“For the Realm” by Dakota Edwin Collins was named by our judge, Nick Fuller Googins, as this year’s third place winner in our Novel Excerpt Contest. Read the excerpt—Chapter Five of the novel—here and then check out this interview in which Collins talks about his history with gaming and what he’s playing now, how to choose which excerpt to submit, and what his writing process is like. Read to the very end to get a sneak peak at how the novel begins.
What originally sparked this book, and this character specifically?
This book began as a note in my list of story ideas that read just “form: video game, MMORPG.” Then it was a short story, then a very long short story, and then the characters kept talking to me and it became the novel it is now. Originally, Ian didn’t have a point of view, it was only from the other protagonist August’s perspective. That was also true in the first full draft of the novel, but it became obvious to me that Ian needed a voice and a perspective for many reasons, one being that the book is not a young adult story despite its subject matter and August being a young adult. When I wrote Ian, I wanted him to be the opposite of what someone (perhaps someone who doesn’t know much about gaming) might picture when they picture a person who is the number one player in a video game. And as this, his first point-of-view chapter, shows, it’s something that was important to Ian, too, that he not appear to be this person. I think if he did, the story wouldn’t work; the main plot hinges on his camouflage.
Often in this contest we see folks using intro sections/chapters, but here you’ve presented Chapter Five; can you talk about using this particular chapter? What specifically led you to that decision, and how do you think this chapter does or doesn’t function as an entry point to the novel itself?
So, the novel has two protagonists and begins with August, a seventeen-year-old who plays the game RelicRealm as a girl character, Redleif. The first hundred pages are August’s, and we get to know him very well, how he can disappear into the fantasy of the game and how he wants desperately to escape what it is to be a seventeen-year-old boy, one who is dealing with the anger and grief of his father’s suicide and taking care of his mother in the aftermath. At the end of these first hundred pages August has a horrible realization that his online sort-of-boyfriend, Ragnar0k, the superstar king of RelicRealm, is Ian Takala, his senior English teacher. And then the novel’s point of view shifts to Ian, who doesn’t know any of this. For Ian, the novel is a love story, and it starts here in Chapter Five, right before he meets Redleif. But in knowing August for those first hundred pages, the reader knows it is not a love story at all, and much of the tension of the rest of the book comes from waiting for Ian to figure it out.
I’m always fascinated by the idea of excerpts, both as a writer and reader, so hopefully this question is different enough to justify asking a second one about that aspect of the piece. Was there anything about that, about these pages being self-contained, that influenced your thought process as you were editing these pages for submission? Did you do anything to make them work as a standalone, or was that even a consideration?
At the risk of pulling back the curtain too much, I chose to submit this chapter because I thought that Ian’s point of view fit better with the kind of things The Masters Review publishes. I changed nothing about the chapter at all. I felt it was self-contained for all of the reasons I mentioned in my answer to your last question; it’s the first chapter of Ian’s love story, even if the book knows that’s not true.
Gaming is one of those subcultures that has always felt to me like you have to know it extremely well to write about it (this impression is heavily influenced by personal history: The one time I hopped on Google and included a game I didn’t know in a story, I got torn apart in a workshop by an avid fan). So, I’m curious about your personal connection; can you talk about your history with gaming, where you started and your personal interests/fascinations therein? And of course, what are you playing right now?
I sympathize with your workshop plight. Obviously I’m very involved in the gaming community, but there’s the gaming community, and then there’s World of Warcraft community. I say this with all my love; there’s a reason I chose to create RelicRealm and base it off WoW instead of using WoW itself.
As far as my personal connection, like August and Ian, I spent the majority of my teenage years slaying dragons. Ian’s relationship with his family and mental health, and how he uses RelicRealm as an outlet for that, is really similar to mine and my brother’s. Right now I’m working on 100%ing Hades so I can finally move on to Hades II. Not to brag, but only five Steam achievements left to go.
I’m that annoying guy at the reading that always wants to ask the two super-cliché questions, so apologies in advance. First, can you tell us a bit about your writing routine? (mornings with coffee pecking at the keys; ten hours in front of a keyboard every day; chunks when inspiration strikes, et cetera?)
I like to go somewhere to write, usually a coffee shop. I wrote most of For the Realm at Fable Hollow Bookshop in Knoxville, which was the perfect environment for writing that book or any book. For me, it’s always been more useful to think about writing in terms of time rather than word count. I protect my writing time like a vicious beast, mostly from myself and my phone. I think: I have an hour today that I get to write, and I don’t do anything besides write during that time. It’s okay if I don’t write anything, as long as I’m not doing anything else. If I look at my phone or my email or my book, I remind myself I’m wasting my writing time. That usually gets me back to it.
Second, beyond writing routine, what about your writing process? Are you a seventeen drafts before your first reader sees it kind of writer, or does it all flow brilliantly to fountain pen on first thought (someone someday will reply yes to that, I’m sure), or do you write a single sentence a million times until it’s perfect, or…?
My favorite piece of writing wisdom comes from Sir Terry Pratchett, who says something to the effect of, “The first draft is you telling the story to yourself.” I write the first draft, I write it badly, and I take notes on what I’d like to add or change as I go, and then I get to work in the future drafts on making it so that other people can understand the story, too. And I keep good writers who I’m lucky are good friends around who are very capable of telling me whether they can or can’t understand the story.
This excerpt is so much fun to read, and certainly does great work in whetting my appetite for the full work; obviously avoiding spoilers, what can you tell us about the novel?
Thank you for your kind words and your thoughtful questions. I’m so grateful to you and everyone at The Masters Review for believing in my little story. The one thing that broke my heart about sending you Chapter Five instead of Chapter One was losing the opening line of the book, but now I’ll give it to you here: “August couldn’t be someone’s girlfriend if he tried.”
Interviewed by Brandon Williams