I love to learn how stories came to be. One of my favorite parts of any collection is the story notes at the end of the book. A while back, my brother asked me where I got the idea for my story “The Installation”. I thought I’d share that with you as well as what I learned from writing it.

How It Came to Be

“The Installation” appeared in the anthology It Calls From Below from Eerie River Publishing. The idea for the story was based on a combination of ideas I’d been working on for a while. It involves the secret organization Lodencraft, which has appeared in my writing before, sometimes as a passing reference, others as a key player. I try to have all my work take place in the same world (à la Brian Keene among others) to varying degrees of success.

The anthology called for subterranean horror, and I immediately thought of Lodencraft. After all, in my past stories, they have secret bases covering the globe. Why not one buried beneath the earth?

I had my setting. I just needed the characters. I try to create an emotional core in everything I write, a bond between characters that is the strongest part of the story. However, I had never written a love story before, which gave birth to Sebastian and Enrico.

They are kidnapped by Lodencraft at the beginning of the story and brought to the Installation. While I had a narrative rife with conflict, it was not a horror story. Hence, I created an ancient evil at the center of all this, taking it into cosmic horror territory.

With this couple thrown into chaos, I found that the story—for the most part—wrote itself. There were still hiccups along the way as well as extensive editing, but character-driven narratives work out so much better in the end.

What I Learned

This story really needed more edits. I did five drafts before I submitted it, but I probably should have done more. While the structure of the story was sound, a lot of the little details and some of the prose needed an overhaul.

I was a little abashed after it was accepted, due to the number of changes the anthology’s editor had for me. At the same time, the story benefited so much from his input, even if it was a bit overwhelming.

There was one particular continuity error that I missed, as did both my beta reader and the editor. I didn’t realize it until the last possible moment. Given the many eyes that didn’t catch it, I doubt the reader would have noticed. Still, it was a frantic, last-minute change.

If anything, this story taught me that I have a long way to go to achieve the crispness that I desire. Since then, I’ve worked on polishing my writing, spending more time on the quality of my drafts than the quantity.

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Let me know if you’d like me to do more of these. I have more stories with stories of their own.

Tchau,

Zé