How I Wrote It. In A Dark Light.
How I wrote it …
How indeed. Let me first recognize the strengths and weaknesses of my book In A Dark Light. The overall strength is the creative bursts I’ve had throughout each story in this book. I’m the type of person who is constantly using the notes app on my phone. I wrote each story in a fast-paced push to the end. One of notice is the short story Death By Exorcist. This story is, as you can tell, about an exorcist named Jacob Kane and his exploits in a village in Ireland. The story started as a vague idea and a character name I came up with in my teens. I wrote this short story starting from 8 pm to 5 pm the next day. It was such a creative rush. I took a few breaks to eat and shower. But I spent most of my time writing; it was such a high of heightened thoughts and ideas. By the time I finished it, I was so proud of my work that I rushed to have someone read it. The other stories, Blood Rose and Goblin Boy, were written at a much more reasonable pace, but every time I wrote, I was obsessed. In the story. I would spend many nights up late, if not through to the morning.
Now, to bring up the weakness of my little story collection
. I have little experience. The first time I wrote a story to its completion was back in College. I went to Mount Ida College to study graphic design. With the idea of making comic books. Which will be discussed in a later blog. The stories I wrote were Blood and Darkness, a short story about a reaper at the end of times, or so it seems. I had fun with it. I also thought of this character as a teen, like so many others. The next story was called Loss. This story is about a knight during the Battle of Agincourt. The hero is a disappointing knight who meets a friend from his past he thought was long dead, and is fighting for the other side. This was also a short story with the challenge of not making it supernatural. It was snuck in a little, but I got the ok from the teacher. The other trouble I had was my spelling and grammar, which was quite the struggle. I had to rewrite this several times to get it right. I did have a relative edit the first draft of the first two stories. Being Blood Rose and Death By Exorcist. The feedback I got was helpful, but it was far from professional. I did reach out to many editors but ultimately settled for Grammarly. This software is the cheapest option, as it’s free, but it has a paid option to work on the grammar and spelling to a higher degree. This was a good option, and I would recommend it to indie writers who can’t afford a $3k editor. It’s not perfect at all, though I wrote the book without auto-correct because Pages has a setting where it edits as you write, and I didn’t want to have to check my work for unwanted auto-corrections I wrote thirty pages ago. So I went through edits multiple times until I was satisfied, which was frustrating because I did pay for Premium and it missed a lot. But besides that, my only other problem is marketing, which will be accomplished by this blog and many more..
Step by step
My process for writing starts with a random thought that gets written down, as said before in the note app. I get ideas usually from a single line of inspiration, such as Death by Exorcist, which was my love for Christianity and Irish mythology. If you’ve explored my website, you’d see the link to Fae Letter Books. It’s basically a dropship bookstore with an Irish theme. With no surprise, if you saw how pale I am, you’d be right in guessing that I’m part Irish. But I won’t go into my ancestry at this moment. I literally went from a character type to a theme, and as I said before, I went on a binge. Not to go over all my stories, but another example would be my third story, Goblin Boy. First thought was to have a boy raised by goblins. Then I went from a burst of inspiration to the notes app for a few days? Or was it hours? idk. I created a family for young Rags. yes thats his name, which I later realized that I’ve heard of another goblin with that name halfway through my book. The Wandering Inn. But that’s the only comparison, thankfully. So for Rags’ family, I created good influences like his grandmother Nama, who is supportive and wise. And than theres the Bad influence member named Thasher. Like when he used Rags as bait to catch the mighty beast known as Meatwich. As you can see, these goblins are not good at names. Hence, naming a human baby Rags. The next step was world-building. I would do a process called mind mapping. The way I used it was to connect events. There’s a way to do it to show cause and effect in bubbles on your page. It’s a great process. As I went, I held in the back of my mind a few characters I was eager to add. For example, the stranger in Goblin Boy, or the build-up to the big villain at the end of each story.
How to write an ending
The most exciting part of the story is, of course, the climax. I won’t go into details for spoiler reasons. But how best to write it? In a binge, like with Death By Exorcist, I had a setup at the beginning of the story, and I leaned into it. If I had to write it again, I would have made it more interesting, but oh well, it’s on paper now. For the other stories, I had an image I wanted to bring to life, both very scary. Hence the T plus rating. I thought I wanted to leave my audience with a little bit of dread and excitement that lingers. But how do you write an ending? Well, you need the story setup from the very beginning with breadcrumbs not obviously written along the way. I’ll tell you of another story. My first story in my writing career, since after college, the story known as Legend Of The Red Eyed Devil.
Failure is ok
So this story I conceived way, way back in around highschool age. Probably about 15-17. It starts with a character I gave The nick name Devil. Now Devil’s real name became Abel Callos. Abel for my religious connection to my life, and Callos because it looks kinda like my name if you squint hard enough; the allo in my name stands out, and they both start with a C. With this story, I held in all my thoughts and beliefs about morality. I don’t believe in fighting dirty even at the cost of my life. Will I hold to it? No idea. So I hate modern military tactics, especially the use of guns. I was full of such hope and hatred. That I put it into my character over the years. My twin has the opposing belief most people have, so I got a contrast, which took the form of a new character nicknamed God. I got the name from a movie that I can’t remember the name of. There was a character whose call sign was God because he had full control of the battlefield as a sniper. so there for I created God, aka Kyle Graves. Now you’d think I’d give these two a huge rivalry in my book, but they barely met once or twice. That’s called wasted potential. One thing I did do was pull a few of the other characters I made as a teen, all the themes and powers. And it culminated in an info dump after info dump story. And it was so hard to read that nobody I gave it to could finish it, except my brother, who could barely stand it, and he made a point of it. In fact, I couldn’t read it at all. It was as difficult a book that I ever read. But I did learn something. One: create new characters, and two: don’t put myself in them because that’s a standard that can never be lived up to in a debut indie book. What I also did was constantly reread my story just to make sure it was readable. This got harder with longer stories like Goblin Boy, but I built those reading muscles as I went on.
Encouragements.
What I would say to new authors to be is that the first story is still better than keeping the ideas in your head. The inspiration bursts should be used as they come to their full growth. Otherwise, you’ll feel like you missed a great opportunity. And you may worry to never find it again. But I’m telling you you will, over and over again. One thing I like to do is what I’ve been saying all along: take notes as soon as you get the idea. Unless you are driving or at work. But I always managed to sneak some note-taking in wherever I go, like at a stoplight or when you're by yourself. I’ve been caught many times taking notes at work, and I was too scared to do so while driving. But thankfully, I can hold onto that thought for a while. And I tell you to hold onto that thought. And if you forget, then well, it wasn’t that important anyway. If it can’t linger with you, how will it with the reader? But do as you do. And be safe and enthusiastic.. One final thought I would like to leave with you is that its ok if you can’t afford support for your book or if you weren’t very good in English class in high school. its best to express yourself in a medium that feels right to you. For me it’s art (I’m not very good) and writing (working on it). If you keep a thought in your head, it’ll die there, and it won’t be anywhere near as fulfilling as its birth on the page. Publishing my works was so exciting that I did it too fast and had to do one of my many edits. Even now I’ve made improvements. Such as making a new cover by hand instead of relying on clip art, or, hopefully you never do this, but AI art. I was so disappointed in myself that I finally created one on the Sketchbook app on my phone, and boy is it beautiful. At least to me, and hopefully to you as well. In conclusion, I hope you express yourself as I did and will continue to do, and make the most of your work because even if it fails, it’ll be a success just to get it published.
Notes:
Where to publish - Amazon KDP is a good option for beginners. So is Barnes and Noble Press. But if you want more expansion, I recommend IngramSpark. But Amazon has the best customer service, with the others being nonexistent most of the time.
Follow me:
You can see my works and updates on AndrewCatallo.com. Or on social media like Instagram. the.art.of.madness as well as on X, AndrewCatallo, and Facebook AndrewFCatallo. And watch out for my occasional video on YouTube, @AndrewCatallo
(note) - FaeLetterBooks.com is gone; it is now in the process of becoming TheBookandPen.com. Keep updated by following me on my social media
Thank you, and I hope you like my books and spread the word about the worlds I create.
-Andrew Catallo