Creating a mythology for children, young and old readers alike

When I first started writing my children’s novel I thought it would be cool little story about about a boy who gets a magical pen, draws a cool landscape filled with trees and rolling hills and goes into his drawing and has an adventure. And that is an awesome premise to a fun story, but as I began to write, the story itself showed undertones of something bigger at work, something broader with multiple layers and as it grew larger in my mind and on paper I realized how small and almost insignificant my main character was. It is interesting to note that on the very large scheme of things in the entire series he is very significant but on the larger world stage he is but a blade of grass.

And it is no small task to write an epic story because as the story unfolds and questions arise to fill in the gaps of the plot and who the characters are and why this and that happened then the wider story begins to take shape. And the wider the story became just so I could have background information and how it relates to Nathaniel then those questions had to be answered until finally I had to start from the beginning to the early characters and why they did what they did it, Then I have to set all the rules of magic and fantasy in place so that when the reader reads he can suspend reality for a moment and be thoroughly engaged in the world that has been created for him to enjoy.

I have been reading Tolkien lately and it reads as a-matter-of-fact story that it doesn’t at all feel like it is made up. It feels like it really happened in the distant pass and that it is a part of our history the same way I would say that Huckleberry Finn is a part of our history like he really lived and traversed the waters of the Mississippi.

I think that is the very hardest part of the series to achieve. To make it believable as if it really did happen and there are characters that walk around in the Inkworld and magical pens and so on…

So much pain is taken to write all the details that may or may not make it in to the story. But it has to be done in order to make it real. I do not want to pigeon hole myself in to a corner with an easy escape. That would blow it. The story needs to be epic in size, believable in nature and small enough to be relate-able. A task I fear will take many years to complete.