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Erie Isles: A Story Guidance Poll
5 years ago
General
Thoughts, and various mad ramblings. I normally wouldn't ask for guidance in a series, but I'm at an impasse with my series, In The Mist Of The Erie Isle (https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/mantridbrizon/folder/765488/In-The-Mist-Of-The-Erie-Isles). Allow me to explain a few things...
First, the way I write stories may or may not be unique. Story plots come to me randomly, as I'm driving or walking or taking a shower or playing the drums. I make notes and formulate plots for series and episodes whenever I have more time. That's basically how all of my stories are born. For character inspiration, if I don't already have something in mind, I'll dig through my vast collection of anthro pictures, which I've been meticulously gathering and sorting since about 2005. I'll look for a character that strikes me, with a picture of the world in my head as a background. Most of the time, the image is over a decade old, saved way back when I was in my late teens or early twenties. They almost always have no visible name or even a collection of art posted by the original owner(s) or artist(s). Sometimes, there isn't even an artist's signature in the image! Some aren't, of course, being well-known and established characters (like Sarvah, from Hejira), but most are just a bunch of one-offs that I thought were sexy. That's how about 80% of my female characters are made. The males I always create from scratch, because I'm heterosexual and only collect females. :3 For wholly original characters, like April from the Macro Universe, Lutala from the Erie Isles, or Zakera from The Seventh Realm, I may either ask an artist to design the skin, based on what I imagine for the race's template, or I actually have a design and color palette in my head and tell them what to draw. April and Zakera were both 100% my design, while Lutala was made from scratch by a friend of mine with actual talent, and I waited for her to finish the sketch before describing Lutala in the story. Fun fact, the artist who made Lutala is the same one who drew Zakera, and also designed Darius and Koleta from the The Seventh Realm. All that being said, when I'm ready to write, I create a folder for the story and make copies of the inspiring/commissioned pictures into that folder, all renamed to match their characters. The names I just make up by stringing syllables together, a joke I even added with Mairlynn's fake name in Episode 43. For anyone who's curious, the reason I don't often reproduce names is because I have a "name bin", a .txt file where real-life and fantasy/sci-fi names are stored. Names that I've written down are still available, and once I use them for a character, they're erased from the list of options so I don't reuse them.
Anyway, a few days ago I found a character in the Erie Isles folder that I'd forgotten about! She's a sinister lizard/scalie who, in this universe, would be a Lahnyt hybrid complete with hair and elven ears. She was placed alongside other characters, some of whom aren't even introduced yet, but are planned. The problem with this character is that I'd forgotten about her and I've since written beyond the point of needing her, now I'm stuck between a literary rock and a hard place. To give some perspective, the character is a young, female, Lahnyt/Vizhek hybrid and a pirate Queen. She's a sociopathic woman who has a considerable sexual appetite, but a strict and somewhat contradictory "always faithful" code. She's a ruthless, violent, and cold-blooded monster, just like April was. She's also a Karma Houdini, meaning that I never designed her to get a comeuppance, because in real-life people often get away with things that they shouldn't. Her designated name is Morgala, a not-so-clever nod to a now famous pirate. She'd serve as an antagonist.
Without giving anything away, I do plan on expanding this universe in the same manner as volume V of The Seventh Realm; it'd be a "X years later" kind of thing, with all new but intertwined characters and a new mystery-thriller plot.
This is the "poll" part of this post! Should I consider...
1) Finding a way to add her to the current plot
2) Using her in the planned expansion story, which she was never a part of but easily could be
3) Erase her outright
I'm leaning toward option 2, because she's sexy and I like her, and because throwing her into the current plot would only be for arbitrary drama, which Erie Isles already has in abundance. She's no longer pertinent to this incarnation of the story, and could potentially ruin the dynamic between a certain group of already highly dramatic characters that I'm attached to, as evident by all of the art I'm buying. ;3 Still, I'm curious what those of you who actually read the story think.
First, the way I write stories may or may not be unique. Story plots come to me randomly, as I'm driving or walking or taking a shower or playing the drums. I make notes and formulate plots for series and episodes whenever I have more time. That's basically how all of my stories are born. For character inspiration, if I don't already have something in mind, I'll dig through my vast collection of anthro pictures, which I've been meticulously gathering and sorting since about 2005. I'll look for a character that strikes me, with a picture of the world in my head as a background. Most of the time, the image is over a decade old, saved way back when I was in my late teens or early twenties. They almost always have no visible name or even a collection of art posted by the original owner(s) or artist(s). Sometimes, there isn't even an artist's signature in the image! Some aren't, of course, being well-known and established characters (like Sarvah, from Hejira), but most are just a bunch of one-offs that I thought were sexy. That's how about 80% of my female characters are made. The males I always create from scratch, because I'm heterosexual and only collect females. :3 For wholly original characters, like April from the Macro Universe, Lutala from the Erie Isles, or Zakera from The Seventh Realm, I may either ask an artist to design the skin, based on what I imagine for the race's template, or I actually have a design and color palette in my head and tell them what to draw. April and Zakera were both 100% my design, while Lutala was made from scratch by a friend of mine with actual talent, and I waited for her to finish the sketch before describing Lutala in the story. Fun fact, the artist who made Lutala is the same one who drew Zakera, and also designed Darius and Koleta from the The Seventh Realm. All that being said, when I'm ready to write, I create a folder for the story and make copies of the inspiring/commissioned pictures into that folder, all renamed to match their characters. The names I just make up by stringing syllables together, a joke I even added with Mairlynn's fake name in Episode 43. For anyone who's curious, the reason I don't often reproduce names is because I have a "name bin", a .txt file where real-life and fantasy/sci-fi names are stored. Names that I've written down are still available, and once I use them for a character, they're erased from the list of options so I don't reuse them.
Anyway, a few days ago I found a character in the Erie Isles folder that I'd forgotten about! She's a sinister lizard/scalie who, in this universe, would be a Lahnyt hybrid complete with hair and elven ears. She was placed alongside other characters, some of whom aren't even introduced yet, but are planned. The problem with this character is that I'd forgotten about her and I've since written beyond the point of needing her, now I'm stuck between a literary rock and a hard place. To give some perspective, the character is a young, female, Lahnyt/Vizhek hybrid and a pirate Queen. She's a sociopathic woman who has a considerable sexual appetite, but a strict and somewhat contradictory "always faithful" code. She's a ruthless, violent, and cold-blooded monster, just like April was. She's also a Karma Houdini, meaning that I never designed her to get a comeuppance, because in real-life people often get away with things that they shouldn't. Her designated name is Morgala, a not-so-clever nod to a now famous pirate. She'd serve as an antagonist.
Without giving anything away, I do plan on expanding this universe in the same manner as volume V of The Seventh Realm; it'd be a "X years later" kind of thing, with all new but intertwined characters and a new mystery-thriller plot.
This is the "poll" part of this post! Should I consider...
1) Finding a way to add her to the current plot
2) Using her in the planned expansion story, which she was never a part of but easily could be
3) Erase her outright
I'm leaning toward option 2, because she's sexy and I like her, and because throwing her into the current plot would only be for arbitrary drama, which Erie Isles already has in abundance. She's no longer pertinent to this incarnation of the story, and could potentially ruin the dynamic between a certain group of already highly dramatic characters that I'm attached to, as evident by all of the art I'm buying. ;3 Still, I'm curious what those of you who actually read the story think.
- Peter