Looking Back at the Start of Rocky Start

We’re already into the new book, which is another story I’d started a couple of years ago (Arresting Anna), and now we’re talking about how we have to change a lot of the stuff I’d spitballed because it’s going to be a real book now and not just me fooling around here on Argh. We’re starting a three book series that we are tentatively calling the Joan of Art series, because she may be our major antagonist. May be. We’re still throwing stuff out there.

But then I was looking for something on my hard drive (note to self: clear out hard drive) and I found the first collage I’d done for Rocky Start, and it was surprising how much the books changed from that original concept.
Here’s the collage:

So the point of the collage is that it’s a way to make visual notes in the beginning. This is what the characters look like, this is what the setting looks like, the important characters are the biggest and so on. And then once we get into the books and the characters come alive in our head, they just look like themselves, not the collage, they become real for us. So the collage is a starting place. And we usually do not finish where we started.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t read Rocky Start and Very Nice Funerals, stop now.

The placeholders for Rose and Max still work for me, and so do the mountains and the storefronts in the background. Lucy Liu still works for me as Lian, but the rest of the kids to the left of her all look too young, I think. These are teenagers who have been through some stuff. And of course, when we were writing Rocky Start, we had no idea what Marley would become so he’s way too small in this collage. The picture of Maggs is a picture of Bob’s dog Maggie (I think), so of course that’s right, but you know what’s missing? Llamas. Little did we know. The llama was actually Bob’s idea, but he was joking. That’ll l’arn him. Serena shouldn’t be bigger than Coral (nobody should be bigger than Coral) but Eastwood is good for Pike. I don’t know who the guy for Herc is (Bob picked him) but that grayed out Michael Caine is Ozzie. Also missing: Bea, Harvey, Melissa, Geoffrey, and Oxley. (Hermione didn’t show up until book 2, so she wouldn’t have made this one anyway.) Basically, I think it’s still representative of place and time and mood and genre, so it works, but boy does this show how much a story can change as you write it.

So now I’m going back to look at the original collage for Arresting Anna. Because that’s going to change a lot, too. (If you’re curious, it’s at the bottom of this post: https://arghink.com/2020/10/so-its-be...)