned for my next post about that.) I wanted to write a novel that had theological undertones without being too “in your face religious.” I’m sure some will argue that it is very much in their face, but I attempted to make it subtle. At the time of writing the first draft, I had been reading a lot of Ted Dekker novels and appreciated how he wrote fantasy yet included his faith without it being cliche. I wanted to do that in this book.
After my short stint researching and failing at plot planning, I started writing. Plan-wise, I only had the first chapter mapped out. That meant a train, unchanging weather, and three characters. I did not know where the book would end (or begin). No idea when the plot twist(s) would happen, or even what the plot twist(s) were. No idea who was the antagonist. All I had was a depressed main character, Jethro Avery, his best friend, Blaec Benedict, and a mysterious woman, Olivien Winters. How did Jethro and Blaec become friends? Why was Olivien mysterious? Why a train? Why unchanging weather? Or the better question, how was the weather unchanging? All questions I had no answers to when I started writing.
Despite the failed planning, I had a few goals before I began writing. I like to challenge myself with every new novel I start. At this point, I had finished writing five other novels. They were all murder mysteries of sorts, and they all had a huuuuuge cast of characters. I’m not kidding. I love writing like I’m a scriptwriter for a CW show, which is definitely not everyone’s favorite style. I’ll be the first to admit it is confusing. So my first challenge for writing Silence was to have a small cast of characters. For me, that also meant writing from one character’s point of view. I know I know. “Um, duh, that’s how a lot of novels are written, anyway.” Well, this was my first, and this meant Jethro Avery was my one and only, and I better like him because I had to stick with him for at least 50,000+ words. (Spoiler: I succeeded and Jethro turned out to be pretty great.)
Second challenge: no flashbacks. I’ve been a sucker for flashbacks (and flash-forwards) ever since the TV show Lost. Don’t get me wrong; these can add so much to the plot. I love them. But, in the past, I’ve relied too much on them. If I ever got bored with where the story was heading, I’d write a flashback. I’d write lots of them. Then they made the plot complicated. Eventually, I’d write myself into a corner, which thankfully, I’ve always been able to find my way out, but not after banging my head against the wall. So, this time, no flashbacks. (Another spoiler: I kind of held to this. I discovered that having memories present themselves in dream sequences was a great loophole.)
So, there you go. One character POV and no flashbacks. Goals were set. Ready to write.
The characters wrote themselves. I’ve said this to family and friends before, and they look at me like I’m crazy. But, seriously, they wrote themselves. Jethro had to embark on a journey, and I did not know where he would end up. I’m writing the third and final book in the trilogy, it is only now clear the character arc Jethro needed to go through. I knew because of the biblical themes that it would ultimately be a battle against good and evil. And I also knew that, sure, good had to triumph, but how? I didn’t want it to be predictable. I didn’t want it to be easy, and as the many evil characters in Silence will show, they made it almost impossible. But how I would get to that end was a mystery to me. This mystery is why I love writing. I want the mystery to unfold as I write. I want the characters to surprise me. And wow, have they come through on that.
It wasn’t until about 75% of the way through writing the first draft of Silence that I realized this couldn’t possibly be a standalone novel. To me, this meant that it also couldn’t just have a sequel. I have this weird rule about writing; either I write a stand-alone novel or it has to be a trilogy. There’s no in between. And again, I didn’t know what a trilogy would look like. All I knew was that I could not answer all the questions I raised within one novel. As soon as I decided that, the ending for Silence became pretty clear to me. So in 2018, I finished the first draft. All from Jethro’s point of view, and what an absolutely crazy journey he went (and still is) on.
Then began the looong editing process, which I’ll save the details about for another post. I will say as a teaser, the second book in the trilogy is written, but I’ll stop here and let that book have its day when publishing time comes. That’s the long and short of how Silence became a novel.
The book is coming. Welcome to The Salvation Trilogy.
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