Now, I want to let loose on Aouthentica.
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| The lion is the national animal of Aouthentica, as the Arions have ruled it for several hundred years, and "Ari" means "Lion" (e.g. Ariel means "God's Lioness") |
I started it back in October of 2007, I believe. I had the exact date at one point, but unfortunately I lost it. So, 2007, which would put me at about 12 years old.
I called it Village of Milliayn, and it was about (shocker!) the village of Milliayn. Here's a brief synopsis from the very beginning of it, which, as
"The village of Milliayn is filled with people with a common gift, the gift of technology.
They live in a land called Aothentica. They were the pioneers of technology. That is until someone else came to rule.
As a young child Villen was expected to be a prodigy in technology, like the other children of Aothentica. From Kindergarten through College, Villen could never remember what the difference was between a hard drive and a floppy drive.
Villen vowed to rid Aothentica of technology, and what better way to do that then become the Emperor of Aothentica?"
First of all, the resulting plot line was very flawed. Especially as the good guys were equipped with flying motorcycles, and laser guns. Oh, and incineration beams.
They live in a land called Aothentica. They were the pioneers of technology. That is until someone else came to rule.
As a young child Villen was expected to be a prodigy in technology, like the other children of Aothentica. From Kindergarten through College, Villen could never remember what the difference was between a hard drive and a floppy drive.
Villen vowed to rid Aothentica of technology, and what better way to do that then become the Emperor of Aothentica?"
First of all, the resulting plot line was very flawed. Especially as the good guys were equipped with flying motorcycles, and laser guns. Oh, and incineration beams.
Why were they holed up in one little corner of the country if they had superior weaponry?
No clue.
Why was Rienna previously a fashion designer?
Probably because I thought it sounded cool at the time.
Why didn't Jrew just lead them on an attack and kill the evil king (Villen)?
He did. In 14 pages the storyline began and ended.
I kind of left it for a while, then came back and began adding on. By page 15 I had decided to jump it ahead a year. Kind of a little in-story reboot. The writing quality jumps visibly.
Jrew was suddenly, randomly, coincidentally discovered to be the nephew of the previous king (Tomeas, whose current incarnation is Avigdor).
And guess who figured it out? Arron. Who is still Arron now. But he's only mentioned by name twice. I kept going on the story for another 123 pages, but it was difficult to keep the story going as I had to make all sorts of little changes and leaps in logic, and it just wasn't working very well.
The villain (King Villen) would've had to go against the convictions that made him take over in the first place in order to try to defeat the good guys. Swords really don't work very well against incineration guns. So he had these things called hoodies which were
"The best computer experts he [Villen] can find and they wear those odd costumes to scare people off".
The hoodies, of course, wore hoods. But there's another fallacy in the plot. Where did Villen find all these computer experts if he's had them outlawed?
Oh! And there was the Filt metal.
“Filt metal. It absorbs lasers of all known types, including incinerators.”
Jrew explains to his enemy in the middle of a fight. *facepalm* Of course, immediately after, there was this little gem:
The hoodie flicked his wrist. Suddenly the scimitar glowed red. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He said, and jumped off the cart. Swinging the scimitar he sliced the shafts completely off. “We call it a lightning rod. It too is made of filt. Only engrained in it are bare electric wires. It has several different uses, Most of which I intend to use very soon!”
He pointed it at Ashley and pressed a button on the handle. The lightning rod zapped and a large lightning ball shot from the sword toward her. Ashley managed to flip out of the way in time. The hoodie laughed maniacally.
Eventually I realized that the base of the story was flawed pretty badly. A guy hates technology so he takes over a country. It could be interesting, but I gave it a shot and I couldn't pull it off.
So I wiped it out and started over. Three or four times in a row.
See, I have this affliction where I can't write a story (or at least this story) without a complete plot line first and I'm not very good at getting my plot lines completed. I get halfway through, then get so excited with my characters and the story that I start writing, but I run into plot holes, so I try to go back to the plot line, but it's boring now, so I lose interest and leave it for a few months (or years). Then when I come back I swear to myself that I will write out the entire plot line now and the whole process repeats.
My biggest problem right now is that I don't know what the climax will be. I know how I want it to end (or at least I have a vague idea), but I'm not sure how they're going to get to the end. I would estimate that I've got about 80-85% of the plot worked out in my head or on paper. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
Anyway. After several lots of starts, restarts and false starts, I began the version (on 8/6/10) that I called The Final Book, because I was tired of rewriting everything so often and I declared that this would be the very last incarnation!
The Final Book was/is much much closer to what I have now than the original. In it, Jrew and the reader know from the beginning that he is the nephew of the last king and the only surviving heir to the Aouthentican throne. I think this was also the first book where I started spelling Aouthentica with a "u" instead of my original spelling "Aothentica". (The pronunciation is supposed to be Ow-thent-ika , not Aw-thent-ika).
And I backed off a bit on the mythical technology so there were no more flying motorcycles or incinerations. But they did still have laser rifles and some other pretty advanced stuff that has since been cut.
Also, in this one, Milliayn was still part of Aouthentica, instead of being in the country next door. But it was too difficult to make that work. Why wouldn't the villain king (Now Talman Perdant) just bomb them into oblivion or send a strike force in to rid himself of the bothersome heir? Or maybe he didn't know about them. Which didn't make much sense either. So that went out.
Strangely enough, of all the things I've cut out, moving Milliayn to Bairek and getting rid of the laser guns top the list of most difficult things to remove. Mostly because it had been that way since the beginning, and to change it rocked my fictional world. After that would probably be any name changes, since when you're reading a book you really see a character through their name. Imagine if it were Henry Potter and the Socerer's stone. Even for people who haven't read the books, that's got to just seem wrong. Harry's name is Harry and it always will be and if it were anything else, it might've been a very different book.
A couple name changes:
Ondray to Cam
Kourtnye to Cara
Rhyan to Ryan
Zamuel to Samuel to Luke to Luc
Tomeas to ??? to Avigdor
Rienna Ninya to Rienna Lee
Grennid to Triennia (City in Aouthentica)
Villen to Talman Perdant to Talman Arion
A couple other places got their names changed, but that wasn't as traumatizing to me as changing character names. Unfortunately, I think there might have to be a few more name changes before I finally finish (I'm kind of dreading finishing, as that will mean my characters will have a definite story and I won't be able to play around with them in my head anymore. Writing can be like playing dolls or house for me.). Aouthentica may eventually be completely renamed, which I'm having trouble making myself consider, again because that's the way it's always been. And Cerra (Sarah). She might have to have her name changed. Which is a horrible concept to me, but if it's too weird, it may have to be done. (Check out the poll on the sidebar to help me decide).
Well, I've got to wrap this up, even though I think I could keep talking about Aouthentica for hours and hours. I hope this conveys how much I absolutely love this story, because of all the novels I've started, this one is my favorite.
Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!
-Trinity
(Picture attribute: Longai.devianart)
The villain (King Villen) would've had to go against the convictions that made him take over in the first place in order to try to defeat the good guys. Swords really don't work very well against incineration guns. So he had these things called hoodies which were
"The best computer experts he [Villen] can find and they wear those odd costumes to scare people off".
The hoodies, of course, wore hoods. But there's another fallacy in the plot. Where did Villen find all these computer experts if he's had them outlawed?
Oh! And there was the Filt metal.
“Filt metal. It absorbs lasers of all known types, including incinerators.”
Jrew explains to his enemy in the middle of a fight. *facepalm* Of course, immediately after, there was this little gem:
The hoodie flicked his wrist. Suddenly the scimitar glowed red. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He said, and jumped off the cart. Swinging the scimitar he sliced the shafts completely off. “We call it a lightning rod. It too is made of filt. Only engrained in it are bare electric wires. It has several different uses, Most of which I intend to use very soon!”
He pointed it at Ashley and pressed a button on the handle. The lightning rod zapped and a large lightning ball shot from the sword toward her. Ashley managed to flip out of the way in time. The hoodie laughed maniacally.
Because, of course, evil people do things maniacally. Even evil people with glowing swords that shoot lightning balls.
Eventually I realized that the base of the story was flawed pretty badly. A guy hates technology so he takes over a country. It could be interesting, but I gave it a shot and I couldn't pull it off.
So I wiped it out and started over. Three or four times in a row.
See, I have this affliction where I can't write a story (or at least this story) without a complete plot line first and I'm not very good at getting my plot lines completed. I get halfway through, then get so excited with my characters and the story that I start writing, but I run into plot holes, so I try to go back to the plot line, but it's boring now, so I lose interest and leave it for a few months (or years). Then when I come back I swear to myself that I will write out the entire plot line now and the whole process repeats.
My biggest problem right now is that I don't know what the climax will be. I know how I want it to end (or at least I have a vague idea), but I'm not sure how they're going to get to the end. I would estimate that I've got about 80-85% of the plot worked out in my head or on paper. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
Anyway. After
The Final Book was/is much much closer to what I have now than the original. In it, Jrew and the reader know from the beginning that he is the nephew of the last king and the only surviving heir to the Aouthentican throne. I think this was also the first book where I started spelling Aouthentica with a "u" instead of my original spelling "Aothentica". (The pronunciation is supposed to be Ow-thent-ika , not Aw-thent-ika).
And I backed off a bit on the mythical technology so there were no more flying motorcycles or incinerations. But they did still have laser rifles and some other pretty advanced stuff that has since been cut.
Also, in this one, Milliayn was still part of Aouthentica, instead of being in the country next door. But it was too difficult to make that work. Why wouldn't the villain king (Now Talman Perdant) just bomb them into oblivion or send a strike force in to rid himself of the bothersome heir? Or maybe he didn't know about them. Which didn't make much sense either. So that went out.
Strangely enough, of all the things I've cut out, moving Milliayn to Bairek and getting rid of the laser guns top the list of most difficult things to remove. Mostly because it had been that way since the beginning, and to change it rocked my fictional world. After that would probably be any name changes, since when you're reading a book you really see a character through their name. Imagine if it were Henry Potter and the Socerer's stone. Even for people who haven't read the books, that's got to just seem wrong. Harry's name is Harry and it always will be and if it were anything else, it might've been a very different book.
A couple name changes:
Ondray to Cam
Kourtnye to Cara
Rhyan to Ryan
Zamuel to Samuel to Luke to Luc
Tomeas to ??? to Avigdor
Rienna Ninya to Rienna Lee
Grennid to Triennia (City in Aouthentica)
Villen to Talman Perdant to Talman Arion
A couple other places got their names changed, but that wasn't as traumatizing to me as changing character names. Unfortunately, I think there might have to be a few more name changes before I finally finish (I'm kind of dreading finishing, as that will mean my characters will have a definite story and I won't be able to play around with them in my head anymore. Writing can be like playing dolls or house for me.). Aouthentica may eventually be completely renamed, which I'm having trouble making myself consider, again because that's the way it's always been. And Cerra (Sarah). She might have to have her name changed. Which is a horrible concept to me, but if it's too weird, it may have to be done. (Check out the poll on the sidebar to help me decide).
Well, I've got to wrap this up, even though I think I could keep talking about Aouthentica for hours and hours. I hope this conveys how much I absolutely love this story, because of all the novels I've started, this one is my favorite.
Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!
-Trinity
(Picture attribute: Longai.devianart)
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