Origins of Shadows
My Writing Journey Vol. 2
Welcome to the second of these Writing Journey posts. I dug out some old folders for this one. This week’s topic is the origin story of my first full story, that also became my first playscript, first screenplay and first full-length novel. The novella version by eighteen-year-old me that is the start of the full novel is what I’m serialising here on Substack. But we need to go back to the ten-year-old me.
Eleven years on, it takes a bit of effort to go back to that mindset, thinking of the influences. I was watching a lot of CBBC, but I think more inspiration came from the older sci-fi shows I watched with my parents (like Babylon 5 - maybe the origins of the evil shadows; I honestly can’t remember), an essence of Star Wars light/dark mythology and the religious education I received at a Church of England primary school with a small village church. Like I said in the first Children of Shadows post, it was the landscape around my primary school that gave some influence, especially for later versions of the story as it seemed to fit perfectly. I think it was more of the edgy, exploratory mood of me and my few friends as we’d explore the nearby fields, hang out in the shaded ditch alongside the school field and make up spooky stuff.
There was also, no doubt, some influence from the prehistoric places my family took me. We visited painted caves in France, the basis for the element of prophecy in the story, a through-line through every version and my other writing as well, definitely a common theme, but something universal. I don’t remember how I felt about those caves - maybe it was my father’s writing as well (see the first Writing Journey post), but something stuck with me, probably from the trip when I was nine. We must’ve had a family trip to Avebury and the surrounding sites, because elements of that landscape featured heavily in the first version of Children of Shadows - the stone circle of Avebury; Silbury Hill, a large mound; the sacred stream by West Kennet Long Barrow… My memory of those sites now come from a trip back when I was fourteen.
So what came out was something like a post-apocalyptic biblical story with elements of YA quests, sprinkled-in sci-fi concepts and mythology, a front-heavy dose of horror elements from a ten-year-old’s imagination and a dash of inspiration from the prehistoric sites of England and France. Sounds a like strange soup recipe I know.
But, I didn’t cook it alone. There was another chef in the kitchen… okay that metaphor’s gone on enough.
My father definitely helped, at least was a strong supporter of the idea, even if he didn’t understand the story (I was making it up as I went along.) We wrote it together, but separately. We each wrote our own version of events I conceived, maybe with some bouncing back and forth, a paragraph at a time. And it was wonderful. Each paragraph went back and forth from the main boy’s POV to that of the main man.
I don’t know where my imagination went, to conjure up some of the imagery. I think the initial concept was just a boy in a field, zombie-like children walking towards him - what could save him? A glowing girl. Then there was the mystery of the homeless man dreaming of these events. He lived in a box under a train bridge, with just a photo, and a sledge - elements that would persist.
In that version the man eventually led an army of a hundred men through destroyed towns, really as if England had been bombed to nothing. The original explanation for the lack of other adults beyond those hundred men, and one woman that they later find, was that most parents died protecting their kids from shadows. But I didn’t really know what the shadows were, or what apocalypse had really happened. This group of survivors went through a more Christian-related journey of baptising themselves in a river, finding the remaining woman in a stable, making a cross out of beams from a destroyed church. That all disappeared in the second version - there will be a post dedicated to that version sometime in the future.
Without revealing anything about future chapters to be uploaded here, we left it on a cliff-hanger for the boy and girl that’s actually the start of chapter three in the new version, and with the men finding the woman. There were a few more ideas pencilled down in my father’s notebook, though they never saw the light of day until last year. But we never finished it. I suppose we moved house and I started at my new school.
However, we did, in that summer holiday, plan out the prequel and sequel stories. Working backwards after writing what we did really helped me later on - it was the first instance of me reading through what I’d done and adding some logic/backstory. And there was one element of Children of Shadow’s ending that I suppose I did know - but you’ll have to wait until chapter fourteen comes out for that one!
My dad made nice and neat mind maps of sorts, on 6 taped-together A4 sheets:
Many ideas from these two plans inspired future versions of the Children of Shadows story. The elements from the Father of Shadows plan defined the core of the story in later versions - the end goal of the crater, the more sci-fi elements, and the main characters’ family backstory. The other prequel elements worked into the screenplays version became a short story of sorts, Daughter of Shadows. Son of Shadows became the main chunk of my first novel, a story then in three parts of differing lengths - Children, Daughter, then Son.
The ideas I didn’t use from the Son plan did work their way into the sequel novel I finished early this year: Father of Light. But that’s a story for way down the line. Returning to these documents last year, the year I worked on my two first novels, was like returning to some holy historical document when I recovered snippets of story that I’d forgotten. Small sparks, two-word ideas like ‘New Versailles’, somehow concocted between me and my father, became such a source of fire in my two completed novels. I’m very grateful he gave the time to work with me to get this stuff from my imagination, and with his writing sensibilities and adult knowledge, down on paper - and that we kept it all - for me to return to. This story’s been inside of me, evolving and expanding for quite some time. It still is, and I’m glad to be sharing the first part of a much larger universe here on Substack. Which reminds me…
I’ll end this post with the story of when I first shared my writing. We did type up what we’d done on Children of Shadows, and when I started at my new school, while the other kids had presentations on animals that they’d researched over the summer, I instead gave a presentation on my Children of Shadows story.
I brought in a printed-out version of what we’d done so far, formatted by my dad with our two paragraphs running side by side down the page, so theoretically one could hop back and forth while reading. (An idea I haven’t fully given up on - having two versions of the same story together on one page…). I gave a speech, similar to what I’ve written today just more embarrassing, about the process of writing it and the basic story, even mentioning the plans for two whole other books - though I never worked more on the first. The strange part was, my new classmates were actually interested, and a few read through the first page or so and said something along the lines of “This is good.” The words that warm every writer’s heart.
I don’t know why I volunteered to do that, though it was rewarding at any rate, giving me a small dose of confidence. I was definitely not comfortable talking in front of people - still working on that. Maybe there was a part of me that didn’t know any better, or maybe there was some part that wanted to share something I’d created with others. Maybe a part of me wanted to make an impression and say “I’m a writer.” I certainly carried on pursuing writing later on while at school, when I started self-publishing at age twelve.
That’ll be the story in my next Writing Journey post.
Until then, thank you very much for reading. I continue to hope this is interesting to others, and not just a stroll down memory lane.
Cheers,
Harvey