My Writing.com Project

For the past few years, my story writing has been whittled down to simply jotting down the overview of a story, then forgetting about it, and moving on to the next overview. I battered out LOADS of (I think, anyway) great story ideas, but never actually did any real creative writing to try and bring them to life. Stories about a Princess who lost her father became lists of medieval nobles and battle plans and campaign details for the resulting civil war. Sci-fi fantasies became list upon list of the various rival spacegoing factions and the institutions that made them who they were. An epic Mafia family feud saga set in my own Dublin City became nothing more than an elaborate family tree, filled with exciting and colourful characters who never got to see the light of day (now that I think about it I might just post that family tree to this sight, to get a few opinions on what I could do with the characters in question).

Eventually, my girlfriend had had enough. "God damn it," she'd say, "you need to stop [screwing] around and just start WRITING again. Just put pen to paper and GO for it. It doesn't matter if it's [below average standard], it doesn't matter if it's not ultra-realistic, and it doesn't even [blooming] matter if I don't like it - just write to please yourself, and no-one else."

So I listened. For the first time in years, I PROPERLY put pen to paper and cast all care to the wind; realism, technique, description, it didn't really matter, I just wrote what came to mind and put it all down. I wrote out tiny scenes - with one character. Two characters. A guy and a girl at a diner. The girl tells the guy she's pregnant. End scene. A father getting told by his son he's joining "The Cause" in Belfast, 1971. The father tells his own experiences with the Republican movement. End scene, A knight in the Viennese court making love to the daughter of the Duke of Austria...a pilot landing his Cessna Skyhawk...a young girl grooming her horse one afternoon...

All these little scenes, to remind myself how to WRITE again. I realised I was enjoying the exercise of writing to please myself, and only myself, and thought, maybe it was time to do more. So I decided to link some of these short stories together, by the slightest of all connections.

That's when I got the idea to write the story of the War of the Three Kingdoms. WARNING: BORING HISTORY LESSON TO FOLLOW

The War of the Three Kingdoms is a little known chapter of British history; ironic really considering that, prior to World War Two, it was probably the most important war Britain ever fought. It was a civil war trifecta that occurred all at once in England, Ireland and Scotland, the three nations being torn apart by civil war, loosely into religious dissident and loyalist factions. For the Scots, it was a war between the Calvinists and the Anglican loyalists for control over the church; for the English, it was the better known civil war between Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarians and King Charles I's Royalists. In my home country of Ireland it was a civil war between the Catholic Confederates, allied in name only to the Royalists, and the Protestant Parliamentarians. Three kingdoms, three civil wars, all of which feeding back into the one overall conflict over the right of government to mandate religious policy and the Divine Right of Kings.

END OF BORING HISTORY LESSON

The perfect background to an epic story, right?

I decided, however, not to write it as such; instead I'd carry on this idea of short stories with simple main characters. Instead of having one overarching dramatic narrative, I'd tell a million different stories, each set against the backdrop of the War of the Three Kingdoms. Finally, each story will chronologically follow on from each other, so that anyone who was looking for it could see the overall story of the war taking place. The stories will jump between England, Scotland and Ireland. They will tell the stories of Royalists and Parliamentarians; Catholics and Protestants; soldiers and lawyers; widows and maidens; politicians and priests. I decided shortly after the original idea that it would begin two years before the outbreak of hostilities sparked the war in Scotland, and end long after the war had officially ended, with William of Orange defeating King James at the Battle of the Boyne. Although part of a different war entirely, the story of the War of the Three Kingdoms can not be told in its entirety without the epilogue of the Williamite Wars.

So this is what I intend to do, primarily, on Writing.com. Post each short story as I write it, starting with the original chapter "1637 - The Bay of Biscay." Originally I started writing this as an overt homage to James Clavell's epic Shogun, still my favourite book of all time. It follows the return journey of an Anglican pilot on the fictional HMS Anne Boleyn, transporting a Samurai Daimyo from Japan to London to negotiate a trade agreement between King Charles and the Shogun. Off the coast of France they are attacked by a Spanish privateer vessel and - honestly, I can't tell you what happens next, because that's all I've written. When I finish the first chapter, I shall post it here, eagerly awaiting your responses :)

So, that is my story, that is why I am here. I hope some of you actually read my work, and I hope to get lots of feedback from you guys. See you all soon!