What I Want To Write (But Probably Won't)

[Umbra]

Now, if you know me, you know how my stories I usually go. I get a few chapters in, getting the story going, and then at some point during the middle I just can't go on any more. (Incidentally, on two separate occasions this has been just before a big reveal that would've brought some much-needed backstory into those worlds.) I'm much more of an "idea" person than I am an author, as it turns out, and naturally I have a few story concepts bouncing around in the back of my head that probably never will be typed down. These snippets could impossibly convey everything I have in mind for the stories, but if I could do that, I'd be writing them.

[size=5][b]The Prophecy of the Children[/b][/size]
I'm gonna start with the big one, simply because it has the most significance in regards to the others. This, friends, is my [i]magnum opus[/i], the [i]Legacy of the Tormentor [/i]fanfic, without all the YGO elements that the story had. The story was heavily rooted in the YGO "mythology" and was mostly based on the rivalry between two pantheons, the Egyptian Gods and the Wicked Gods, and a family that gets all too caught up in it. However, this time, it would be a trilogy. To go forward, we must go back. Things will go increasingly batshit as the series progresses, I warn you, but it will do so at a rather linear rate.

[b]The Inheritance of the World [/b]takes place almost entirely within the facilities of Crystalfound, an organization which, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, doesn't exist. The founder, Harold Leander, is a so-called "savant"; a human that has been gifted with extraordinary abilities. Over the past twenty-five years, he has been gathering other savants to fight an ever-rising threat. However, while the outside world is unaware of them, the real threat lies on the inside. By the start of the story, Harold has learned that one of the savants is, in fact, a "walker": an unpredictable beast that draws their powers from chaos and destruction.

[b]The Legacy of the Gods [/b]picks up nine months after Inheritance, and follows the life of Jonah Morae, seventeen and in love. However, things take a turn for the worse when his cousin Susannah shows up at their doorstep, claiming that her parents and brother were kidnapped by some unsavory group called "The Conclave". Soon, the Moraes find themselves entangled in a three-way conflict between the remainders of Crystalfound, the vicious Conclave of walkers, and the Vigilants, a group of humans that have harnessed their natural abilities. As it turns out, Jonah is the direct descendant of the god Hathoryn, whose family fled to Earth after their palace was sacked by the wicked Witmalacc and his dark army.

[b]The Doors of Darkness [/b]takes place a whole three years after Legacy, and once again picks up with Jonah Morae. Having surrendered his position to a relative, and played an instrumental role in the death of Witmalacc along with the destruction of his realm, he has gone to find the father he thought lost many years ago. At the age of ten, Jonah was told his father had died in a car accident on his way to work, but it is revealed at the end of Legacy that his father was alive as early as nine months prior. Following a trail of clues, he arrives at a small town somewhere in California, only to stumble upon a much larger conflict - one which he himself put into motion. The death of Witmalacc, who is revealed to be a so-called "Primordial", is unprecedented since the dawn of time. It is only by way of these Primordials that a much greater dark - Saeradis, the Deathfather - is held at bay, and order brought to the universe. Without Witmalacc to hold things in one piece, Saeradis starts tearing at existence itself, and these tears become doors into the darkness beyond.

[size=5]The Others[/size]
And now, on to the simpler and not-as-directly connected stories. However, what I want to accomplish with these stories is a concept I like to call "metafiction" or a story larger than a story, much like Stephen King does with the Dark Tower and the rest of his works. As such, the following stories exist in the same "cosmology" or mythology as the Prophecy trilogy, but follow different people and different stories.

[b]Warfields [/b]is set in Stockholm, Sweden, at the end of the world. We follow the life of Rebecca Fields as she starts her final year of high school. She has fallen out of touch with society since her mother's tragic death in a drunk driving accident seven years prior, and when her father resorted to deep alcoholism she bounced back and forth between different foster homes, never being able to stay for more than a few months. She encounters a mysterious man with a black guitar who seems to follow her wherever she goes, and he reeks of black magic and sulphur.

Parallel to Rebecca's story, we follow Andreas a year later, when the end has already passed. As one of Rebecca's few friends, he is determined to find her at any cost. He, too, begins to notice a man with a black guitar in the ruins of the city, and the familiar plink-plonk-sound of his strings pushes Andreas even further. The stories "converge" with the discovery of the man's identity, and the final meeting between Rebecca, Andreas and the Pale Prince.

[b]The Hollow Man [/b]is the story of Richard Howling, private investigator, and the mysterious Hollow Man murders. The town of Harrow Falls is struck by despair as several people are found dead in the streets at dawn, all with horrified expressions stuck to their faces. At first, suspicions are drawn to the nearby asylum, where as it turns out, one of the inmates has escaped recently, but as the investigation continues, the evidence starts pointing to someone within the bureau... Richard Howling himself.

[b]The Lady in Red [/b]is a classical tale of a haunted house, and five children breaching the boundary between the real and the unreal to cross into a world of untold adventures. Four of them make it out alive. When they return, the fifth has been forgotten by everyone else, as if he never existed in the first place. Many years later, the children, now adults, return to the house to find out what happened to their friend on that dark night so many years ago, and what really is the mystery of the Lady in Red.

[b]Those Less Fortunate[/b] is set during [i]The Doors of Darkness[/i], as the grasp of Saeradis becomes tighter and tighter. We follow ten people over the course of six weeks, through records, photo albums and discarded video cameras. Together, they weave a story of life beyond death, and the madness that lies beyond the doors of Saeradis.

There are probably many more ideas drifting around in there, worlds that have yet to be visualized, but they will have to come when they do. Thoughts?

[Dr. Cakey]

None of these are [i]The Crimson King[/i].

[Umbra]

[quote name='Dr. Cakey Arclight' timestamp='1354638356' post='6084997']
None of these are [i]The Crimson King[/i].
[/quote]

What?

[Dr. Cakey]

[quote name='Umbra' timestamp='1354639245' post='6085014']
What?
[/quote]
Wait...were you the one who wrote Crimson King, that first chapter of a 5D's rewrite? [s]If you weren't, I apologize for attributing something of quality to you.[/s]

There was also that Bleach rewrite that went nowhere. That was you.

[Umbra]

I did do a 5D's rewrite at one point, but I can't remember for the life of me what I called it. Crimson King does sound like something that "past me" would call a fanfic.

That would make for a good writing exercise, I suppose. I tend to stay away from straight-up fanfics these days, but YCM sure loves their duels... I might. We'll see.

[?someone?]

Enough with these good ideas, people, you're making me feel insufficient.

[NoshpalStefan]

Actually. and I don't want to bash on your Creative process, mostly because it's different for everyone, but, I think that you should try to focus more on Character Development. Meaning, even though it's Fan Fiction, or even a more serious work, forging/developing the character takes out a lot of the pages, and makes the writing seem more interesting, even if the story is short, this development contributes much to the actual story. If you were doing this already, then I apologize for interfering, or if this wasn't your actual idea of how to progress in your stories, but I've found that it helps me a lot when I focus on these things. But, once again, if it's a Fan Fiction, then you might just want to get on with the story and not the writing style, so ultimately it's your preference. Furthermore, I'm also an idea person, not to get me wrong, I prefer to think of the stories and explain them rather than spread them throughout a lengthy piece of writing, but try out Character Development, it works in interesting ways.

[Umbra]

Oh trust me, a lot of work goes into the characters as well. However, most of the time they come [i]out of [/i]the story, rather than the other way around. Very rarely does a character appear in my head that warrants their own story.

Warfields would be one such exception, as both Rebecca and the Man with the Black Guitar came before the setting.

[Phantom Roxas]

Taking all the Yu-Gi-Oh! elements out of Legacy of the Tormentor is fine with me, since by the end of the story, it did progress to a point where it felt more than just a typical Yu-Gi-Oh! story. I'm glad that Legacy of the Gods is going to retain the part of Susannah and Jonah meeting, and a more direct tie between that story and Inheritance of the World would be interesting. Very interested in how that will all lead to The Doors of Darkness.

Warfields sounds interesting because of the parallel stories, although I'm always kind of curious about stories where you have part of it take place after another part. Seems like it's easy to end up spoiling the other part of the story, and not in the sense that it's a flashback and thus some parts are doomed by canon.

The Hollow Man is a neat concept, but I don't consider myself much of a mystery fan.

The Lady in Red reminds me of It. Not surprising, since you're a fan of Stephen King.

Those Less Fortunate sounds like a cool way to explore the ramifications of the story on people not involved with it, since I assume everyone in this would have no knowledge of what's going on in The Doors of Darkness.

[Umbra]

Yeah, by the end of it, Legacy of the Tormentor wasn't much of a YGO story, but the very nature of the story warrants a re-write of its own. Since it is essentially fanfiction, there's not really a whole lot I can [i]do[/i] with it. If I ever wanted to publish the story, or use it in any other way, I would have to get rid of the YGO foundation it built upon. So, I'm basically [i]50 Shades of Gray[/i]-ifying my own story. Susannah's and Jonah's meeting is probably one of the few scenes from the original that will make it into the re-write. That, and the final fight against Witmalacc and his allies, for what it's worth, and the twist at the end.

Inheritance will be better connected to the "main" story once I finish it. When I wrote it the first time (back in 2007) I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't know there'd be a trilogy five years down the line, so I didn't know the structure and how the world worked. It wasn't really until I started writing The Dark Doorway that the whole meta-world with the Primordials and Saeradis started to unfold, and I found that everything just [i]made sense[/i]. Looking back at how Inheritance and Legacy played out, everything just connected in a way that I couldn't have imagined.


Warfields is something that I have to be careful with. Ideally, it would come out like [i]Memento[/i], where an earlier scene might make the reader think that things happened in a certain way, and then a later chapter just completely turns everything on its head. If I can pull it off, it could be one of the greatest stories I've ever written, but it will be difficult.

Lady in Red wasn't directly inspired by [i]It[/i], but there was probably some subconscious influence. Stephen King has been a major influence on all my writing, and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life.

The thing about [i]Those Less Fortunate[/i], and indeed, all of the others to some extent, is that all of them take place in the same world as[i] Prophecy of the Children[/i] and the rest of my stories. Those Less Fortunate will be more closely connected to Doors, but at the same time, the same system of existance still comes into play. In Warfields, the Lady in Red, and the Hollow Man, we'll still have walkers and savants, although they may not be as prominent or obvious, or even referred to by those terms. There could easily - in the case of Those Less Fortunate, there [i]wil [/i]be - characters that appear in more than one story. It's all interconnected.