Chrome's Brother: Process, Development, and F*ck ups
Bonus chapter
By Blockhed13
If you must know, this is not another chapter to the original CB. Simply an overview of my overall writing experience and process of Kumoru and Chrome's Brother.
This started out as a simple oneshot story. However, due to the popularity of the story (friends and fans alike) I continued it. Hence, it became it's own 50 chapter story with a WHOLE bunch of sequels planned and beginning to be written. But, let's look on the past 50 chapters together, shall we?
One thing's for certain, my vision changed from day one. Which leads me to begin to explain my process.
My process was to have a character that didn't seem fit for the mafia world, who seemed completely different from his family, who thought differently. Yet, he cared for nothing more than the people he considers his "family." In comes Kumoru Dokuro. A satirical brainiac who never seemed to think for himself and let people guide him. Well, *seemed.*
Where did Kumoru originate? Well, it wasn't in the heat of the moment. Chrome's Brother and Kumoru came to me as a random thought. He wasn't a very well thought character (for a oneshot, as it was the original design,) and Ku was redesigned and re-written 3 times. He originally had blue hair, zig-zag, no nappo. My friend convinced me to at least change the hair color, because Mukuro's hair was blue. So, I changed it to green. Thanks to my very first reviewer The ReBornStar and friends who agreed, I gave Ku a nappo.
As you can tell, this was the first of my many screw ups.
For the start of my screw ups, let's start with the obvious. I've always had issues with my past and present tenses. I'm still guilty of it today. I'm afraid that my tenses are just a habit that I can't break. And as any good writer has issues with, typos. Yeah, I have a lot of typos here and there. And I blame my keyboard because it doesn't register my key presses.
Now, to my bigger screw ups. Plot elements!
Yes, I seem to have a lot of them. This mainly because I could never keep a straight vision of how I wanted Kumoru to develop. My screw ups are mainly:
The missing ring of chapter 12
Random memory of fear of aliens
Deadmau5 fan!
The missing ring was me planning to reveal that Ryan had a ring that he was aware of it's power, showing that Ryan (who is Kumoru, for all those who forget) already knew about mafia business and what it's really like. I figured out very quickly that that thought had very little to work with, and I'd screw it up majorly. So, it was never mentioned again.
Aliens! This was another thought that actually might have worked, but I scrapped it because I thought it sounded soooo out of place in the KHR universe. This thought was that Ku had something happen to him, and illusions change his vision to see people as his greatest fear, aliens. This lead to him fighting very hard to kill them all, until it was fixed.
Deadmau5 fan? I really don't know what I was thinking. The original idea was that he heard one of deadmau5's songs, and he phased between Kumoru and Ryan. Thus, showing that Mukuro did a bad job of trying to save Kumoru from his first death, or did he rush to save Ku from his first death? I guess we'll find out in Fast Forward.
One thing that I kept throughout he entire story constantly, is the chapter lengths. I always kept them short (about 500 words) because I got distracted too easily. I found it easier to write short chapters and focus on writing them. Plus, it gave the illusion that the story was moving along much faster than it really was.
And finally, development. Development for Kumoru was tricky. I've already explained his redesign, the different scrapped projects, and his origination as a random thought. I think that throughout all my process, all my screw ups, and the 50 chapters in general; I did a damn fine job making Ku into the satirical family man I intended. But everyone has their own thoughts and theories for this story, so don't let me lead your beliefs.
Hmm... What else is there to say? Well, I had a lot of fun writing the story, and I always looked forward to getting and reading reviews. I also worked with my friends (who were always nice enough to edit and take my cover art commission (I'm talking to you Jedexa/Jaelin Fawkes and Amy Fawkes.)) Thanks for all the help and dealing with my constant non-stop babble about things that made no sense, or things that you helped expand my thinking on to fully develop.
And conclusively, thank you for reading CB and giving me reviews which encouraged me to write even more. Now, the next arc coming soon...
FAST FORWARD!
