On the Origin of Stories

This is modified from my original post to the Fangs, Fur, & Fey LJ community.

I think my favorite stories to work on are ones that come to me in pieces, where I get a glimpse of something here (like a character, an image, a title, etc.) and I get a glimpse of something there. For a while I think these glimpses have nothing to do with each other--and for the most part they don't.

Then something happens where I need to work on an actual story (rather than filling notebooks with random notes), and all these different, previously unconnected pieces just fit together.

So I can start with an opening line ("An angel and a demon can never be friends."), an image (all the fishes gathering at spawning time), a title (Dragon Rose: A Dragon's Love Story), a character (Pai's drawing, Rose and Striker from role-playing games), or a "what if . . ." (What if you made this a sci fi?, What would it be like to live in a world where . . . ?, or What if he didn't know that she [his girlfriend] was the supernatural he's supposed to be hunting?), but usually one of these isn't enough to get the full story. Also, I mostly rely on the "what ifs" to fill in the missing pieces of character and plot.

Because I know the origin of Pai's story the best, I will use it as an example of how one of my stories came into being.

When I was in 11th grade, I drew a picture of a girl wearing a Chinese-style dress, wore a cape, and had a sword. I named her Pai after a video game character I used to always play at my friend's house, but for the life of me can't remember the game. At the time, I think I had some notion of turning her into a superhero.

A few years later, I got this idea for a "magical girl" story (which is a Japanese manga/anime genre about a young girl who gets magical powers and can be like a superhero). Around the same time, I wanted to write about a character who had a sleepwalking dream, much like my own experience. So I named this "magical girl" story "Nothing Else Matters" in memory of the boy I had the dream about.

The story didn't really go anywhere. Fast forward a couple years to my creative writing class in my last year of college where I needed a short story to write. I had planned on working on another short story, but I got this image of a teenage girl holding a sword after a long battle with blood running down her hands, but not from the actual fighting.

My mind placed all these things together, so when it came time to write the short story (which was really chapter 1 of my new WIP), everything just fell into place. The short story was titled "Esper" (a type of magical girl who uses psychic powers or has ESP), though the title of the book changed to "Bleeding Hands". I didn't like "Bleeding Hands" as a title, because while it captures that image I had, I don't think it sounds good, plus I wanted to continue with the Metallica-themed title since I was dropping "Nothing Else Matters". So the new title is "No Leaf Clover" which I think fits the theme or the events much better.

Writing Goals

While I could have kept this post with my Clichés in Fantasy post, I decided to make a new one. Though this is really more just a note to myself of what I should be working on.

1. Finish writing, rewriting, and editing Kitsune, volume one of the Fox Chronicles. Write the synopsis, cover letter, bio, etc. for submitting Chapters 1 - 3 to the SHOMI Fiction Writing Contest by April 15. Type, rewrite, and edit during May and June (possibly July) of 2008. If SHOMI doesn't accept it, then I'll send it to agents and editors.

2. Rewrite and edit book one of the Forsaken trilogy, Like a Frothing Rabid Dog is Adorable. Rewrite the synopsis to match the edits made to the book. Once Ayako is suitably YA or Rabid Dog is long enough to be an adult novel, I will return to submitting it to agents and editors. (In a way, I'd prefer to keep it short and make it more YA.)

3. Start something new. This all depends on where I'm at. If I'm still in Japan when all of this is done, I have only the beginnings of novel ideas and plots that I started for the SHOMI contest (and ditched in favor of Kitsune). But if I'm back in Minnesota, than I have a whole slew of over books and novel ideas to go through.

a. Kerrianne May's story. I love the idea of the Intragalactic Fighting Tournament. And I think this story has a lot of potential. Also, I want to find out more about Lucius Ambrose.

b. I'm also curious to explore the new world of Aurora Dawn and Kala Black with gaias and ganas, and exorcists and revenants (their version of vampires).

c. Or I might return to the world of Whale Song and Dragon Rose, now that it seems like I've gained enough distance from the original messed up plots to pull them apart and reform them into something really good.

4. Admittedly, I would really like to skip #3 in favor of getting more than just four or five chapters done on No Leaf Clover. But that'll only happen if I'm in MN.

Clichés in Fantasy

I just remembered that Dragon Rose also had a talking cat, named Caabba, who, along with the help of the prince, helped my heroine realize her true destiny.

This has kind of got me thinking about why I stopped writing this book in the first place.

1. I had no plot for it. And what outline I had written, which I was certain would solve all of my story problems, was in some blue spiral-bound notebook that has since then disappeared. Of course, I tried writing a new outline, but it just didn't seem the same because it wasn't that outline.

2. It was about a 17 year old girl named Allokohottí (Alloko for short), who had no history prior to walking into the first scene of the book, which was a mock combat scene with the prince Doda. And for some reason, this lack of a background never bothered me, but there was no explanation for why she didn't have one.

3. Even though Doda was the prince, he couldn't stand politics, and would rather spend his time in the library reading history books. And then he found the book that would draw him into the plot. It was an unnamed book, but it talked about the true history of dragons, the birth of Dragon Rose, Dragon Lady (the woman who rescued her since she was a runt and most likely wouldn't have survived her first fight), Dragon Lord/Master (the human form of the dragon who trained her to be a good fighter), and the true identity of Dragon Lord/Master, who turned out to be one of the Keepers of the Old Ways and as such was forbidden to fall in love with Dragon Rose. This book also talked about the last days of the planet Dreyverzon and the secret history of how his people came to be on his own planet. So Doda sets off on this quest to help Alloko (whom he has a crush on) to realize her destiny.

4. As it turns out, Alloko is the reincarnation of Dragon Rose, cursed by Dragon Lord/Master all those years ago, all because he fell in love with a non-Royal dragon. Only, Doda discovers that Dragon Rose was in fact a Royal dragon, and the last remaining heir of the original dragon pair (so the only Royal alive).

5. There was something to do with the king being evil (which Doda was oblivious to), and some rebellion with the leader of some cult (because she liked the king, only he was unfaithful to his wife to be with her, and in the end went back to the queen). Yeah, I wasn't really sure where I was going with that.

6. Once Alloko and Doda and Caabba finally made it to the planet (as they realized that Dreyverzon is just one of its three moons), they only have a few days left if they want to break this curse. (It's an astronomical event that occurs once every couple hundred thousand years or something.)

7. When they finally break the curse, Alloko is transformed into her full dragon glory. And Kalidor's entrapped spirit breaks free to realize that the one he loved was really a Royal, and that he had only cursed himself for the last however long for not being able to be with his one true love.

8. Now, as a romantic at heart, and since I had subtitled this A Dragon's Love Story, I always wanted Alloko to be together with Kalidor (the Keeper). Only I felt that there would be a lot of feminist people saying, "Hey, that guy's a complete jerk. He curses her, doesn't do anything to try to make it right, and then she still agrees to be with him in the end, even though all that stuff happened in a past life." Which got me thinking (that, and when my husband read it, he said he always thought Alloko and Doda would be together) who should Alloko end up with?

Now, I think I could find satisfaction if Alloko ended up with Doda and left Kalidor to his misery (hey, he earned it). But at the time, I was so set on Alloko, after becoming Dragon Rose in all her Royal dragon glory, to just go with her dragon lover. And some how that didn't sit well with me.

But back to being cliché in fantasy. Aside from the plot reasons for why I stopped writing the book, there were also some cliché reasons for why I stopped writing, or at least what I felt was cliché with my story.

1. It was about dragons. Yeah, you can't have a story titled Dragon Rose: A Dragon's Love Story without it being about dragons. But I also thought dragons were really overdone at the time. At the same time, I hadn't read many dragon books because they just didn't interest me (either the author's writing style or the plot or something), which was why I started Dragon Rose in the first place.

2. (While I didn't think this at the time, I sort of think this now.) It also had a talking cat. Actually when I first wrote this story, I thought a talking cat was something new and original. Now it seems like everyone has a talking cat.

Though really, thinking back on all of this, I don't think these two things were nearly as cliché as I thought they were at the time. Yes, a lot of people write about dragons. Yes, a lot of people include talking cats in their stories. But that isn't enough to make the whole story cliché.

In a way, it makes me really upset with myself that I didn't stay with this story. Because looking at some of the other books out there, I see bits and pieces that tell me this story could have been popular. I mean, there are romance novels about dragon shapeshifters, and my dragons could shapeshift (well, only the Royals and the Keepers could). Plus, there seems to be a lot of people who like talking cats (though, there are also those who seem to hate them).

All I can really learn from this is to not stop working on Kitsu's story until I get it finished. Otherwise, in five years time, I'll feel the same way about Kitsu's story as I feel about Dragon Rose.

The Early Works

In attempting to answer someone's question at the Den of Shadows, I started thinking about some of my earliest novels.

The second novel I wrote was a trilogy called Whale Song. (I wrote the novel over the course of three spiral bound notebooks and wrote "to be continued" at the end of each book.) Whale Song was about the alien world of Avvvingteesttia, and the Avvlings who came to Earth seeking help for their dying people. The main character was the eldest Avvling princess who, following in her mother's footsteps, came to Earth to request aid. Only when her mother came, she never returned. So along with looking for her two sisters, she also needed to look for her mother, but in the process of trying to save her people, she fell in love with a human boy.

It's actually kind of hard for me to make this story sound coherent since each notebook told it's own storyline, and then because I lost the first and third notebooks, but really wanted to try publishing the story, I tried delving into what the political life was like on Avvingteesttia with no queen, since it was a matriarchal society, and now that all the women of the ruling family where running around Earth, what was happening to their father? Some how in the process, I gave them an evil aunt who was a witch named Hexe. I don't know why, I just figured I needed a villain.

This is actually the most coherent this story has sounded, and thinking about it in these very simple terms (compared to the mess I made of the novel when trying to "fix" it), it makes me think that I could actually rework this story. The plotline would need some reworking since I only have part 2 of 3. And Hexe would be dropped.

Maybe like so many other writers, a part of me does actually want to see my "first" book in print.

The first book I wrote was called Running Water and started with the wonderful (note the sarcasm) opening line of "It was a dark and stormy night . . .". It was also my first attempt at writing a short story outside of school work, and it exploded into a novel. Yeah, Running Water has no chance of ever making it to my list of novels I want to go back to.

Though Running Water wasn't actually the first book I wrote. The first-fist book I wrote was in first grade, and I owe much of my writing to my first grade teacher, Ms Ann Hall, who helped me every step of the way, or at least when I had plot problems. And the second-first book that I wrote was called Lolo and Popo's Adventure, which I wrote in sixth grade. Originally I wanted to expand a short story I had written for the class into a book, but my teacher, Ms Nelson, encouraged me to write a new story. So I wrote one about sister chimpanzees who were trying to save their rain forest home, which just happened to be the Amazon because I didn't realize Africa had any rain forests, or that chimpanzees actually lived in Africa and not South America. Since then, I've learned to do research.

The third book I wrote was called Dragon Rose; A Dragon's Love story. It was only the prequel to Whale Song because they were set in the same world, though originally Dragon Rose was in it's own world. I decided to combine them to use shared world history. But Dragon Rose is set primarily in the ancient past plus some of the "modern day" of Dreyverzon. In a way, Dragon Rose explains Avvingteesttia's history, but I don't think that bit of history is important to modern day Avvingteesttia to be in Whale Song, especially since most of Whale Song takes place on Earth.

It was about the time that the Avvling princesses' mother had the spirit of a tiger and if they wanted to save their mother, they would have to save her tiger first that I realized I needed to figure out who these "animal people" were. While they still fascinate me, and I would like to give them center stage in a story, I haven't yet. Mostly, I became preoccupied with dragons and the legend and the curse, and how the history of Dreyverzon coincided with the history of Avvingteesttia. And then the story just puttered out. Though I have a friend who, every now and then, asks, How is that dragon story of yours coming along? To which I reply, You still remember that thing? And she says, Of course. I loved that story.

So maybe at some point when I want to take a break from the supernatural Realm of Shadows, I might get around to re-visiting the more fantastical world of dragons and shapeshifters, of legends and curses, and of the horrors of modern day science, and alien princesses falling in love with human boys. Theirs is a world that really is lighter and fluffier than the Shadows.

One thing that carries over between the two worlds is that they both have strong magic, not so friendly humans, and shapeshifters. Yes, I'll admit it, my dragons were actually shapeshifters, or at least the more powerful ones were (there were actually three types of dragons in that world - dragons, the Royals, and the Keepers of the Old Ways).