You’re My Inspiration with Melissa Caruso

One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a new column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.

This week, we bring you a familiar face: Melissa Caruso, whose The Tethered Mage was May’s Book Club pick! Today, we’re celebrating the release of The Obsidian Tower, the first in a new trilogy set in the same world as The Tethered Mage, and it’s available now!

Building a Dream Team

When I was doing initial brainstorming for The Obsidian Tower, one of the very first elements I came up with was the idea for the Rookery, an international magic troubleshooting squad. I knew I wanted the series to revolve at least in part around a group whose job it was to avert magical disasters and clean up magical messes, swooping in to deal with strange and dangerous magics others might not be prepared to face.

This meant I had to build a team, and so I turned to SFF works with really great teams for inspiration in how to do it.

Heist stories are often all about building a team, and Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows was one of the first books I looked to as a great example of a fantastic fictional crew. The titular six are a dysfunctional assortment of wonderfully flawed and broken characters with conflicting goals and clashing personalities who nonetheless somehow manage to come together to form an incredible team.

The Rookery were supposed to have been together already for a while, though. When I thought of fictional groups who had worked together for years and already developed a deep and competent partnership, the first book that sprang to mind was Nicholas Eames’ Kings of the Wyld. Saga, the aging but legendary mercenary band reunited after decades apart, have deep and unbreakable bonds with each other, and you can see in how they interact the years of working together, the seamless teamwork, and the knowledge of each other that goes beyond friendship.

I was also watching The Expanse at the time I was brainstorming for The Obsidian Tower, so of course the crew of the Rocinante were another example I turned to for a wonderfully constructed team. They each have such incredibly distinct personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and approaches to problems. One of the great things about the Rocinante crew is that you have a pretty good idea how each of them will react to a given crisis, and sometimes you see it coming and you get that wonderful “uh oh, here he goes” feeling as if the characters were old friends (and in some cases, old friends who sometimes make dubious decisions under pressure).

Looking at these and other great teams collectively, I tried to figure out what made them so special, so I could draw on those qualities for inspiration as I crafted the Rookery. I realized there were a few things they had in common:

Everyone had their own specialties — particular skills they were good at, and roles they filled on the team. What’s more, each of them got their chance to shine doing their thing; each member of the team was not only useful, but vital. There’s something really satisfying in watching a group work competently together with each member performing their role. (Kings of the Wyld in particular does this as well as any book I’ve ever seen.)

Team dynamics were really important, but in each story some characters had particularly close or interesting relationships with each other. In the first seasons of The Expanse, my favorite relationship in the crew was the dynamic between Naomi and Amos, with Naomi acting almost as his guardian; watching that dynamic evolve and change was very cool. In Six of Crows, the relationship between Inej and Kaz, with all sorts of unspoken layers going on that one or both of them were in denial about at any given time, was fantastic. Certain pairs of characters might have a particular history, be especially close, or rub each other the wrong way, and that adds so much sense of depth to the group.

Distinguishing team voices was clearly really important. When you have the same group of characters talking and bantering together all the time, it can be easy for their dialogue to wind up blending together and falling into an indistinguishable rhythm. That’s not a problem with any of my inspirations; you could never mistake something Jasper says for something Nina says, or an Amos line for a Holden line, or be confused about whether the person talking was Clay Cooper or Moog.

Similarly, having each member of the team take a different approach to problems both creates interesting tensions and keeps the characters distinct. Impulsive versus cautious, ethical versus morally flexible, physical versus cerebral — there are lots of different axes on which characters’ approaches can differ, and for these great crews the characters definitely fell in different places on them. It kept their stories interesting because you never knew for sure who would wind up pushing the action in any given situation — and sometimes there might be conflict as those different approaches clashed.

So I tried to create a group where each character had their own skills and weaknesses, strengths and approaches. I gave the characters and the group a history, with some of them having secrets from or hidden layers of feelings for each other. I did my best to come up with unique voices and ways of acting for each member of the team. And I created particular dynamics between certain pairs, plotting out arcs not only for each individual character, but for key relationships within the team.

It was wonderful having such fantastic examples to draw on for inspiration, and it was really fun trying to consciously analyze these great teams, along with other classics like the Avengers, the six core ponies in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the crews in Firefly and Star Trek, the Crystal Gems in Steven Universe, the gang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and more!

What are your favorite fictional teams?

Melissa Caruso is the author of fantasy novels of intrigue, magic, murder, and explosions from Orbit Books, including the Swords & Fire trilogy (The Tethered Mage, The Defiant Heir, and The Unbound Empire) and The Obsidian Tower (Book One of Rooks & Ruin). Melissa’s debut, The Tethered Mage, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Morningstar Award in 2017. Melissa loves tea, adventure, and the great outdoors, and has been known to swordfight in ballgowns. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two superlative daughters, and assorted pets.

Author Photo by Erin Re Anderson

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