Tag: Abish County

Trouble with the New Tale

I’ve been working on a new story, and am about five chapters in. I think the pacing is good and the overall structure is working, but there is a clear issue. The source of the issue stands out against the rest of the story, but I don’t know yet how to fix it. There are things that I do know.

The main character was a side character from a few of my other stories. In particular, he showed up in Timmy’s Zombie Abatement Service and as the first deputy on the scene in Rumpe Farm Investigation. I tried other characters as the lead for the current story, but this Deputy Fairmont seems to be the best fit.

In the tale, he is going through the motions and doing the right things. He seems dedicated to doing his job, but there is no other depth. This makes the whole tale seem like a description from a history book rather than an interesting tale. There are few of us who enjoy reading history books.

The trick would be to find out more about the deputy. His biography is clear. He has a bachelor degree in criminal justice. After that he went to the academy to go into law enforcement instead of going to law school. This job with the Abish County Sheriff’s Office is his first and he has only been there two years.

The other deputies are all local, having grown up in Abish county. Fairmont is the only one with a college degree, and he’s an outsider, so there is a little friction. However, he can be sent into situations where the other deputies may have a prior relationship with the people involved.

What bugs Fairmont is his future. The posting in Abish County is not what he expected. His friends from the academy describe different situations in the other counties. They regularly see alcohol issues, traffic collisions, disorderly conduct, domestic disputes, and meth-related crimes. None of them have had to investigate grave robbing or Prohibition Era mob murder houses.

The rest of the department doesn’t think there is anything wrong with that. Calls come in about weird lights or strange noises and the department says to make note of when it happens and, as long as no one is hurt and there is no property damage, don’t worry about it. They don’t even claim it’s swamp gas or weather balloons; it’s just one of those things that happen.

So far, the department has approved of Fairmont’s handling of things. They tell him he has a bright future in the county. He’s starting to wonder if “bright” means a good future or something more like the movie The Wicker Man.

This is the part that needs to be integrated into the story. Normally I would try to weave in the character’s general motivations along with their in-story goals to give the character depth. Now I need to do this for a character who has no idea what he wants but do it in a way so that the reader gets the point rather than just be bored.

My dear Deputy Fairmont, I need to get you sorted out. I’ll either figure out how this works or decide to write other things. Either way, you seem to have a bright future in my writing.

When Stories Go Wild

A story has been coagulating in my noggin. It takes place in the same county as my other little horror stories, so I should be able to concentrate on the telling and not worry so much about details. I figured out the details for those other tales. Unfortunately, the narrative doesn’t agree.

Things began with Timmy’s Zombie Abatement Service and a few places in Abish County, Iowa. It is a fictional county made up by averaging out all the rural counties in the state. Essentially, Iowa has ninety-nine counties, but Abish ain’t one. So far, there’s a primary town, a little history, and a sheriff’s department.

What is the name of that town anyway? For the new story, it would be nice to know. The next question: how do I create a fictional county seat for an Iowa county without picking an existing town, and while making it sound like an actual Iowa town. Time to fall back on averaging and pattern matching. The new name for the town is Elrin.

The next struggle: road names. There are two ways to name county roads in Iowa. If there was a good reason, and a petition, then the road may use a common name that has been around a while. Otherwise, there is a coding scheme that uses letters ‘A’ through ‘J’ for East-West roads, and ‘K’ through ‘Z’ for North-South roads. The lettering transitions as the roads move further south or east through the state.

This means I must either reference the roads by the common name, or come up with a relative location for my county within the state. One of my goals with this county was to make it a generic, average, rural county in Iowa. Using letter codes for the county roads would establish a location, which also establishes terrain, nearness to large cities, and other things. I could use weird combinations, for example having one road with an ‘A’ and another with a ‘Z’ in the same county is nonsensical in the real world. It’s a tough one.

A county also needs more towns than just the county seat. A typical county in Iowa will have around eight to ten actual towns, but may also have other communities such as unincorporated areas. Online searches must be phrased as “counties in Iowa” and not “Iowa counties” because the search engines keep wanting to “correct” the spelling to “Iowa County”, an actual county in Iowa. When I do figure out those towns, they need names and people.

A couple of members of the sheriff’s department participated in the earlier stories. Some show up again. Everytime they show up, they require more development while still staying true to their original appearances. One of them is the main character in the new tale. This requires that I carefully review my prior notes and integrate them into the new notes. Since this is a recurring thing, I need to create a story-independent database of characters.

Finally, because my brain works like this, details about the history of the county have started to bubble up. When was the county founded? Who were those founders? Were they into anything weird? Is there a reason why this county may be better suited to odd things happening? There seem to be long-reaching shadows that may lead to more stories later.

The overall result of this is that writing the story is taking longer than thought. My preference is to say I want to jump right in and tell the tale. Unfortunately, part of my brain would rather spend all the time building every little detail of this story’s world. It’s a constant fight. I will get there eventually.