Starting from nothing

Narrative on this post (001)

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This is my attempt to explain my own process - both as a means of explaining what steps I take as well as walking though my own metal process. In addition, as I am intending this to be my official effort towards Nanowrimo, I am not including these side-bars toward my word count.

I started out this novel intending to use the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night." I have tried starting most of my efforts of late with this phrase and that has been mostly in opposition to something I was taught in school - that this phrase was one of the very worst ways in which one might begin any kind of literary effort. I meant, and continue to mean, to either disprove them or expect that experience will prove them right. Regardless, in practice it simply means I won't eschew it's use. With regards the actual beginning, the phrase "It began with a house" popped in my mind and would not leave. I recognized it as not only a powerful beginning but also something I'd not touched on before. And once I accepted it as the beginning of this work, I realized it brought to mind other questions.

What sort of house is it? Is it dark and mysterious, foreboding and cantankerous, light and fluffy, or a sort of idealized unknown? Is the house the beginning of something dark and so the character and nature of it's components is a precursor to the rest? Are the two separate?

Does anyone live in the house, or is the house merely the center of a number of seemingly unrelated events? If the house is inhabited, has it been inhabited consistently or sporadically? Is it the case that the house has been only owned but never maintained? How about the grounds - do they indicate a level of repair (or disrepair) consistent with the initial thrust of the story?

Of technical concern: what is the point of view of the speaker? Is it someone reminiscing about their own past, an historian describing a particularly creepy chapter of a well-known neighborhood, a second-person rendition of selected events, a first-person narrative that offers more of monologue feel interspersed with interesting twists, or should the fairly-common third-person approach be selected, allowing the reader to experience the details as the author sees fit?

It should be noted that, although each of these were eventually answered (and perhaps will be answered different before we're done), none of them were actually asked while I was writing. I merely started with the phrase and walked where my fingers drew my attention. I believe I picked descriptors that frame the parts of a house I might notice, which is why they're all exterior, and I picked details that would indicate someone was walking onto the property chiefly because that is how I was first introduced to the house in my head - start from the road, notice a window, note the curve of the house, allow the eyes to move to the front-door, and realize the shade is being offered by a mighty, massive oak. And it went from there.

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Narrative on this post (001)