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Origin Chapters - Shiya
13 years ago
Slight spoilers warning for those who have not read the first four books of Raven Wolf.
When mapping out Raven Wolf and the progression of the series, book five was at first intended to consist and centre around Shiya and him bringing up many memories of his past that he would tell to Dolly, recalling events in an attempt to make sure he could still remember things even with his crystal that stored and helped him recall the events of his past gone. This an idea that I came up with very early on before even writing the series, but then decided to change during my writing of it.
During the writing of book for though I thought the plot of the upcoming book five over and decided not to go with what I had originally planed for it. Several reasons making me change my mind.
For one the book's plot ended up focusing around a very small and specific amount of characters MUCH more than it did the other characters in the series, and made events that featured the others seem out of place or awkward. It was like combining two books into one with the reader constantly jumping back and forth from story lines, if my readers would enjoy doing this or even want to I do not know, what I did know was that as I thought over the plot of book five it bothered me and made me uncomfortable with the way the story was flowing, as not only did it feel like I was trying to tell two separate stories at once while dealing with an already complicated story line, but that the story very much slowed down to accommodate to these additional stories that Shiya would tell. What's more for readers that were unfond of or didn't like Shiya, this book would possibly turn out to very tiring or boring to them because of the amount it dealt with him.
Another very large reason was because most of what happened in Shiya's past consisted of very dark events. I try to have a comfortable balance between both light hearted and dark events in Raven Wolf, but Shiya's past was filled with very few pleasant memories at all, and in turn made the book five much darker than the books before it, and possibly even more so than the future books in the series.
In the end I saw fit to change the vision I had for the fifth book, and I removed Shiya's tellings of his past, remapping the stories and events that I had planed and organized throughout the upcoming books, which of course stalled the writing of book five, as these stories very much consisted of most of the book.
It felt like a waste though to get rid of all the ideas, plotting and writing I had of Shiya's past, and thus the idea of 'Origin' chapters came to my head, I could put out all the work I did on Shiya's past without it going to waste, I could elaborate on it as well including little pieces of information or events that I had decided to not include because I was afraid they might make 'second story line' longer than the main story, and I even delve into the pasts of other characters in the series that I felt had interesting stories in their pasts worth hearing out.
Whether or not readers would be interested in such things I was unsure of, so in my previous journal I asked if readers would be interested in Origin chapters, and if so what characters they would be interested in hearing, and I received a fair amount of positive response (with readers curious about all kinds of characters) that in the end encouraged me to go through with the idea, and working through the notes that were originally supposed to consist of most of book five and changing them into the origin chapters that dealt specifically with Shiya's past, before and after becoming a source, becoming a member of the tribe that would one day be called by the name of Raven Wolf and of course the events in which the curse was placed on him and the tribe by the spirits and the events there after.
I hope you enjoy the first collection of origin chapters.
When mapping out Raven Wolf and the progression of the series, book five was at first intended to consist and centre around Shiya and him bringing up many memories of his past that he would tell to Dolly, recalling events in an attempt to make sure he could still remember things even with his crystal that stored and helped him recall the events of his past gone. This an idea that I came up with very early on before even writing the series, but then decided to change during my writing of it.
During the writing of book for though I thought the plot of the upcoming book five over and decided not to go with what I had originally planed for it. Several reasons making me change my mind.
For one the book's plot ended up focusing around a very small and specific amount of characters MUCH more than it did the other characters in the series, and made events that featured the others seem out of place or awkward. It was like combining two books into one with the reader constantly jumping back and forth from story lines, if my readers would enjoy doing this or even want to I do not know, what I did know was that as I thought over the plot of book five it bothered me and made me uncomfortable with the way the story was flowing, as not only did it feel like I was trying to tell two separate stories at once while dealing with an already complicated story line, but that the story very much slowed down to accommodate to these additional stories that Shiya would tell. What's more for readers that were unfond of or didn't like Shiya, this book would possibly turn out to very tiring or boring to them because of the amount it dealt with him.
Another very large reason was because most of what happened in Shiya's past consisted of very dark events. I try to have a comfortable balance between both light hearted and dark events in Raven Wolf, but Shiya's past was filled with very few pleasant memories at all, and in turn made the book five much darker than the books before it, and possibly even more so than the future books in the series.
In the end I saw fit to change the vision I had for the fifth book, and I removed Shiya's tellings of his past, remapping the stories and events that I had planed and organized throughout the upcoming books, which of course stalled the writing of book five, as these stories very much consisted of most of the book.
It felt like a waste though to get rid of all the ideas, plotting and writing I had of Shiya's past, and thus the idea of 'Origin' chapters came to my head, I could put out all the work I did on Shiya's past without it going to waste, I could elaborate on it as well including little pieces of information or events that I had decided to not include because I was afraid they might make 'second story line' longer than the main story, and I even delve into the pasts of other characters in the series that I felt had interesting stories in their pasts worth hearing out.
Whether or not readers would be interested in such things I was unsure of, so in my previous journal I asked if readers would be interested in Origin chapters, and if so what characters they would be interested in hearing, and I received a fair amount of positive response (with readers curious about all kinds of characters) that in the end encouraged me to go through with the idea, and working through the notes that were originally supposed to consist of most of book five and changing them into the origin chapters that dealt specifically with Shiya's past, before and after becoming a source, becoming a member of the tribe that would one day be called by the name of Raven Wolf and of course the events in which the curse was placed on him and the tribe by the spirits and the events there after.
I hope you enjoy the first collection of origin chapters.
