It should feel like you are within a nondescript void. Part of what the reader feels at the beginning is loneliness. The method of achieving that is through sparse description. I describe what needs to be described. No more. No less.
I want the reader to fill in the holes with things from their lives, because that makes it more personal. I want them focused on what I want them focused on, but doing that within their own lives is key.
The problem with writing a novel about separation, about different characters finding wholeness (not beginning with it), and using a language and structure that begins feeling linear and enriching (traditional story structure and assumptions), is that isn’t what the characters are feeling.
It’s harder to relate to a character if you feel differently than the people you are discovering.
I began writing the book with the idea that a cult could be a good thing. I tried to imagine what that would mean, what the consequences could be. I thought about all the cult movies and books already out there. Most center around the horror of the cult itself. Cults have a stereotype and cliche structure all their own.
(The danger was to simply have a cult become the conqueror, a victory against the evil in the end. It had to remain a cult. It had to always feel like something other than the life the reader was living in).
The stories people tell of cults are almost always centered around the charismatic leader.
Some cult story tellers will gain sympathy for a rebellion against the leader by highlighting them within a traditional story arch.
But what if the cult is right? Not just that they feel it’s right and that’s why they joined. (In my first book—THE LAST TESTAMENT—the main question was… what if you didn’t have to believe? What if you knew? What wouldn’t you do if you knew absolutely that what you were doing was right?)
On top of that, and perhaps more specifically, I knew I wanted to examine the means (the ethics and morality) of achieving the righteous project (it’s an old troupe).
Now, this sounds like I wanted to write a story about a zealot, but no. I wanted logic.
This is the way because it is right, not just for one, not just for me. It is right because it is right for the whole.
At the start you weren’t right. At the beginning you were living in the desert, away from a completeness you can’t understand.
It had to start with a sense of malaise, fogginess, separation.
I looked at ways to achieve that for the reader, and I decided three things early.
1) Language had to be sparse. Not an imitation of Hemingway (I do it, I know.), but close. You get to see only what I want you to look at. The danger is that it feels too empty. My style in general follows this ethos, but for this novel it had to be even more severe.
2) Perspective. It had to be multiple and had to defy time and proximity as much as possible. I decided on a loose story based around a hero (turned out to be Alex), who’s quest takes a back seat to people around him, the people he affects. Usually stories are told from the perspective of the guy driving the boat. I wanted the focus to be on the wake. (This led me to create a recruiter for the cult as my hero because it afforded me the opportunity to have different people around him that had no connection).
3) Structure. No Chapters. Divisions within the separations. I decided to have each segment be about one character. I further break them up with my black circle (a constant reminder of the cult’s symbol) for multiple reasons you can try to figure out for yourself.
In the book several characters tell others that they can’t understand the choice they are making until after they’ve made the choice. This question kinda feels like that.
No way you’d really understand unless I told you about why I made my decision. The answer to the question about world building can only be found in a general understanding of my intent of the whole novel.
I couldn’t tell you about every rock or have you feeling as if you knew the characters. I had to get you immediately sympathize with people you barely know. In the end I think the novel does come together, that the singularity that creates that fulfillment in the reader is contained in the end, but to get there, like the characters, you had to go on the quest to wholeness as well.