Reflection
After writing my first Fanfiction, The Path Of Honor, looking back I had felt as though I hadn't really done the best I could have on it, which disappointed me somewhat. At some time after that, I decided that I would do another one, putting all of my effort into it. I chose to do another Pokemon fic because, quite frankly, I enjoy writing stuff based on the show. This is because the show itself has so many concepts that are left open that I have incredible freedom to move my story in whatever direction I wish, yet am still challenged to uphold the rules of that world.
And after submitting my second fanfic, I seem to have decided to work on it a little more. Why? Apparently, I don't know how to follow my own advice. Don't keep fiddling with your projects for a long time. Know when to call it good and move on. This was just a pocket project, despite all the experience I actually gained out of it, and I really should move on. But, I guess all those little story flaws that I caught looking back on it were too much to bear. So here I am again, cleaning up my first mistakes.
Planning and Preparation
I began to write an outline and a basic character list, but my first ideas didn't work out too well. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. Then, one day, I had programmed the VCR to record something for me while I was out and my younger brother changed the channel to watch one of his own shows without changing it back. You can guess what was recorded instead.
While the episode, Hocus Pokemon, in and of itself was very disappointing, it introduced a new area of ideas to me. I have a sort of attraction to magic in the fantasy setting, which is why these ideas appealed to me. I began to develop ideas about a ruling council of sorcerers, kept secret from the rest of the world to protect themselves from the easily frightened and misunderstanding general public. From there, I began to write a story based on those ideas.
As I began the new outline, however, I found that there were aspects of it that I really didn't like. Two of the key characters just didn't seem to fit in the story correctly, while the overall direction of the plot just wasn't interesting to me. In the end, I scrapped my entire first outline and completely changed two of the main characters.
As I began to write the story, I began to feel that I was wasting my time. Since it wasn't something I could officially publish, I just couldn't bring myself to put my whole heart into the story. If not for the people who insisted that I continue after I submitted the first chapter to test it, I would have stopped then and there. Several times afterward I considered dropping the project, but, after writing chapter eight, I realized that I wasn't writing this just to get an audience's reaction, I was writing it because I enjoyed writing it.
In writing the second draft, I read through the story several times, picking away at it until I had torn apart every hole in the plot's logic. The next step was deciding how to fix it. Each moment in the story has its own feel and rhythm and I couldn't just go in and screw around with it carelessly. In spite of appearances, the story is actually very delicate and fixing it was a lot like picking up shards of broken glass. In the process, I probably cut my self a few times.
Characters
For this story, I tried to better assimilate all of the main characters into the plot than I did in my first story, which I think I pulled off to some degree of success. Getting into these characters was a fun experience. While they might seem like simple characters at a first glance, there is actually quite a bit to them and when put together, you have a lot of room to interesting character interaction. While I stuck to the main personality traits, I tried to be a little conservative with the characters. This may have prevented some of the slapstick from the show, it provided me with other moments that were just as humorous, more so for me as I don't particularly like slapstick.
I also tried to pay more attention to the pokemon than I did last time, though I've noticed that they still conveniently disappear from time to time if I don't need them to do anything. Though they are basically animals, each of the pokemon has their own simple personalities. Once you get those down, they flow quite smoothly through the story, making them interesting editions to the plot.
Artemis Jin'ei: initially, Jin'ei was a sadistic sociopath who was seeking the power of The Sentient so that he could have more power to torture people. There were two problems with this. The first problem I found out when I purchased the third volume of the Rurouni Kenshin OAV. There is a character from RK called Jine Udo who was almost identical in personality to Jin'ei. There is a difference in pronunciation of the names (Jin'ei, I think, is French and therefore pronounced Shin-ay and I may not even be spelling it correctly), but on paper, it's not so easily identified. I didn't want anyone who had seen RK to identify the two characters together. The second problem was that I just plain didn't like his character. I found it difficult really enjoy writing about him.
In most cases, I despise Disney films, but when my sister decided to watch 101 Dalmatians, the solution came to me. I'm very anti-fashion, so the idea of having a fashion designer as a villain really stuck in my mind. From then on, Jin'ei developed from a psychotic murderer to an arrogant, well-bred aristocrat.
While Jin'ei is certainly not the personal favorite of my villains, he is certainly one of my most interesting. As I began to develop his character, I found that I really wanted my audience to hate this character. He became a cruel, domineering control freak. In all his relationships with others, he wants to be the one in charge. Even with his own wife, you can see this. He didn't particularly care one way or the other if Catherine was there, but it mattered greatly to her whether or not she had his money. Jin'ei realized this and used it to manipulate her into complete obedience. This, I'm certain, was enough to make the female side of my audience passionately despise him. I'm hoping our values haven't degraded enough that the male half doesn't at least feel a strong aversion to him, but I've no idea how it really comes across.
Another thing I put to Jin'ei was his derisive attitude. Even in fighting, he displays his belief in his own superiority by openly showing he feels confident enough to not take it seriously. Everything Jin'ei does is calculated to cause the greatest insult to his opponents. Having been forced to deal with similar people, I know that a lot of people will absolutely loathe him for this.
I hate the cold, which is probably why I made Jin'ei a cold-themed villain. When I describe Jin'ei's appearance and actions, I continually used terms that people associate with snow and ice. He always dresses in cold colors; white, blue and gray. He always looks at others "coldly" or "icily" and he often hisses and slithers like a snake (a cold-blooded animal). I also referred to him by his last name only, which only serves to make him seem even more distant, since even the narrator can't seem to get on a first name basis with him.
I added a personality quirk to him about halfway through writing; his tendency to stroke his ear. It was something that I felt gave another level of depth to his character and I had a very good reason why he had such a quirk. Unfortunately, I didn't write it down, so I can't recall what it is. Remembering to put it in really irritated me, though, which is why I had Lupus cut Jin'ei's ear off at the very end of the story.
Lotus: Lotus is a kind of mix between Tom Bombidil of Lord of the Rings, and Fizban the Fabulous from Dragonlance. Like good old Tom, he always has a song in his heart and often lets that song come to his lips. Like Fizban, he's absent minded and, at times, completely wacky, but capable of become extremely serious if the situation demands it.
As the story went on, Lotus developed into a stronger character than just a clone of famous fantasy story characters. I first realized it after the first encounter with the hunter. When I'm really into my story as I'm typing, I get so in character that I don't think about what I'm writing, I just let it flow out. The end result is that what comes out is what would be most natural to the characters involved. To my surprise, I suddenly found the old man crying when he thought that he had killed Lupus. I thought about removing it at first, but on further reflection, I realized that that was just the kind of person he was.
Lotus had a lot of ridiculously long-winded thought shots. He always had to consider everything involved in his decision before he makes it and there tends to be a large amount of lengthy pauses when he is involved. This was, however, a key attribute to his character that I simply had to accustom myself to. Most of his thought shots aren't actually necessary to the plot in any particular way, but I think they give a strong impression of his character. The other option was leaving you wondering during those long pauses and as wacky as the old guy appears at first, you never can be quite sure if what he's thinking is actually related to what's going on.
One thing that I have left in is a short, probably overlooked gag in the third chapter. Lotus makes an odd comment about his socks. This joke is, of course, not actually funny, but the others still laugh at it. The reasoning behind this is that the audience should be wondering what they could have been talking about that would get them to laugh at such a gag. This I find funny, but I'm not sure if the audience gets it. Comments on this would be greatly appreciated.
All and all, this was a character I really loved working with and I consider him one of my story's strongest assets.
Lilly: this spunky little magician was the key link between the main characters and the concept that I wanted to present. In my finalized outline, she actually had very little mention and could probably been dropped from the plot entirely without needing to make too many adjustments for her absence. As the story went on, however, I found a few ways to make use of her more effectively and ended up liking her almost as much as I liked her grandfather.
Information about Lilly I had gathered from the show and the research I did in preparation for the writing was exceedingly limited. At first, I felt a little uncomfortable about including her in the story, but then I decided that the lack of information simply left more room to develop her as was needed to make the story work.
From her appearance (and her mild British accent), it can be concluded that this character was obviously created for the purpose of trying to leech off of theHarry Potter craze, which was one of the particularly disappointing aspects of the episode. I automatically decided I would try to separate her from Harry Potter in the mind of my audience. To do this, I used my inferences to develop a past that was suitable to explain her life with her grandfather, yet held as little similarities to Rowling's character as possible.
At first, I considered have her living with her grandfather simply to train, perhaps visiting her parents on holidays and summers. As she developed, however, she became very much like her grandfather, but to a lesser degree, suggesting that she had been raised almost exclusively by Lotus from a very young age. So, I had her parents killed in a car crash, which gave me a whole new assortment of options for her character.
One of the things I had gathered from the show was that she was a bit of a ditz. In my experience, people are like that for only two reasons. One is that they're complete airheads. Besides being just plain irritating, I didn't think that this would work because I couldn't see a total moron as being able to study magic in the way that I envisioned it. The other reason is that they always want to make people happy. There seems to be something about being continually upbeat that prevents you from being completely on the ball all of the time. This option works much better, both giving her a reason to study magic and fitting in with the death of her parents.
Amusing, isn't it. When I just sit down and explain it, one would probably still see a lot of similarity between Harry and Lilly, yet in the flow of the story, they are such different characters. I have one thing to attribute this phenomenon to: presentation. How you present the story to your audience makes all the difference.
Lupus: in my original story idea (before I had included the sorcerers and such), Lupus's part was extremely different. He still had a loving wife and daughter and a dog named Dokoto, but his name was Arthur, he was in a wheelchair and he had a much more personal (but not friendly) relationship with Jin'ei stemming back to childhood. Jin'ei was going end up using Morgan to get him to cooperate and he ultimately ended up burning to death with Dokoto in a fire.
I hated it. It made things way to complicated and seriously wrecked the overall logic of the plot. After viewing the episode that changed my mind about the story's direction, I initially removed him from the plot. As Jin'ei developed, however, it became obvious that such a person would sooner use an underling than get his own hands dirty, so he reappeared in the story line. I tried several different possibilities, most of which still kept the idea of a guy in a wheelchair. In the end, as you can well see, the only thing that remained the same was that his daughter's name was Morgan and his dog's name was Dokoto. Classic example of how a writer shouldn't become too attached to his original ideas.
"They look like good strong hands, don't they?" If any of you have read or seen The Never Ending Story, you probably recognize this line, where the Rockbiter talks about how he failed to protect his friends. That was the image that lead Lupus to develop into the character he ultimately became. In the end, I even made Lupus's hands a symbol of his character, which worked out quite well, since his hands were deformed and made for great description. Lupus ultimately became a secondary villain. In his case, however, I wanted the audience to pity him, just because I love stories where you can feel sorry for the bad guy; where he's more than just someone who fights the heroes. From the moment that I put Lupus into the position of seeking vengeance, his part was set. Choosing to form a connection between Misty and Morgan in his mind was something that I came up with to help me develop Lupus into the kind of person I wanted him to be.
As a whole, however, Lupus remains an enigmatic character. Many of the whys about his life are intentionally left as unanswered questions.
Those of you who read the first draft will probably note the change in chapter 8, the biggest change I made. Yes, Lupus is a masochist. Something I really wanted to stress about his character was that he really hated himself. I was too vague in the first draft, I think, and I seriously doubt that most of the readers got the real point. Lupus hated himself, not because of his failure to protect his family, or because he had murdered people, but because of what he was. For one thing, the very person he was had degraded so much that he had forgotten his own name. He was no longer a human, or a beast, or even a thing. He was just a purpose; a purpose that he knew was corrupted, but that he was still unable to move away from. He had become trapped that purpose until he lost all sense of self and only lived for vengeance. To be accurate, he didn't live for vengeance, he was vengeance. If you understand what I am saying, it should leave you feeling sick to your stomach.
The other thing he hated himself for was because he wouldn't die. It's not natural for a person to live that long. Death is a part of the natural world and, in the end, all people accept death when their time comes. Lupus, however, was denied death. He had accepted that his reason for living was finished, had accepted that it was his time to die, yet he still lived on and on and on and on. He longed for death because he had no reason to live. I don't know how many of you share my vision of heaven, or even believe that such a thing exists, but it really makes no difference. Man is not meant to live that long and if he keeps on living after he has completed his life, he will end up longing for death because it is the next natural step.
Others: I was quite surprised by the large number of supporting characters that I added. All of these characters served only one of two purposes; presenting my concept of the Conclave, or further developing Jin'ei's character. Catherine and Rogers were both put in to give the audience an idea of the kind of people Jin'ei surrounded himself with. Catherine and Jin'ei's relationship was a twisted one meant specifically to show his need to control others and his lack of concern for human dignity. Rogers was the classic loyal family butler and the only person my villain considered a friend. Not very original, but sufficient to serve his purpose. It was the same for Amelia, who, if not for his selfishness, may have been Jin'ei's wife instead of Catherine. Even little Jeremy had a subtle part in developing Jin'ei's character, though if any of my audience don't recognize it, I won't be the one to destroy their naivete.
Plot and Presentation
Unlike my first piece of fan fiction, which was meant to be centered on Ash beginning the path to adulthood, The Sentient was intended to be an idea story. Its primary purpose was to present my concept of the Conclave and the order of magic to an audience. As the story progressed, its driving force migrated from its concept to its characters, which is really the only thing could be expected from such a long-winded plot. It's still presenting the concept, though, so I didn't completely loose the initial purpose.
Like a lot stories that feature children as the main characters, Ash became the hero by accident. The Sentient fell into his hands by complete chance (or was it chance? You can't really be sure) and suddenly all these events are thrust upon him because of it. He doesn't have much control of what's going on, so he simply goes along for the ride. At the same time, however, what he does directly controls what happens to him, so it makes for a very unusual setup.
I had decided beforehand that I was not going to include the Pokemon League in my story. I never really liked the idea anyway; it's ridiculously underdeveloped and the show focuses on it way too much. I also didn't want to use Team Rocket either, since that would mean TRT would, by necessity, get involved. Sorry to all Jessie and James fanatics, but I just plain hate the characters. Both of these aspects get mentioned, since they are a part of the world, but they have no direct part in the story itself. Instead, I wanted to pull the story away from the usual focus of Pokemon and really see what could be done some of the show's ideas.
One of the biggest challenges was to present Lupus correctly. The first time around, I messed up. What I wanted people to see in Lupus is that he had degraded so much that he had lost touch with his humanity. He no longer felt emotion or had desires, he just existed. He didn't really even hate the sorcerers any more and, in the back of his mind, he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but he had been killing them for so long that he believed that he couldn't do anything else.
For another thing, Lupus had lost touch with who he really was. Misty had begun to awaken that in him and it caused conflict with his character, to the point that he became like two people. The climax of his conflict was that Misty helped Lupus overcome the hunter and drive him away. This is something I really respect about women. While Misty never raises a hand to fight Jin'ei, she is a heroine in her own right, just as much as Ash is the hero, because she saves Lupus.
Another thing that people do wrong is with villains. Even now, a lot of people still make the mistake of thinking that the villain is just a bad guy, so he has no real development. At the same time, some people see this and make a mistake on the opposite extreme. They say that nobody is truly evil and play off that politically correct garbage until they loose all sense of reality in the story, such as in the disastrous Lilo and Stitch TV series.
The simple fact of the matter is that some people are evil. They may have admirable qualities, but that doesn't change anything about what they do and who they are. It just means that it's a pity that they had to go so wrong. Jin'ei is evil. The pokemon understood this quite clearly, because animals can sense these things and that makes the world much simpler for them. With human characters, however, you have to remember that the line is not so easy to establish. You have to find that way to present the villain that says, "Yes, there's good things about him, but he's still doing evil things."
I did this through Amelia. Ash and the others didn't know Jin'ei at all, so there was no way to show this through them. Amelia, on the other hand, loved Jin'ei and had known him for years. She tried to prevent it, resorting to cheap lawyer technicalities in the council meeting, but even she had to accept the truth in the end. That short moment of her internal conflict was the most important part of Jin'ei's character development.
Part of telling a story is knowing what the story needs. A good writer should not consider the audience when he is plotting the story until he is deciding what will best help the audience understand what he is saying. A lot of movies make this mistake and so do even a few books. Sometimes, horrible things happen that will make the audience uncomfortable. The key is to balance the story with gentler and lighter moments, so that the audience sees that there is more to the story than just the shock, though there are times when even that rule must be overturned for the sake of the story (read H. P. Lovecraft).
There are some very socking moments in this story, such as Lupus's masochism. This was, I believe, essential to the development of his character, even though I knew some of my audience would feel sickened by it (I had to stop writing for a bit after that because I, myself, was so disgusted). These moments are balanced out by the softer moments that occur at the end of the story and the moment when Misty helps Lupus to free himself. A lot of directors today screw up this balance by putting humor into the moments themselves. A true master of storycraft will never do this. You should never break the tense moments just to keep your audience from becoming unhappy. This screws up both the pacing and the presentation. The balance of a story is very delicate and you should be careful that you do not upset it, and I worked very hard to maintain it in this story.
While Lupus needed to be helped, Jin'ei was a different matter entirely. I personally believe that you should deal with every villain appropriately according to what they have earned (again, there are exceptions, but I really can't think of any good examples of when this was done correctly). With Jin'ei, I had no idea what that was. I wanted Jin'ei's defeat to be poetically correct. For most villains, an appropriate death is good enough, but Jin'ei was a special case. In some cases, what villains do and how they develop dictates that death is either to much or not enough. In Jin'ei's case, death was letting Jin'ei off too easily. For his pride, the most appropriate end was humiliation, so I stacked more and more shame and disgrace upon him until he ended up in an utterly ridiculous (and humorous) situation.
A lot of themes are weaved into this story. I had no particular message in mind when I started plotting the story, but once the story found its own theme, I worked on finding the best way to present that to the audience. The number one rule as a writer is that the purpose of your writing is to tell a story. Nothing, not even the theme, should interfere with that. While a good story will have a theme, the best will present that theme in a subtle way, one that fits naturally with the story and doesn't distract the audience. A lot of times, people end up making themselves sound preachy when they try to work themes into a story because they try to push a message upon their audience instead of letting the story find its own message. When done right, the people who really enjoy your work will be able to argue for hours amongst themselves about what exactly you are trying to say, while those who just read it will probably not see any theme at all. That's the beauty of a well crafted story; you take away from the story whatever meaning you want to. In that respect, I think I did quite well.
Conclusion
So, what do I have left to say? Now that The Sentient is complete, I move on to bigger projects. I have enjoyed writing this story and gained a lot of valuable experience from those few of you who provided me with feedback. Just writing something with the intent that an audience would be seeing it has taught me quite a bit. My presentation skills have improved dramatically and the stories flow much more smoothly. I would like to thank the audience for their time. Without your feedback, The Sentient would never have seen fruition.
Sayonara and happy writing,
Reynold James Dalton
Draft 2 is finally completely submitted. Boy, am I glad that's over.
It's spring right now, and I'm in the middle of my creative burst. In other words, stories are shooting out of me like bullets from a machine gun. I've got a couple of projects running right now and I've decided that amidst it all (because I can), I'm going to write another fanfiction. Trouble is, I have a couple of ideas and I can't decide which one to do.
One of them, Criminal Evolution, will be written as a series of short stories focusing on the psychological development of just one character. There will naturally be heavy character development for one character, with lighter development for others and it's story is somewhat simple. What it lacks in plot compexity, though, I promise it will more than make up for with psychological complexity; this character is the most complex character I've ever created.
The second is entitled Thrice Damned. It's a high-adventure fantasy story (moreso than the one you just finished reading). This one has a lot of characters, a long plot with a couple of subplots that tie together towards the middle, and freakish monsters the likes of which you are not likely to have seen before (unless, like me, you are psychologically disturbed and have bizzare and frightening dreams).
I leave the choice to you, my audience, whome I respect and appreciate. Which would you rather read about? A classic fantasy adventure, or a complex character with issues from here to Yugoslavia? The choice is yours. You can send your vote as a review or via E-mail (displayed on my profile page). If you send E-mail, be sure to type in a subject that tells me why your letter is about, else I might throw it away by mistake.
If nobody says anything about which they'd rather read, then I'll just flip a coin.
