The Book of Josiah - Behind the Scenes - 1

GENESIS
My inspiration usually comes from structures rather than characters - with Radiance the idea was to create a story around the 10 sefirot of the kabbalah, for the Book of Josiah, my first novel, the idea was different:

-What if there was a man who got younger the further into the future he went?

Which led to this thought:

-What if there were were three storylines, each set at different points in the future but the further into the future they went, the younger the main character became?

Casting my mind back to when I first began to write this story (I think I must have been around 16 at the time), I think that one of my main motivators behind this structure was to cheat around the size of a novel. Not being certain that I had one novel's worth of plot within me, I decided to write three interweaving stories instead, choosing to divide and conquer.

Cont. after the jump.



CHRONICLES
Nevertheless, writing this book didn't come easily, and for a long time all I had was the prologue (which no longer is part of the book) and the first page of the first chapter, unsure of how to proceed.

At the age of 17, I decided to try an experiment - I had a group of friends interested in writing, and wondered if we could write the Book of Josiah (then called Perchance to Dream) between the four of us. Each of them would take a plot line while I would weave it together.

Yoni Smith chose the Josiah, far-future timeline, and produced a couple of pages of prose bursting with ideas (not all of which made it into my final draft). He had devices in people's heads that played the perfect soundtrack to whatever they were feeling at the time, and cast Josiah as a matrix style action hero in a long black coat. It was to Yoni that I owe the whole "it's five to six, and then something takes 1 minute" thing (which hints at a recurring pattern in the story that I am not ready to divulge just yet).

Adam Glass took on Joe, an old man sitting in a room surrounded by dust and memories. As I recall, he only ever wrote a few paragraphs, but it conjured vivid images of a timeworn man in a timeworn life, haunted by his past. That feeling has stayed in Joe's chapters ever since.

Only Asher Dresner didn't write any part of Perchance to Dream, though he was involved for years afterwards in reading and critiquing my work. Since he has now moved on to writing more public work, I appreciate all the time he devoted to my own.

REVELATION
However much I appreciated the input of my friends, it became clear to me that this group approach wasn't going to get the book written. In the end, I had to do it myself, though it was a slow, laborious process.

By the time I was living in Israel for my year out I was still struggling with chapter 6, with no end in sight.

How did I manage to finish the book?

Perhaps that's a tale for another time.

JOSIAH

But one final thought - why Josiah Smith? I liked the average sounding last name, the Biblical first name that could be broken down into 3 parts for the 3 timelines as Josiah / Jos / Joe.

More importantly though was the character of Josiah Samuel Smith from the Doctor Who story called Ghost Light. Worth a watch or two.