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teratornisSo for about the last year, argentum_ls and I have been working on a collaborative series featuring Highlander character Matthew McCormick. We got to chatting one day a while back about the supposed spin-off series that character might have featured in, and what that might have looked like. I ended up writing a scene that got stuck in my head, and. . .
Well, now we're like a dozen stories deep and that first scene I wrote is buried somewhere in story six or some craziness like that. That sixth story was originally going to be the first one, I think, but we didn't even know we were going to do a series at that point, much less such an extensive one. We're both very much the sort of people who start writing something just to see what happens and roll with it from there, chasing the inspiration. The inspiration just. . . went a lot further than initially anticipated.
So I wrote that story, and then I wrote another story, and then we just sort of kept going, until it became apparent those two stories - and some of the stories Argentum had started hammering out as well - weren't destined to be the first in the series.
At that point I started Close to Home.
I honestly can't remember if this was intended to be the first story in the series when I started it, but I believe it became clear fairly quickly that it was going to be, and I sort of aimed the writing toward introducing the various characters we've built into these stories around Matthew McCormick. We knew from the start we were going to have a fair amount of original characters, and that we didn't want to include any of the main characters from the TV series or movies too heavily, so Close to Home became something of an introduction for some of those characters.
The three main allies here are Francesca Talbot, Diana Chase, and Sam Grant, and all three have definitely taken on something of a life of their own. Argentum and I have spent long periods of time discussing their characterization and roles in the story, and coordinating how best to write all three and what we want some of their story beats to be. We definitely have some plans and exciting reveals all around, for these characters, and I had a really interesting time getting some of the bones of that in place with Close to Home. This story mostly kept its overall shape between first draft and final draft, but there were at least a couple of scenes that got gutted and rewritten primarily to really work on some of those characterizations, and how best to set up the relationships within the setting.
It was also a pretty fun time to set up some tension for the rest of the series. This particular story ends with some pretty important loose ends left dangling, intentionally so, and we have some plans down the line for how to handle those. There's one already-written story that touches on some aspects of those loose ends, and figuring out how to set all of that up has been another interesting part of writing both this story and more of this series. Given how badly out of order everything was written, figuring out what to tie together and how to get there has been a challenging but exciting experience.
I'm not usually an out-of-order sort of writer, but that was just how it went with this series, and it's honestly been a lot of fun, especially as a collaborative project. Argentum and I have had a great time brainstorming so much of this, not only with Close to Home but with the other ever-increasing number of stories coming up for this series.
We've also gotten a bunch of really excellent help from![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
black_dwarf and idelthoughts, who joined us as beta readers when we eventually realized this project was only getting bigger and bigger, and having a couple people with an outside perspective around to keep us on track might be helpful. They've both been wonderful fellow brainstormers and beta readers, and have definitely done a lot of great work helping me get this story in shape. It's been a lot of fun to work with both of them on this as well, and they've been super great.
I have historically felt a bit at a loss upon finishing a multi-chapter story. It's always just a little weird to wrap up a big project, because what are you supposed to do with yourself then? Despite the fact that we posted the final chapters of Close to Home last night, though, I'm not feeling much of that at all this time. Might have something to do with the fact that there are multiple stories upcoming in this series that I still need to do a pile of editing on, not to mention a couple more planned ones to actually write.
I definitely won't be running out of stuff to do for quite a while, I don't think, but I sure haven't gotten bored with it yet.
argentum_ls and I have been working on a collaborative series featuring Highlander character Matthew McCormick. We got to chatting one day a while back about the supposed spin-off series that character might have featured in, and what that might have looked like. I ended up writing a scene that got stuck in my head, and. . . Well, now we're like a dozen stories deep and that first scene I wrote is buried somewhere in story six or some craziness like that. That sixth story was originally going to be the first one, I think, but we didn't even know we were going to do a series at that point, much less such an extensive one. We're both very much the sort of people who start writing something just to see what happens and roll with it from there, chasing the inspiration. The inspiration just. . . went a lot further than initially anticipated.
So I wrote that story, and then I wrote another story, and then we just sort of kept going, until it became apparent those two stories - and some of the stories Argentum had started hammering out as well - weren't destined to be the first in the series.
At that point I started Close to Home.
I honestly can't remember if this was intended to be the first story in the series when I started it, but I believe it became clear fairly quickly that it was going to be, and I sort of aimed the writing toward introducing the various characters we've built into these stories around Matthew McCormick. We knew from the start we were going to have a fair amount of original characters, and that we didn't want to include any of the main characters from the TV series or movies too heavily, so Close to Home became something of an introduction for some of those characters.
The three main allies here are Francesca Talbot, Diana Chase, and Sam Grant, and all three have definitely taken on something of a life of their own. Argentum and I have spent long periods of time discussing their characterization and roles in the story, and coordinating how best to write all three and what we want some of their story beats to be. We definitely have some plans and exciting reveals all around, for these characters, and I had a really interesting time getting some of the bones of that in place with Close to Home. This story mostly kept its overall shape between first draft and final draft, but there were at least a couple of scenes that got gutted and rewritten primarily to really work on some of those characterizations, and how best to set up the relationships within the setting.
It was also a pretty fun time to set up some tension for the rest of the series. This particular story ends with some pretty important loose ends left dangling, intentionally so, and we have some plans down the line for how to handle those. There's one already-written story that touches on some aspects of those loose ends, and figuring out how to set all of that up has been another interesting part of writing both this story and more of this series. Given how badly out of order everything was written, figuring out what to tie together and how to get there has been a challenging but exciting experience.
I'm not usually an out-of-order sort of writer, but that was just how it went with this series, and it's honestly been a lot of fun, especially as a collaborative project. Argentum and I have had a great time brainstorming so much of this, not only with Close to Home but with the other ever-increasing number of stories coming up for this series.
We've also gotten a bunch of really excellent help from
I have historically felt a bit at a loss upon finishing a multi-chapter story. It's always just a little weird to wrap up a big project, because what are you supposed to do with yourself then? Despite the fact that we posted the final chapters of Close to Home last night, though, I'm not feeling much of that at all this time. Might have something to do with the fact that there are multiple stories upcoming in this series that I still need to do a pile of editing on, not to mention a couple more planned ones to actually write.
I definitely won't be running out of stuff to do for quite a while, I don't think, but I sure haven't gotten bored with it yet.
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