Reflection
Once in a while a story comes along that takes you completely by surprise. From out of nowhere, an idea strikes you and then consumes your life for the time it takes you to get it out. You become obsessed with it; you don't feeling eating, you don't feel like sleeping, you just have to get that story out of your head. Well, okay, maybe that's just me. In any case, that was the way with this story. This story has a long history to its development, yet the creation of the story and writing took me less than two months.
It began a long while ago, I don't remember when precisely, a friend of mine suggested I try different forms of writing other than just prose fiction. This seemed an interesting idea, but nothing came of it for a long time. Then, almost a year ago, when I got a copy of the Sandman Vol. 3. At the end, as a special feature you might say, there was a copy of the script for the first chapter of the volume. This did not seem terribly difficult a thing to write, so I decided I would give it a try. But I didn't have a comic book story to write, so I put the idea on hold.
Back up a bit. Back in 2003, I became aware of a little known comic book called the "Witch Girls." I'd stumbled across a website that contained character bios for each of the characters in the story. I said to myself, "These are amazing characters. I must read this comic book, for I cannot conceive of it being anything other than absolutely incredible." Well, the company that had made the comic books had gone under due to lack of money and so was not being distributed anymore. At the time, I did not have a credit card, or even a bank account (I was in high school), so I couldn't buy it over the internet, nor could I buy them at a store, so I gave up on it and eventually forgot about it. It was not until a few months ago, when someone I was chatting with someone on Deviant art and they reminded me of the comic book. So I took the time to find it on the internet.
The comic book itself disappointed me. It had a solid story and the characters were fantastic, if you knew the back-stories to them, but it was awkwardly paced, the dialogue was choppy (and the grammar was just atrocious; I'm usually not put off by little grammar mistakes here and there, but there is a point where it becomes bothersome to me) and there just wasn't any decent character play. Not only that, it seemed really watered down compared to what the bios had led me to believe it would be.
On the other hand, after reading it, an idea for a story with those characters popped, fully formed into my head, complete with very exact imagery and about 80 of the dialogue. That's when I remembered my idea to try writing a comic book script. I figured I'd write maybe two or three chapters as an experiment, just to see if I had any talent for it, but when I hit chapter three, I found myself unable to stop. I was enjoying the story so much that I had to finish it. It became more than just a desire, but an actual physical need, to the extent that if I wasn't writing it, I would be come ill (exhibiting flu-like symptoms, having headaches, anxiety attacks, etc.). It cost me a month and a half of working time at the beginning of my summer, but it felt so good to complete it.
Once I had it complete, I was not sure what to do with it. This story had come to mean a great deal to me. When story has consumed that much of your time and emotional energy, when you've laughed and cried with your characters, cared about them as if they were real people, it can't help but be something special to you, even if it isn't completely your own original idea. I entertained the idea of getting it published, since I'd found out the original creators were trying to revive their company (if you are interested in more, their website is here - /), but I have been disabused of that idea. So, the next option was here, at . And why not? It's a respectable archive of fan created works.
In my other works on this site, I wrote a reflection for readers who might be interested in how the story developed, but I'm a bit disadvantaged for doing that for this piece. Unlike my other stories here, which had months - sometimes years - of preplanning, carefully plotting out the story, developing an idea of how to present the characters, carefully working out the details, the dialogue, the presentation, this idea was almost completely formed form the moment I had it. Because of that, I really don't know exactly how it developed. This was the first time that an idea had popped into my head so fully developed and from beginning to end, very little actually changed. Mostly it was a simple process of sanding off a few rough edges to the story.
A few things did change. For example, chapter 6 was originally planned to be a chapter about the board of directors, with only a little bit of Annabelle. I really hated dropping that scene, as it had a lot of good character play between Helena and Denora, as well as included some really interesting side characters that I never got to include anywhere else. The problem was that the scene didn't do anything to advance the plot, it went on too long, and it gave away things too early. I ultimately decided to focus the chapter entirely on Annabelle because, as important a side character as she was, she was getting very little time in the story and she needed to have a more fully developed character by the time the end rolled around. I needed the audience to understand her relationship with her cousin - or at least have some idea - or most of her actions in the last two parts wouldn't make sense.
Another thing that got dropped was that Eddy was originally supposed to have three personalities. The problem with that, however, was that there was only one scene in the entire story where his third personality really came out and when I gave it some thought, I decided that it would just confuse my audience if that came out of nowhere and then never did anything else for the story. That one I really didn't mind dropping, since there wasn't anything really interesting about Eddy's third personality.
As I was writing this story, I tried to take advantage of the nature of the medium. Of course, the visuals are all-important to a comic book, but in the nature of the story, I tried to take a few things into account. He first thing was that the story began before I stepped in and would continue after. The one thing I love about comic books is that you have different writers for them, so you get to see how the characters would be in different settings. If Batman's back-story was like this, this would happen, versus if it was like that, which would make that happen (if that makes any sense). I did not want this to be a story that stood alone, but that seemed in the middle of something bigger, something that perhaps other writers would explore and write for. I wanted it to be a thing that people would be able to write any number of different back-stories or follow-ups. I actually do not have any story ideas for after, or before (except as what appears in the first comic book), as much as there appears to be one. What I really have is a mythology that gives the appearance of knowing where it's going.
Unlike my other stories, I did not want this one to really follow the mythology of the original exactly. As I said already, the thing I love about comic books is the way you get to see different continuums of the same universe, so I wanted to create a bit of my own mythology, but still keep it within the realm of the Witch Girls universe. What resulted is a universe where ancient beings that humans have often mistaken for gods and demons have seeded the world with their power (in the form of the arcane bloodlines) for their own goals. In this mythology, humans, even those who have strong bloodline ties, are just tiny players in schemes far beyond our comprehension. All of these beings is following the same basic plan, what they call The Destiny, but each being has its own interpretation of destiny, and so they are all competing to prove their version as the True Destiny. Samael is one of those beings, while the being thought of as the Christian God is another, and they are the two most powerful of the Powers competing, but there are also the fey of Irish mythology, the Kami of Shinto beliefs and so many others (although only the fey really got mentioned in this story). Throw in vaguely messianic references, hint at the politics going on underneath it, you have a story that appears much more developed than it actually is.
And now that it's done, I feel that this has been a valuable experience. The one thing that I got out of this is that it's not just the characters themselves, but how they relate to each other. You can have the coolest characters in the world, but if they don't fit together in a coherent story, then it really doesn't matter. That was the one thing that I liked most about the Witch Girls characters. On their own, they were good characters, but it's when you put them altogether in the same story that you get something great. They way they relate to each other, they way they play off each other is incredible. The use of irony in the style of the characters and the potential for character play between them is beyond compare. I think this is the best character setup I've seen in a long time and I do hope that if the writers are able to revive the comic book, we'll get to see a lot more of that potential realized.
Until then, I'm just going to wait and see what happens.
Sayonara, and happy writing,
Reynold James Dalton