Rough Draft of a Character Sketch for a Potential Novella

The world in which this story would be set is ours with a rarely seen other reality somewhat analogous to worlds with hidden magic or demons or dimensions. A world in the vein of The Dresden Files, the Potterverse, F. Paul Wilson’s “The Secret History of the World” books, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, something along those lines. A world that knows all about our world but which is known about by relatively few of us.

The main character a young man, late teens or early twenties. The (slightly) younger of fraternal twin brothers. He’s been raised by a single mom who’s recently died as a result of a supposed accident the facts of which don’t quite add up. He has no idea who his father (who had left before he was born) is or was, not even a name. His mom would never speak of his dad when sober, which was most of the time. But sometimes, in her cups, she’d let something slip — that he was from somewhere else, that he had a way with things that she never understood, that he saw things that nobody else did.

The main character had sometimes thought that his mom when drunk was using euphemisms to mean that his dad had been schizophrenic, but after her death, all that changed. When going through her things, the brothers had found a box including a note to them as well as dozens of strange pieces of metal. These belonged to your father the note started. “Just inert objects” to her, but they’d seemed to do things when their father had held them.

The brothers experimented, and found by trial and error that at least some of the objects would do odd things. One let them read people’s minds. Another, when held in their right hand, gave their left hand great strength, but not the other way around. A third that would let them float and sometimes let them move through the air, but in ways they hadn’t figured out how to control. Some that seemed to have powers, but not particularly useful powers, like the ability to kill houseplants. Some that didn’t seem to do anything.

And one that made his brother disappear. He was just gone. The main character couldn’t figure out how to bring him back. Was his brother dead?

Perhaps foolishly, the main character continued to experiment. And then one day, one of the objects took the main character and all the metal objects somewhere else.

Granted, just a sketch outline so far. Not even a name for the main character, let alone whether he’ll come to have an antagonist from the somewhere else. I probably need to read more Joseph Campbell before fleshing out this character.

I’ve written lots of short fiction, but longer forms have eluded me. I’ve started on novels more than once and hit brick walls. But this time around, I’ll take a stab at a novella.

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