3. Leaning on Influences
I’ve been a writer my adult life, for different audiences, both personally and professionally. But long-form, publishable fiction is not something I’d tried my hand at before 2018. In the opening days, I oscillated wildly between “this is easy” to “this is impossible.” I didn’t have established practices or methods, I didn’t have techniques I could fall back on to break through creative logjams. When I reread my first drafts, I always found that I’d rushed the plot points or skipped too quickly through the beats of a conversation between characters. It was easier for me to see the story’s architecture in my mind than it was to get it down on paper, in a way that felt easily interpretable by a (for a long time completely hypothetical) reader.
Luckily, I’ve also read a great many books, across a wide range of styles, genres, and cultures. This accumulated body of reading was something I could draw on for analogues and inspiration. When I began to take writing seriously, I also spent months not reading, but rather thinking about what I had read, and what bits of it I could leverage to my own ends. I thought about the writers I admired most, but quickly made my peace with the reality that it would be foolish to emulate their unobtainable greatness. I thought about the specific pieces of storytelling that were especially captivating, like the battlefield melees of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, or the juxtaposition of public and private politics in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. How could I replicate the beats of Philip Pullman’s person-versus-system quandary in His Dark Materials or the depictions of mystical processes as frank, empirical enterprises in Primo Levi’s The Sixth Day? Could I borrow something from Roberto Bolaño’s brooding, atmospheric detective tales in 2666 or from the rich, complex coming-of-age journey described by Lloyd Alexander in The Chronicles of Prydain?
The Locutor Series draws on many of these sources, although not always directly or identifiably. It draws on other inspirations, as well, including television.
I am no great purveyor of television, but there are a handful of mainstream touchpoints that often come to mind when I’m writing. The first is the “puzzle box” show that drops its characters into deeply mysterious scenarios, leaving the viewer to speculate and guess about what’s going on across multiple episodes. Here, I’m mostly thinking of the work of Damon Lindloff (Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen) but also shows like Severance, Russian Doll, and West World. I also enjoy a bevy of other very popular shows like Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian, but for quieter reasons than I suspect most other people do: these shows are really good (really, really good) at depicting their characters reconnoitering, scheming, planning, and executing complex ideas. (I recently rewatched the episode of The Mandalorian where Din Djarin and Cobb Vanth spend a full twenty minutes hatching a plan to kill the Krayt Dragon and it is just glorious.) The Locutor Series is full of people testing new ideas, developing new tools, and puzzling through weird, nuanced situations. I love putting problems solvers into a puzzle box and waiting to see what happens.
If there was a single guiding light in my writing it would be Pullman’s trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass were fixtures of my young adult reading. I have returned to them often as an adult and they hold up magnificently. It is always a dangerous game trying to compare one’s book to some other, but let me hazard at least one claim: if you’ve read and enjoyed His Dark Materials, I am pretty sure you are going to love The Locutor Series. Both feature a young woman as their protagonist, both of whom are able to control mystical power as a result of careful study and practice. Both take place in a light fantasy realm, where just enough of the rules of the universe work differently than the ones we encounter in our own lives. Both stories begin in small, cramped spaces before rapidly expanding outward, geographically, temporally, even cosmically. And both present a person-versus-system narrative, where the protagonist must react against an established status quo in order that she might better understand herself.
Make no mistake: The Locutor Series is not an homage to His Dark Materials, and there are many fundamental differences in the philosophy, style, and plot. But establishing this point of comparison with a famous work was important both for me, just starting out as a writer, and for you, as well, perhaps considering reading the debut novel of an author you’ve never heard of.
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