Daydreamer: The Conception of Soul Rope

For many authors, the story of how they created their novel can feel incredibly unique. Whether an idea came from their dreams, a moment of inspiration, a real-life experience, or years of meticulous planning, all authors go on a journey to complete their work. What’s become clear to me as I reflect on Soul Rope is that it’s been a combination of many of these approaches.

As we’re getting closer to the release of my first novel, I felt it would be an interesting task to recount my journey to this point, sharing with you the reader everything you need to know about Soul Rope before you think about spending your free time reading it. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be breaking down everything to do with the creation of my novel, its style, its influences, its planning, and the journey it took to finally reach completion. Don’t worry I’ll be avoiding any topics that might give any spoilers. Soul Rope has many mysteries, and I would be doing both you and I a great disservice revealing the twists and turns before a page has been released. With that being clear let’s start at the very beginning, how and why this book came to be.

I should start by saying that this is a story that’s been developed over the last eleven years. You may think that’s an awfully long time to take to draft a book, but the truth is that originally it wasn’t ever going to be one. Back in my upper school days I found myself in a very strange place mentally. Truth be told I let myself become intensely sleep deprived, a zombie who’s mind only awoke when there was computer game to play or a series to watch. Really those media were part of the problem. I’d stay up till the early hours of the morning doing one or the other, cramming it all in before forcing myself to get a couple hours of sleep before school. It’s obvious to me these days that they were my escapes from a world I saw little interest in. It’s from this growing angst that I began to drift away from reality and into the world of daydreams. Being constantly drowsy only made it easier to zone off into scenarios beyond the plain boring planet I stood upon.

If I was in class, on the bus, or even back home trying to sleep, all I’d see was the characters, and narratives of exciting new worlds. At first, I simply imagined myself with powers I’d seen from other media, but soon enough I found myself creating a new character, my first separate protagonist, one who’d eventually become known as Dante.

It's from this original character that I would spawn a narrative that would continue daily, weekly, monthly, and eventually yearly. Even to this day I try find a way to keep the original narrative going, but after eleven years there’s not much left for my characters to do.

Teenage me had no intention of sharing his story but as I reached adulthood something finally changed. Suddenly an urge to create a shareable Soul Rope took root. I’ll be honest if I could draw, I’d have probably made it into a comic or graphic novel but alas I had to find a different form, enter the novel.

At nineteen with only a GCSE in English at grade C I thought I could take on the task of completing a full book. It’s safe to say the original three chapters I wrote were more like mad ramblings then cohesive chapters. It would soon be clear to me that I needed help and that’s when I made an important choice. If I wanted to author this novel properly then I would need education, and so with only the goal to write one story I enrolled in a writing degree at university. A man who previously had no interest in writing, or experience thought it would be a good Idea go straight into the deep end for the sake of a teenage narrative. I know in hindsight maybe it wasn’t worth the time or debt. Still, I have no regrets because without that choice this novel wouldn’t have been completed. My time at university was a rude awakening on how much of an uphill struggle it would be to get this story into the world. My writing had to go from less than amateur to professional in three years, and then I still had to write the damn thing.

I learned many things at university, and unlearned so many preconceptions I had about the publishing world. Most importantly though I figured out that the story I had in my head wasn’t going to be the one that appeared on the page. I had to take a sloppy narrative born from a sleep deprived fourteen-year-old and adapt it into a cohesive plot that made sense to other people. Soul Rope is an adaption, written by an adult who found meanings in stories a teenager didn’t have the emotional experience to understand. Many new characters had to be made, chapters added, themes discovered, and plot adjustments made on the advice of others. That last point is crucial. University taught me that a writer doesn’t have to work alone. I got so much great advice from lecturers and peers that helped me see this story in a new light and pick out things I just couldn’t see on my own. Whether that be characters, settings, or plots points, there isn’t something in this book that hasn’t been shaped by someone else. This book was born from a lone teenager’s mind, but it was shaped by an adult’s vision and moulded by the teachings of others.