Ice Pirates

03 July 17: I'm working on a pirate story this week. It's set to either go into an anthology later this year or be my first solo publishing attempt. 

Part of the behind the scenes writing stuff I want to share today is character creation. But first a little bit about how I write. My stories are organic. What I mean by that is I don't start out with what story I want to write, but instead I let it develop from an idea and I go from there. 

For this story I started with a prompt from the Fantasy Writers group on Facebook, who has released anthologies in the past and has produced some good writers already. The prompt was demons and winter. Well, I have already written a winter tale for a seasonal anthology, no demons in it though. So I had an idea for a story about the Ice Pirates, a group in my world I am building who live in the North and come down to hunt sometimes. No, not Vikings, but yeah, something like that. In winter. 

So the kernel of my idea was based on some writing I did a few days ago, about how assassins traveled to the New Lands, smuggled as fabric and furniture aboard ships. I started writing about a ship, making the long voyage across the ocean and they get attacked by pirates!

But wait, that doesn't happen yet. It's still a nice sea voyage.

Then the Ice Pirates attack! And there's an obnoxious passenger, who was promised the ship would not encounter any pirates. 
I can't forget the demons though, from the prompt. 
There may be a little Princess Bride influence there as well.

Okay, back to character creation. I needed a strong captain and an even stronger first mate. The captain was easy, had loads of captains in my military career. He's good. But the first mate was a little harder. I tried to give him a good name. Sea Dog Sam. Don't ask who I based him on, he's a mix of this fellow and that. From there he blossomed into a guy who might have been an Ice Pirate on previous voyages. From there he became an integral part of the plot once I brought along the demons. And then there's Cheeks, the ship's load master, and a few other sailors. Right now I am still working on the demons themselves. Nasty bunch they are, real evil. I think the Ice Pirates might be the good guys in the story after all.  


EDIT: Favorite line written recently for this story: 

Over the next few hours the crew of the Breaker ran her as fast as she could go, leaving mists behind them like ink squirting from a squid. 

Any favorite lines from anyone else writing?
Happy Writing to my writers out there and Happy Reading to everyone!