Interview with Will Elm

Welcome, travelers.  Our stop in the Otherworld today brings us to a storied land of legend and history.  Today’s guest is a debut author who writes with the presence of someone with veteran status, who will no doubt win over many readers when they’re introduced to his series.  If you like your world rich, your characters gray, and your books to have some meat on their bones, this is going to be the one for you.  Read on to learn more about today’s featured author.

 

Tellest: Greetings Will!  I wanted to offer up my thanks for giving me an opportunity to learn more about you and your work.  Your debut, Shadow of the Elders, was a lot of fun to get into, and I’m excited to learn more about how it all came together, and to figure out more about you and your journey here.  I’m sure that readers will be just as interested.

Will Elm: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. I’m excited to talk about myself, my process and the book. Hopefully, I can give folks a little deeper insight into the plot and the world.

 

T: I tend to start my interviews by going way back to where things started for an author.  What was it that first inspired you to take up writing?  Did you have something in your childhood that spoke to you and gave you the urge to tell stories?  Did someone foster a spark of creativity in you that you just had to see brought to life?

WE: My interest in writing comes from my love of books. And I’ve always loved fantasy novels. I remember having my parents read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to me when I was younger, and once I could read well enough, I sought out fantasy books like The Chronicles of Narnia and A Wrinkle in Time and I loved the King Arthur stories. As I grew older, I sought out a wider variety of genres, but fantasy has always been my favorite.

I did write some as a child and then in adolescence, but I never really committed myself to it. I liked telling stories like I was reading, and I wanted to write a book, but I wasn’t interested in learning how to do it well. In other words, I was a storyteller not a writer.

I tried here and there to write, but it wasn’t until I stumbled upon Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube class on writing science fiction and fantasy that I realized I could learn the skill like it was any other. In other words, I took a more practical approach and devoted time to reading books about writing and creating stories. I practiced with writing prompts on sites like reddit, just trying different styles and scenes. I tried some short stories, but I really found my ideas more appropriate for novel length (and a long novel length at that). And that eventually turned into Shadow of the Elders.

 

 

T: How do you deal with things like writer’s block, or just not knowing what direction to take a string of events?  Do you still go to things like writing prompts, or do you have other methods to try and wrest back creative control?

 WE: I think I’m fortunate in that I haven’t struggled much with traditional “writer’s block.” My blocks are usually from lack of energy or motivation, or just burnout in general. When I don’t know what direction to take, I typically step away from writing for the moment and do something else. I often find I come up with the best ideas when I’m not pressing myself for them or even thinking about them at all. Going for a walk sometimes opens up a whole new set of ideas for me. I realize that I’m not up against hard deadlines and don’t have to rush, but I also find my solutions come pretty quickly.

That also doesn’t mean they don’t change. I’m mostly a ‘pantser’ (i.e., I develop the story and write it at the same time rather than spend time outlining before starting to write) and that means I edit after the story is completed to make sure all the steps a character takes is in line with how I want the story to be at its conclusion. If something has to change, I’m not afraid to edit it. This also helps put less pressure on me to find a way forward.

I’ve used writing prompts in the past, and they can be helpful in the way brainstorming can be, just a stream of consciousness of ideas, but I find them limiting within a larger story. The more I think about them, the more I get focused on them. For thinking of new stories and new ideas, they can be fun to play out in my head, but when I’m in the middle of a story, I find they can make moving forward more difficult.

 

T: You mentioned that you’re a pantser.  Have you ever run into a situation where things just went completely off track from where you thought they would go, and you had to try and get things back on the rail, so to speak?

 WE: Oh, definitely. There were sections of Shadow of the Elders that had to be rewritten to match how the story progressed. I also had times when I tried to move forward in one direction but found it didn’t fit where I wanted the story to go. Sometimes a character would try to do something, and it would work, but the outcomes of what they had done would cause problems for other parts of the story. It can be a delicate process keeping everything moving in the right direction.

 

T: There’s a notion that as a storyteller, we can either sort of manifest our stories out of our own mind, or that we’re almost discovering it along with the reader in a way.  I liken it to taking a toothbrush and working out the fine details of an archaeological dig.  What would you say is the way you perceive your storytelling?

 WE: I’m definitely more of a “discover it along the way” person. There are times when it feels as though you are manifesting a story, it just flows out onto the screen. But for the most part, I am writing and thinking and discovering as I write the story and that is how I keep up my excitement throughout the process. I want to find out what happens next!

 

T: Let’s then jump into your new book.  Your debut, Shadow of the Elders, which is the first book in your Sylvan Record series, just released earlier this month.  Now, I say debut, but your writing has a lot of power and poise to it and seems like it was written by someone with a lot of experience under their belt.  How long have you been working on Shadow of the Elders, and how did it come to first take shape?

WE: Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, I’ve been working on it for around three years, with some breaks mixed in. It wasn’t the first thing I wrote, but there was a lot of learning involved in writing a book. For example, I had never edited a book before. There were a lot of hard lessons learned in writing it that made it take a while to finish, but I think it’s better for it. I hope my subsequent books do not take as long!

The idea was one I had been working on through some of my short stories that I mentioned earlier. But I kept on having more to say than I could fit in that length. And as I had more to say, that led to having to explain other things, like when you learn the answer to a question and it only leads to more questions. Before I knew it, I had written the whole book.

 

T: Do you enjoy the research phase of writing, or would you prefer to be in the thick of it, getting on with your characters and learning what they’d do next?

WE: I did most of the research for my book while writing it. There was a certain amount of background I brought to the story, from reading non-fiction books like The History of the Ancient World by Susan Bauer, but I did not spend a lot of time specifically researching the book. It is a secondary world, meaning the world is fictional and created, but it is aligned with the technology and progress of the early iron age (e.g., Ancient Egypt and Sumerian civilizations). And it does work similar to earth.

That all said, I much prefer to be writing the story than researching. There’s an excitement to finding out what the characters are going to do and say and the surprises they come up with in any given scene that is really one of the things I love most about writing.

 

 

T: That sort of also goes into my earlier question about going off the rails and getting surprised by things.

Did anything ever completely catch you off guard about the way someone acted in your story?  Did you almost have to do a mental doubletake to make it make sense?

WE: I get surprised by my characters all the time! I’ve had characters say and do things, in the moment I’m writing them, that I never would have predicted for them to say or do. It’s funny that I think about them a lot but often their actions in the moment take me by surprise.

I think one of my favorite examples is Aloc, who is a large, strong guy with a heart of gold. He’s the optimist in a world full of pessimists. And there is a moment when he is tricked by someone’s lies and is genuinely hurt by it. He doesn’t resort to anger or violence, though he’d be justified in doing so, he just felt completely demoralized. It really came out of nowhere but is perfectly consistent with his character.

 

T: For some authors, writing characters that are interesting can be a bit of a challenge, but you manage to layer your ensemble with the same richness as the rest of your world.  What are some of the things that you tend to do to give your characters extra layers of dimension, to make them feel real instead of just ideas scribbled onto a page?

WE: For me, the characters always start with their personality. The ‘why’ they do what they do. For all my characters, main or supporting, I have a general idea of who they are and why they are that way. And then I let them react to the events in front of them.

Characters really become interesting when we can understand their motivations, instead of just seeing their actions. So I spend time thinking about, for example, how someone who is arrogant might act when they meet someone stronger than them. Or what a nervous person does to try to keep a secret. I find those types of questions lead to complex and deep characters.

 

T: In another life (or perhaps still this one, in some ways), you were exploring psychology, which gives you a special insight into the way people work and behave.  What kind of advantages do you see yourself embracing when it comes to your writing and working with a large cast of characters like you have in your book.

WE: I think my background in psychology has really helped me create a world of characters and people who feel real and unique. It was one of my goals, in writing a book with such a large cast of characters, to make sure they didn’t feel all the same. And my education in psychology has helped me to understand people’s actions, their emotions and by doing so, I can bring those feelings into the character and, ideally, to the reader. I want them to feel what a character is experiencing as much as possible. I think understanding psychology helps me do that.

 

T: One of the things that a lot of beginner writers sometimes miss is that often, when it comes to a character’s psyche, there’s not just a mental component, but a physiological one.  How do you include things of that nature that speak truth to how a character is feeling?

WE: I think people can often miss the physiological effects of our mood or psyche on how we act. I know for one, I’m grumpy when I’m hungry or haven’t had a great night’s sleep. So this is something I pay specific attention to with my characters. It’s not always as simple as an emotion leads to a specific action or bodily sensation. I always think about crying when sad. Some people cry a lot and others are more stoic. Anxiety or panic is another example. Some people might feel nauseated while others breathe heavily and still others might lash out. People experience emotions in a wide range of different ways, even when that underlying sensation is the same.

Describing how a character’s physiology might change given a certain emotion, and how that impacts their actions, helps to humanize the characters for the readers. We see not only their emotions but how those emotions make them act.

 

 

T: So, we’re speaking a lot about the human side of characters here, but there are also monsters out there, be they dragons and trolls or just people with truly low moral fiber.  Your book is a bit of a low fantasy, so your stuff is pretty grounded, and you certainly write with shades of grey.  But some people are hard to relate to and probably should be.  Do you find getting into those people’s mindsets difficult, or is it almost a release to explore a different way of thinking?

WE: Yeah, all the monsters in Shadows of the Elders are people. And it can be difficult to get into the mindset of someone who would want to hurt someone else or is looking to achieve ultimate power and dominion over people. That’s not how I, nor most of us, live our lives. But I think the key is to understand why they are doing what they are doing. There’s no one in my story who is evil for no reason.

Some people feel they are being replaced, so they act out of that fear. Others are trying to save people they love but they are willing to go to extremes to do it. The actions are horrific, but the reasons are simple and human. I find it an exercise in empathy and understanding to take characters that do evil and terrible things and figure out why. I hope that gives more depth to them as well.

I will add that it is sometimes a lot of fun to write the villains. They get to have a little more edge to them and I’m not as worried about them having to resort to tricks and guile to solve a problem. There are more options on the table for what they can do.

 

T: One of your hobbies is exploring the natural world.  Does this mean you’re a world traveler, or do you find the magic and majesty in the places that are even close to home?

WE: I guess both! I love to travel, and in my younger years I traveled outside of the United States (where I’m from) to countries all over. But now, with a family and young kids, we mostly explore the areas around us. I am lucky to live in an area that has access to beautiful natural scenery, and we try to take advantage of that by going on hikes. We also live close to a couple major urban areas, so we take advantage of that when we can.

But we also love exploring our yard and finding bugs and critters to see. One of the nice things about young kids is you get to see the world through their eyes. So they don’t need big new shiny things, they’re happy seeing slugs under rocks and hummingbirds.

 

T: When it comes to that sense of exploration, do you use it in your world?  Are you implementing discoveries that you’ve made in real life into your fantasy world?

WE: I certainly take a lot of inspiration from the exploration that I do, especially in nature since that plays a huge role in the book. These aren’t always grand discoveries or learning of something new. Sometimes it is just bringing what I see into the story. For example, there are hikes nearby where I live, where you walk along a stream that bends and winds through a forest. There’s parts where it rushes through rocks and down small falls. I’ve brought that scene into the book. I know this isn’t a “discovery” in any traditional sense. I could look up a picture of a running stream, but there is something about seeing it in real life that makes it easier to bring to life in writing.

I’ll add that I bring a lot of what I discover from reading other books, mostly non-fiction, into my fantasy world. I read a lot of books on history and nature and what I learn from those often makes its way into what I’m writing. Sometimes it’s being directly inspired by what I’ve learned but other times, I take what I’ve read and turn it around. I ask, what if things worked differently? What if this person didn’t make it back home again, etc.?

 

T: Almost like the lightest touches of fan fiction.  But I think we’ve all played in some sandbox, whether it’s watching a movie, playing a game, or reading a book, and thinking, oh, I would have done it this way, or I wish I had known what would have happened if the plan had worked the way they expected.

If there was a popular example of something in fiction you would want to change that wouldn’t spoil your story, what would you want that to be?

WE: This is a hard question for me, mostly because so much in the story follows from what came before. I feel like if I change a section of the track, the train will derail. Though I love the idea of playing around with what could happen. Although it’s integral to Shadows of the Elders, I’ve always wondered what would happen if two of our main characters never run into the raiders who separate them. How different the story would be, if they stuck together. There’s so much in the world that flows from that, it makes me wonder how things would unfold if it didn’t happen.

 

 

T: There is a second book in the Sylvan Record series that seems like it’s on the way!  Shadow of the Elders did a lot to introduce us to your world and the history of it, but it feels like you’re the kind of author who loves to add layers of that richness often.  When it comes to book two, are you expecting to have just as substantial an experience for readers?

WE: Yeah, book two has been drafted and though it’s still in a very early form, it’s longer than the first book. I think “substantial” is a great way to put it.

Without giving anything away, book two really opens up the world and changes a lot of our understanding of what is going on. It picks up right where book one leaves off and continues to follow some of the same characters. I’ve also added a few new people. But the twists and turns in the book are wild and, I know I’m partial, but I think it is really going to shock some people. Hopefully in the best way. And there’s certainly more to come after it.

 

T: When it comes to building such an immense world, there’s certainly a lot of ways for a writer to explore it.  One of them is through the eyes of the characters they’ve grown accustomed to, and another is to completely change the vantage point and perspective.  With how your world looks to be, it certainly looks like you could do that.  Have you ever had a calling from another part of the world to tell someone else’s story?

WE: All the time! I have a number of point-of-view characters in Shadow of the Elders, so we get to explore the world through their eyes. But they are all connected through these storylines. In my spinoff prequel, we get to see a new part of the world, and a new story, through a familiar character. But every time I write more of what happens in the world, it brings in more characters and more ideas. The hardest part is to stay focused on one person and one story at a time.

I have thought of the idea of creating an anthology of short stories or novellas from different characters across the world to help bring out their stories. There’s nothing done on it yet, and there might not ever be—there’s only so much time in the day—but I’d love a chance to explore the world in that greater depth.

 

T: Your second book is also not the only one that you’ve been working on, because as you mentioned, a spin-off that features some of your characters in the main series is in the works.  It’s a little more personal and intimate, and you can go more into the lore of those small players in the grand tapestry.  What are you most excited about regarding that spinoff?

WE: The spinoff has been such fun to write. Because it’s smaller in scope, focusing on only one of the characters from Shadow of the Elders, I get to explore a character and their life in much more detail (I’m not ready to announce who the focus character is yet). It is also less concerned with the entire world’s happenings and is more a personal adventure/journey for the character. And it answers some very interesting questions about how the person we meet in Shadow of the Elders is who they are.

I’m really excited for readers to get a chance to follow our character’s journey. There are a lot of surprises along the way. And though it is meant to be a standalone book, some of the tie-ins with Shadow of the Elders will be very thrilling to those who have read it.

 

T: Is this meant to be a sort of, “sign up for my newsletter, get this book for free” sort of thing that you’ll be doing, or just a fun story you were eager to write?

WE: It started as an idea to get me back into the writing mindset after spending quite a while revising and polishing Shadow of the Elders. I didn’t have a set length for it, but I wanted to do something smaller in scope than book three in the main storyline. When I decided on the character to focus on, the ideas just poured out of me. It definitely became this really interesting and powerful story with exciting implications for the larger world and its storylines. It’s been a lot of fun to write.

It will be a full-length novel and won’t be free, though it’ll be less expensive than the main books given it is shorter. My hope is to make it as accessible as possible for those who want to get a taste of the world and its stories, without having to dive into an epic like Shadows of the Elders.

 

 

T: With your spinoff, you’re getting a recent prequel for one of your characters.  But your world is rich with lore and history.  Have you ever thought of going even further back and seeing what revelations you can present to the reader—and yourself?

WE: In Shadows of the Elders there are a few vignettes that speak to the history and lore. One of them is the prologue. And more will come out in the subsequent books, though not in the prequel / spinoff specifically. I have definitely thought about writing the stories of the history of the world, especially the past civilizations that so impact the story’s present. It might work as a set of short stories or a collection of vignettes from that period in the world.

It would be awesome to expand the world’s history but there is a lot of story to tell before I get there. I’m aware that I might not be able to tell every story I want to but certainly readers should have a sense of the history if they read the main books.

 

T: Would you consider your book as something that is written to market, or more something that was written because it was a story that needed to be written (or a delightful blend of both)?

WE: I’d probably say it was both. It’s not intentionally written to market but certainly the story is one that wouldn’t be surprising to find in a popular fantasy novel. Ultimately, this was a story that I wanted to tell regardless of how it would sell, but I think there’s a market for it.

 

T: If your fans wanted to learn more about you, where would you direct them?  Do you have a website or social media presence that they should know about?

WE: Absolutely! I am active on bluesky @willelm and mastodon @willelm@indieauthors.social and I have a blog at my website at willelmauthor.com . Any of those sites should be a great place to learn more about my books or just follow my process.

 

T: Will, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to chat with me over these questions.  It was a delight to get to know you better, and to learn more about your world and your stories.  I’m excited for other fans of fantasy to get to know you and immerse themselves in your tales!

WE: Thank you for the wonderful questions. It was great speaking with you.

 

T: Folks, I want to one more time thank Will Elm for dropping by to tell us more about his world, his history as a writer, and for divulging more information about what we can all expect.  It’s always a delight to talk to passionate storytellers, and it seems that this author is one with many more to come.  If you enjoyed reading about Elm’s books, don’t wait.  Check out Shadow of the Elders (The Sylvan Record, Book 1) on Amazon today!

The following two tabs change content below.
Avatar photo

Michael DeAngelo

Michael is the creator of the Tellest brand of fantasy novels and stories. He is actively seeking to expand the world of Tellest to be accessible to everyone.
Avatar photo

Latest posts by Michael DeAngelo (see all)