The Necromancer in the Mirror: The Writing Process

I’ve always wanted to be able to write a book like the ones I see on the shelves of Barnes and Noble; the kind of sweeping epic fantasy that transports you out of your chair into epic battles and adventures. While I was able to self-publish a small YA book as part of a creative writing class in high school, and have had a few literary journal publications here and there, those accomplishments didn’t quite match the grand dreams I had of such a novel. It was with this dream in mind that my freshman year of college was spent on a project that I eventually titled The Necromancer in the Mirror. This project took me an entire year to write, and it is with great pride and joy that I’d like to be able to tell you a little bit about the book itself and what the writing process looks like for a college student trying to write a book while also managing a twenty-credit workload. Spoiler alert: the process is a mess. Despite the chaos that is the college writing process, the resulting novel was exactly the epic fantasy novel that I set out to write.

In this post I’ll dive into the inspiration behind the book, who the main characters are and how they were constructed, and the writing process for the novel, essentially taking you along with me on the wild ride that was the creation of The Necromancer in the Mirror.

The Inspiration

Obviously, this fantastic fantasy book didn’t immediately spring together just because I wanted to write it. It was an uphill struggle, and there were plenty of times I wanted to quit. It required time, dedication, and of course, inspiration. The inspiration for The Necromancer in the Mirror came from too much time on BookTok. Any bookworm who spends too much time on social media could tell you a thing or two about the wonders of BookTok. It’s the side of TikTok, denoted by the #booktok where readers share their favorite and least favorite books that they’ve read, and authors can promote their books and document writing processes.

The Butler Collegian discusses how BookTok may be responsible for the recent rise in book sales, particularly in YA, Fantasy, and Romance genres. “In 2021 over 825 million physical books were bought, which was the most on record since they began keeping track in 2004, which is possibly in part due to the immense popularity of BookTok. This 825 million in 2021 can be compared to 2019 where only 751 million books were sold, a 74 million increase in just two years.”

The genre I saw most on BookTok was a mix of fantasy and romance that is seen particularly in books like Blood and Ash, Bridge Kingdom, and A Court of Thorns and Roses. These books have readerships in the billions, and yet Fantasy Romance as a genre is made up of only a few books according to the list of most popular BookTok fantasy books compiled by Greenwich Library despite the number of people clamoring for them. It was on a dive through BookTok watching the fifth video about A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas - which is a fantastic book - that I decided somebody needed to write another book of this genre for these poor readers. Every influencer I watched was stuck pitching one of the same five books. They needed something new and I was in a position to create it.

Creating the Plot Idea

In my books that aren’t romance, I’ve always enjoyed mystery, dystopian, or fantasy with an element of thriller. Something exciting and strange that serves to draw the reader into the book; a corrupt government or an underlying plot twist that the reader suddenly realizes at the end. These are the parts of a book that make them interesting for the reader; the parts of the book where you have to put the book down and take a deep breath just to calm yourself from the excitement of the plot. It was with the audience of BookTok and thrilling plot twists in mind that I first came up with the idea for The Necromancer in the Mirror.

I wanted to utilize that favored trope of a corrupt government up against the main characters, but I wanted to do it in a fantasy setting. I used a few Pinterest boards and Instagram reels for the original plot inspiration, which I sketched out on a napkin. I had a few ideas for plot twists that I wanted to include, and romance tropes that I wanted to twist and replicate in my own way. Unfortunately, I as a writer love to utilize my creative freedom to the furthest, which is a fancy way of saying I came up with a bunch of ideas and that’s not at all what I wrote. The end draft of The Necromancer in the Mirror ended up being a tale of corrupt government, dragons and castles and magic, and the realization that people are not as they seem.

Dalmir Dhark, the main male character, evolves from his emaciated, closed-off state in the prison to a charismatic, humorous, and valiant friend who is willing to do anything for his family and Vidyan. Vidyan Sterling, the main female lead, transforms from a student finding her worth from academic validation, and the attention of her snobby noble boyfriend to someone who has friends and family worth fighting for. She becomes a character who loves adventure and is capable of making her own choices.

The Character-Creation Process

Something that I really enjoy in any book is an element of the psychedelic; a character that’s mad and unexplainable, and that trope is always improved when they have a perfectly reasonable counterpart that is just appalled by their actions and creates more human feelings within the mad character through their influence. This comes in pairs like Alice and the Mad Hatter, Sherlock and Watson, and Cardan and Jude. I wanted to recreate this type of character trope with my two main characters but use it in a more extreme sense which ended up being from the roles of a mad necromancer and an aspiring Departmental Politician.

Dalmir was created with Ichabod Crane, from Sleepy Hollow in mind. He is a gangly, morally gray character who is either good or bad depending on who you talk to. To make him into my own character and the type of person that would fit into a land like Corsava, the setting for The Necromancer in the Mirror, Daemon has a pair of magically significant bright blue eyes, long hair, and tattoos, which also helps to make him attractive. Unlike Ichabod, Dalmir needed something that would make him stand out personality wise, so he has a sharp sense of humor that helps him to earn favor with Vidyan when she comes to interview him. He has a sharp intelligent eye and when combined with his magical talents, he becomes a compelling character. He’s too chaotic on his own though. He acts too fearlessly and gets himself into several bad situations because of it. This is where Vidyan comes in as the mediator of the relationship.

In contrast, Vidyan wasn’t inspired by any particular character. She was almost a reflection of myself and how I thought I would act in the situations she was placed in. She aspires to be a Departmental Politician in the Corsavan government, which she is unaware of being corrupt. She and Dalmir connect as friends when the Chancellor of Corsava sends her down into the Confinery to psychoanalyze Dalmir. Then she becomes the rationalizing figure in the relationship, keeping Dalmir from running off after vengeance. She too, is highly intelligent, but has a more calm and calculated mode of planning.

Dalmir’s separation from the human world during his time in prison has made him cold and closed off and he has lost all hope of ever leaving the prison, and thus has already gone through the process of believing he was ever going to be set free. Vidyan’s humanity is what it takes to bring him back from the brink of madness and into a rational-thinking state of mind. Vidyan’s hard work in the Corsavan School, her kingdom's university, has made her too cautious and too much of an overthinker. Dalmir’s humor and quick decision-making skills help Vidyan to spend more time with other people and less in books and develop social skills she did not previously have.

The Outlining Process

Once the inspiration for the novel was there and I had the characters fleshed out, it was time to outline the book. I firmly believe that part of writing a novel is letting the story come to me as I write. I’ll come up with a preliminary outline for the story that looks mostly like chicken scratch on paper, and then as I dive into the story, I usually end up scrapping that entire outline and coming up with a completely different storyline as I go through the book. For reference, this method of making it up as you go along is known as being a “pantser” or flying by the seat of your pants. The opposite trait is being a “planner” or planning out the events of your novel and then strictly following the outline in the creation of the novel.

When I first began my work with Danielle, I didn’t know what being a pantser meant, but after reading the first drafts for one of my articles, she sent me an email that was something along the lines of, “You’re a bit of a pantser, aren’t you?” I believe I stared at the screen in confusion for a few minutes, then Googled the definition of a pantser and went, “Oh, shoot. I am.”

Despite my track record of pantsing my literary work, there was a strange method of outlining that I used to produce The Necromancer in the Mirror that I don’t think I even really realized was outlining at the time. I created my original plot-summary outline method, which I quickly discarded and came up with a new plot line as I was writing. Once I had a new plot summary in line, that one was then written down and discarded in the same manner. So, in this way I actually ended up using the one-page synopsis method of outlining that is described in this MasterClass article. Only I did it about ten times over with each new line of plot that I came up with.

With previous novels I’ve had issues with editing due to having to search through the whole novel for a specific event that needed edited but I have no way of keeping track of when events happen in the book. To deal with this, I created a chapter record that contained a brief one to two sentence summary of each chapter so that during the editing process I would have a guide to look at that would help me remember when events take place throughout the novel.

While I don’t think this was a perfect method of outlining by any means, it was a good method for those that don’t enjoy strict outlines that tell them when to write what. Sometimes stories need to write themselves, and so the outline method I used was just to keep track of how the plot changed throughout the book and I think that helped me to keep good records while leaning into my own method of writing.

The Writing Process

Writing processes vary for everyone, and I can’t say that I’ve found the perfect process for me, because I definitely haven’t but I have found a process that, while painful at times, helps me to produce a quality novel within a short period of time. As a college student, I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, and like most students my age, I work multiple jobs on top of schoolwork. So how do I find the time to write a novel? This is where having a strategy comes in. Novels aren’t written, or even outlined in a day. It took me a week to outline The Necromancer in the Mirror, and after the project was outlined, it took me another two weeks to find the time and work up the courage to get started.

I know there are many strategies that authors like to use to motivate themselves to write when they’ve started a new project. I’ve found that over the years I set a bottom-line goal to write one page a day. In classic Times New Roman 12 pt. Font, this is about 500 words in a day, which may still sound like too much or too little, but it helps to put a set timeline in your head of when your book should be finished. When I first begin writing, I pick the number of pages or the ideal word count that my book should be when it is finished, then divide it by the number of words or pages that I intend to write in a day, which gives me the number of days that it should take to write the book, and a set timeline on which to get it done. Again, this strategy isn’t for everyone, but it helps me to set timelines for myself.

Something I learned writing Necromancer was that patience is truly a virtue when it comes to writing, in particular patience with yourself. I had a lot of days where I would be stressed or have too much going on - a test or a final to study for - and that one page just did not get done. When you don’t meet the deadlines you set for yourself it becomes easy to put yourself down or become discouraged in your work because it feels like you can’t keep up with it. The response I tried to give myself whenever I missed a day was, “That’s fine. Just write two tomorrow,” and then I would write two pages the next day and it was a nonissue. I also had days where I would become so engrossed in the story that I didn’t want to stop at one page, so I would write more. I had some days where I ended up writing five to seven pages just because I was so excited about the story. The next day though, I still had to write one page regardless of how many I wrote the day before. In this way, I think that one of the best lessons learned throughout the writing process itself was the importance of perseverance and patience.

This novel took me an entire school year to write and there were so many times where I wanted to take a break from writing, but if I did, I knew there was no way I would be able to pick this task back up again. I had to see it through to the end.

Conclusion

The Necromancer in the Mirror was truly an adventure to write. Its roots from BookTok make it a story that was specifically written for the audience of fantasy romance readers. People who love to read fantastical epic stories but require a bit of romance to sweeten the story and make the characters more interesting. I’ve loved the mixing pot of strange character traits and bits of inspiration that make up the melting pot that is Dalmir and Vidyan’s personalities, they were difficult to come up with, but the end product is two exceedingly real people that don’t seem as though they could have ever been fiction. Their story has grown into something that is beyond me, thoroughly their own world and own people. From the writing process I have learned what it takes to put together a complicated story with more than one line of plot that has a clear beginning, middle, and end that wraps up with a satisfying conclusion. The aim was to provide a satisfying end to The Necromancer in the Mirror while also leaving a few unanswered questions to serve as a good beginning point for a second novel.

This book was truly a work of love and I hope that my readers enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I’ve included a synopsis of the book’s plot below for some investigation into what the book is about, and to keep up with Necromancer updates, follow along on Instagram, @mads.mertz! For more information about the construction of stories and the writing process outside of this book, check out our blog!

Synopsis

Vidyan Sterling is a star student at the esteemed Corsavan School of Magic and Academic Disciplines, well on her way to becoming one of the youngest government Chair members in history. With her childhood dreams of working as a Departmental Politician, she is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to interview and counsel an imprisoned magician to impress the Chancellor. The only problem is as she dives deeper into her interviews with the famed Dalmir Dhark, she learns horrifying truths about the Chair’s tyranny that she doesn’t want to be a part of. When the Chancellor accuses her of setting the necromancer free, she finds herself on the run with a man who isn’t anything like the criminally insane murderer the Chair claimed him to be. He’s funny and charismatic, and though his past mistakes haunt him everywhere he walks, Vidyan learns to enjoy her adventures with Dalmir.

They find themselves in Du Khazad, the kingdom bordering the tyrannical Corsava and strike a deal with its king to pardon them. The Chancellor isn’t willing to give up his search that easily though, and Vidyan must learn to fight for what she loves if she is to keep the life with Dalmir that she’s discovered. Along the way she also discovers that it may be her fate to be more than just a student or pawn to the Chancellor. She has power in her own right, and she must learn to use it in time to save Dalmir and the sorcerers of Corsava from the oppressive hand of the Chancellor.