Mitchell T. Jacobs's Blog, page 2

Writing Black Wolf

Creating the cover was a process as well.     My first novel, Black Wolf, is in the process of being published. This is the end of a long, work intensive process that culminated in the finished product. By detailing the process, hopefully I can provide insight for those who are interested, and encouragement for those who want to write a novel, but are faced with uncertainty. It's a difficult process, but it is by no means impossible.

    Black Wolf's concept began as a simple question to myself. As noted in my bio, I'm a huge anime fan. It was while I was watching the show Log Horizon that I posed myself the question: why did it seem that all virtual world MMOs were fantasy role playing games? (As an aside, go watch Log Horizon. It's available for free streaming on crunchyroll.com, and it's really good.) Part of the reason is probably because most of the major MMOs on the market today are fantasy RPGs. Say MMO, and the first thing most people will think of is World of Warcraft. There are many others; Guild Wars, Runescape, the Ultima series, and the upcoming Elder Scrolls game, all set in a fantasy world. But I also feel that ignores a large portion of the current gaming community. First person shooters are, of course, an extremely popular genre in today's gaming community, and it's almost certain that they would continue to be popular in the future.

    My own experiences in MMOs also colored how I wrote Black Wolf. I have never played World of Warcraft; the MMO that I've spent the most time in is EVE Online. For those unfamiliar with the game, EVE Online is a space simulation with very few boundaries. The world is vicious and unforgiving, and distrust, underhanded tactics and betrayal are all too common. It's a tough world to get into, but it was a world that I liked playing in. Many of the concepts in Black Wolf, such as territorial control, economic warfare and player made factions at each other's throats, were drawn from my experiences playing EVE Online.

    So out of all that I developed the concept of the Black Wolf novel; I wanted to write a work on a virtual world MMO based on the FPS concept. So how did I do it?

    I started writing.

    No, really. It's something that gets said a lot, but it bears repeating: you have to write. While you're probably saying 'no duh', the greatest obstacle when writing a novel is when you think about what you're writing, but never actually write it.

    One of the greatest misconceptions about writing a book is that many people seem to believe that it's like baking a cake; you throw all the necessary ingredients together, bake it, and it comes out done. A more accurate analogy would be to compare writing to forging metal. You start with a lump of metal ore, filled with slag, and you refine it with heat and hammering.

    Other than the world, I didn't have a grandiose plan as to where the novel would go. Pretty much everything outside of the World at War MMO concept was developed as I wrote. The plot meandered as it made sense to what the characters were doing, and the characters themselves developed as they interacted with the world. Again, this novel wasn't the product of a meticulously thought out plan in my head. I simply wrote, and then did a whole lot of editing. Most of the philosophical questions in the novel were logical extensions of the issues that a virtual world MMO would bring up.

    In summary, it's most accurate to say that I forged Black Wolf, and it's that fact which I would use to encourage anyone who wants to write a novel but isn't sure they can do it. You don't have to be a prodigy or a genius to do this; you simply need to be willing to put the time and effort forth. The process is not an easy one, but it's very, very rewarding.