Photo by paul voie from Pexels

Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

No fair, Clevenger, saying things better than I could. But then, he has the more organized mind. Me, I will organize what the topic is I am writing, but then Pants the whole article. For example, last week I said I was going to discuss what I was willing to change about the Stories of Sainan after I gave my anecdotes about compromising storytelling. I then told my story, and… nothing. I wrapped up and signed off, completely forgetting to mention what aspects of the story I thought were malleable. Such is the way my brain works.

The thing to remember is that no project can begin fully formed. It is going to start as a idea, to be merged with other ideas. Then you have to explore those ideas, either in an outline or just by writing and seeing where it takes you. Therefore, initial ideas are going to be expanded upon, changed into something new, or dropped for a better concept. I want to touch on some of the changes that happened on my side, with my initial ideas, so that I can hopefully leave a few crumbs for Clevenger to discuss.

One of the first things that happened was the realization that the three ACT story we were looking to tell was quickly becoming large enough to be a three BOOK story instead, later to be expanded into four books, as we realized that the middle was just too large. This was perfect fine, except that I was wanting to tell the story of a gay romance, and all act one did was set up the main character. The love interest was not introduced until the second act. But now that was the second book. This left me with wanting the series to be a love story, but no love story for the entire first book. Therefore, I delved more into Jesse’s past relationships, and with Clevenger’s encouragement, built up a bit of a crush for him in the first book. Something to let the reader know where this was going.

Just as quickly, characters began expanding as the story began being written. One of the things I was very cautious of when we first began writing, was how to handle female characters. I am not a woman, and I am not going to be one of these “Fedoras” who condescend to women. I am well aware that one of the biggest complaints of female readers is that men tend to butcher their female characters. Clevenger and I took this to heart and paid attention to the common caricatures and tropes of men writing women, and worked hard to do our women justice. Nowhere did this stand out more than with Thorn. I originally saw her as a hard-assed, ultra-feminist tomboy, there to use her Goblin race discrimination as a stand-in for real world misogyny. She was also there so that I could deliberately write a scene that would pass the Bechdel Test. I quickly found that this was placing a Fedora squarely on my head, began working to make Thorn a fully fleshed character. The hardline “ultra-feminist” angle was dropped as insensitive and pointless, and instead I worked on delving into her real personality. Now she is a beloved favorite character of both myself and Clevenger.

Speaking of favorite characters, we took another aspect of community advice to heart and began looking at two fun and cruel angles to add to our story, adding depth to our villains, and looking for ways to hurt said favorites. It raised our BBEGs up to the level of making them human, showing how they could view themselves as doing what is right from their own points of view. As for hurting the good guys? It’s fun to add drama to the story, fun to know we are gut punching our future readers, and fun to play god, deciding who lives, who dies, and who suffers lasting injuries.

There was one final thing that got added, that I think was a surprise to both myself and Clevenger, and that was when he started writing out scenes. From there, he really started proving himself a good writer. But I am going to let him tell you about that. So until next time,

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham