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Story evolution.

ascanius

Inkling
I've been thinking recently about how my story has evolved as ime passed

When I first starting creating the seedling of my story I was in my early teens and it mostly revolved around drawings of places and very quickly the ideas grew. I had dragons, every mythological creature from the greek myths, elves, dwarvs, talking hares and hedgehogs the size of a man. My original story was a mix between the redwall series, the lord of the rings, wheel of time, narnia, harry potter, and almost every other book I read around that time, plus about four kitchen sinks and WOW. I had the completely impossible geography, with mountains greater than 10 km in height, mountains on gargantuan trees, canyons the size of my mountains etc. Interestingly I kept my dragons small, about the size of a rhino. Don't get me wrong somethings didn't make it into the sinks, like floating cities wich just seemed too far fetched though a mountain range on a tree.....

Looking back and comparing what I have now, I barely have a kitchen much less a kitchen sink. It's funny too because the more I removed the more complicated my story has become. I think mostly the big thing that kicked this all off was my shift from the all important quest, that was my plot at the time, a quest for the powerful artifact to save the world, to the characters. Every now and again I still try to find ways to fit some of my childish ideas into the story, I really like the talking hares and still working on it.... I do have minitaurs so it's not too much to add talkign hares.

My story has evolved into a completely knew and unkown beast that left it's ancestrial roots long forgotten. How have your stories evolved as you evolved and matured as a writer or through the passage of time?
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I've not been writing for as long as I imagine you might have, but my story evolved quite a bit too as I learned. Originally it was just meant as a simple boy-meets-girl romance, but as I progressed it became a lot more than that. I figured just doing a little bit of romance would be simple and easy, but the characters grew and the story developed some undertones that are a lot more serious than just a bit of a carefree holiday love affair.
 

Helen

Inkling
How have your stories evolved as you evolved and matured as a writer or through the passage of time?

Well, my characters and themes have become richer and more complex. I'm not sure complexity is such a good thing though, in terms of concisely getting the point across.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Very much like you, ascanius. My story had been all about plot, because this story was to establish some fundamentals for later books. I wasn't surprised to find characters taking over because I knew from the start story has to be about people.

The big wrestle for me has been how to develop character arcs in a context where the story arc is more or less fixed. The entire novel cannot span more than a few months so, among other things, that conditions how relationships develop. The enemy continually advances until the very end, which has other implications.

The constraints come mainly from writing a historical fantasy. The novel has evolved, but its DNA is pretty much set.
 
The story I'm working on right now is actually a prequel to a series that I've been wanting to write for a long time. But I don't feel I'm up to writing the complex magic and politics. So I've decided to tell the story of my MC's mentor first, to get a feel for the world and to practice writing fantasy. Also, I had a pretty good plotline for the story, and I didn't want it to go to waste.

As to story evolution, I used to play stories in my head that had completely overpowered heroes that kicked ass everywhere they went and were just plain invincible. It's really fun to fantasize someone who has the world in the palm of his hand. But now I realize that if you make someone obscenely powerful, you need an obscenely difficult task/enemies for him to complete/fight. That's where my knowledge falls short.

The end goal of what I want to write won't change, but the route I take to get there is by no means set in stone.
 

Edankyn

Minstrel
The end goal of what I want to write won't change, but the route I take to get there is by no means set in stone.
This fits my story's evolution perfectly. I've had the same end game in mind for several years. Even though the journey has taken many different iterations, it has always led to the same (or substantially similar) conclusion.
 

ascanius

Inkling
I've not been writing for as long as I imagine you might have, but my story evolved quite a bit too as I learned. Originally it was just meant as a simple boy-meets-girl romance, but as I progressed it became a lot more than that. I figured just doing a little bit of romance would be simple and easy, but the characters grew and the story developed some undertones that are a lot more serious than just a bit of a carefree holiday love affair.

Initianally I had no romance. Then I started reading greek mythology and really like the Persephone and Hadies dynamic and that's, I think, the point whre I started to leave my original story and take a strong shift towards character.

Well, my characters and themes have become richer and more complex. I'm not sure complexity is such a good thing though, in terms of concisely getting the point across.

Yes simetimes the complexity is a reall PAIN to keep organized, something I'm terrible at. It seems stupid but I take note about what I write.

The story I'm working on right now is actually a prequel to a series that I've been wanting to write for a long time. But I don't feel I'm up to writing the complex magic and politics. So I've decided to tell the story of my MC's mentor first, to get a feel for the world and to practice writing fantasy. Also, I had a pretty good plotline for the story, and I didn't want it to go to waste.

As to story evolution, I used to play stories in my head that had completely overpowered heroes that kicked ass everywhere they went and were just plain invincible. It's really fun to fantasize someone who has the world in the palm of his hand. But now I realize that if you make someone obscenely powerful, you need an obscenely difficult task/enemies for him to complete/fight. That's where my knowledge falls short.

The end goal of what I want to write won't change, but the route I take to get there is by no means set in stone.

I totally had my entire cast as indestructable super people too. I then realized I had no story that way.

Very much like you, ascanius. My story had been all about plot, because this story was to establish some fundamentals for later books. I wasn't surprised to find characters taking over because I knew from the start story has to be about people.

The big wrestle for me has been how to develop character arcs in a context where the story arc is more or less fixed. The entire novel cannot span more than a few months so, among other things, that conditions how relationships develop. The enemy continually advances until the very end, which has other implications.

The constraints come mainly from writing a historical fantasy. The novel has evolved, but its DNA is pretty much set.

The thing was the most difficult for me, and still is, is the end game or goal. I started off knowing the begining and the midle but the end never seemed important because well the good guys win, Duh!

One major way my story changed is it got a lot darker, yet I have those little moments that pull it together....I hope. My grandmother has some great stories that I've slipped in and I'm hoping it will balance things out.
 
For me the problem is that the end goal I have in mind is both complex and it actually consists of two parts. I'll try to explain in brief.

I want my MC to be obscenely powerful. I don't want any coming of age story. He's a trained assassin that's turned into the upper ring magic user through a ritual (let's keep it at that). He has a plan, but to achieve his plan he needs more power. He does this by linking giant power sources to his being. This makes him more powerful and more unstable. Eventually he manages to make his plan happen. The plan is to magically create a transport network that is secret and spans the entire main continent. Compare it to one party in the world having access to airplane travel, without the others knowing that it exists. It's a major advantage.

That's part one. Part two is using this network to move around troops and quickly gather information to slow down and sour any military action. The end goal is to reduce war to struggles between professional armies on strictly agreed upon areas. A type of controlled warfare over small stakes.

If you weigh this story in your head, I think we can agree that part one is not that difficult to work out and pull off. But part two is a nightmare. There's so many dimensions involved in this type of control that his organisation would need multiple branches (to get funding, to get information, to train and use the military, to do research). Problem is that he can't pull all of that out of his ass. I'm very interested in writing a story that's believable within the rules that are set.

So I decided to give anybody who underwent the ritual to become a magi would have a long lifespan, long enough to set up a functional form of this kind of enterprise.

Writing a story that encompasses a full world is beyond my capabilities though, so that's why I decided to zoom in on my MC's mentor so I could train my writing and already flesh out the world some. My end goal remains years away in the future though. But it's not a bad thing to have a long term goal.
 

Bluesboy

Dreamer
My story has evolved significantly since its first incarnation. It started as a story about twin assassin brothers, their dialogues based very much on my and my brother's banter and I wrote about 3,000 words and that was it. I made it up just on a whim, wrote it in 4 hours and it was supposed to be a sample of my writing when I was considering applying for a creative writing programme.

I really liked it, but when I tried to continue however, my attempts led nowhere, because I couldn't develop the idea further and all I managed to do was a cliche after cliche, so eventually I abandoned the story altogether. It got me into reading history books, in desperate need of inspiration and now I took some basic ideas from certain not very well known historical periods. Some people straight out of history have incredibly gripping and interesting lives and so I adopted the key elements taken from those and put them into the context of my wrold.

My main problem now is that I've done a lot of historical research and it's affecting my worldbuilding all the time, making me go back and redo a lot of what I've already written.

The basic premise of the story has stayed the same, though. I want my characters to go through harships connected to my areas of interest, to spark a debate and all that. The thing that's changed and I keep refining is the setting of the story.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
This fits my story's evolution perfectly. I've had the same end game in mind for several years. Even though the journey has taken many different iterations, it has always led to the same (or substantially similar) conclusion.
I am almost the same. There are certain themes that continue to stick in my imagination, but molding them into a finished story that I'm willing to publish is another beast entirely. It's almost as if I'm always searching for the perfect story to build around my longstanding special interests.
 
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