My story in two voices [Past]: Writing the first chapter
[This is part one of this two-part article. This article will show what I thought about my story and how I created it in the past. The next article will show what I think now and how I am reconstructing my story, as well as diving deeper into the characterization of the characters themselves and how they will be used. Also please keep in mind this was orginal written a couple years ago and is written rather harshly. Viewer discretion is advised]
What I’m writing about: The process behind creating my story and writing the first chapter of ‘Paradise Lost’. The reason I’m writing about my first chapter is to relay the experiences and struggles of completing this task and what it felt like when I was done.
Since writing this I have been going back through my story and have started rehauling the character designs, the characterization of the characters, and the story itself. (Though the premise remains almost completely the same.)
My story premise is: ‘’A lobotomized war vet named Locket Valentine attacks a woman named Sarona (who is of the same race of the people he fought in the war).
And gets put in an article of clothing similar to a straitjacket and becomes nonresponsive which leads to his friends contacting the village psychic Roberta who brings the group of friends into his mind to see why he started behaving so erratically,
Only to find out how destroyed his mind truly is with the group having to go through his mind and put him back together before he becomes too broken to be repaired’’.
(Which I later condensed it into), ‘’ A man attacks a strange woman passing through the small village of Burning Rock. The villagers must restrain him by putting him in a straitjacket.
While in the ‘Burning Rock Prison’ he becomes unresponsive to anything, which causes his worried friends to contact the village oracle, who brings the duo into his mind to see why he started behaving so erratically.
They discovered that his mind was fractured and fissured. With the group going through his mind to salvage what they can, with pressure from the villagers to solve the issue before they test out a risky new medical procedure on him.’
I did this to make the story not give away too many details that would clue everyone in on everything too early.
Why this story in particular: I started thinking about writing the first chapter when I discovered that there were writing challenges on Wattpad where I investigated it and found the eight-chapter challenge that started on September first and that goes on till October thirty-first.
That is for new writers who would create eight more Wattpad chapters of their story and would submit said story to the challenge to be read by the people of Wattpad for tips for improvement in their writing.
I decided to participate in it. For the tips of improvement, and the chance to start writing my story.
I chose this story because it was the most recently developed story I had made, that wasn’t too closely related to any of the other ones until after the second book I planned to write after this one.
I used this story so I could focus on characterizing more than the overarching narrative I have in most of my other Story’s like ‘’Cryptid capture’’ the sister show to ‘’Paradise Lost’’ that is about capturing the cryptids to try to cure the new virus they’ve been spreading around.
That will eventually become part of this narrative in the future. (I have decided to add a story in between those two called Paradise Found. This will be about Agatha, Riot, and Lockett with the addition of potentially another villager.
Going on a journey to find Lockett’s home to see if anyone else is still alive. This will be between ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Cryptid capture’.)
Why I chose the name I did: I chose the name ‘Paradise Lost’ because of the character (the story’s about) Lockett Valentine and his secretive personality/ constant tendency to keep things from his friends.
Because of his backstory of being a rich kind who, like Agatha, was sheltered from harshness of this world who got drafted in the war. When returning to his family, finds out that the enemy has slaughtered them and he is alone. Which leads to him losing the paradise and sanctuary of his home.
Designing the logo: designing the logo was one of the funniest parts of the process. Because of my ability to add details that hint to the secrets and future reveals of the story that are right under the readers’ noses.
With the needle and thread being a hint to the needles that are used in the medical procedure to lobotomize people that is next to the ‘o’ that’s shaped like an eye. And the string that’s stitching the whole logo together is holding on to the dog tags with lockets initials.
Where I got the idea from: I got the idea for the story when listening to Iron Maiden’s song ‘The Trooper’ on the album ‘Piece of Mind’. I thought of the idea when viewing the album cover that had their mascot, Eddie the head in a straitjacket in a padded room, chained to the wall with his skull fastened closed by a piece of metal.
Which gave me the idea to create a story about a lobotomized war vet. I got more of an idea of how I wanted the story to go when I looked at their mobile game ‘Legacy of the Beast, which is a story driven game about Eddie the head collecting pieces of his soul so he can fight the devil to stop the apocalypse.
In the game, you’re Eddie, and you go to different planets themed off different albums Iron Maiden has written with the music from each album being played in their themed planet.
This game is what gave me the idea for the rest of the story, premise. Were his friends would enter his mind and go through the different decades of his life, fixing his mind, discovering more about their friend than they hadn’t known before that would make them regret judging him and mistreating him.
Figuring out how to characterize them: I thought about making the story for several days after thinking about how I could incorporate this story into my own crafted universe, where every story I make is in the same continuity.
I also struggled with the characters themselves in designing them and making them interesting as characters.
I struggled with these issues until I looked into another show important to me, ‘She-Ra’. The 80s cartoon spin-off series about He-Man’s twin sister Adora, who is She-Ra. The princess of power, who has joined the rebels, must fight the evil horde.
The inconsistent characterization of Adora: This show got me into writing stories. Looking back at it in the present day, I see the flaws in writing I hadn’t seen before, for example, the way they wrote the main character Adora.
She is a kind and intelligent leader who has a firm belief in justice. But in practice They had unintendedly written her to act like she was more of a plot device than a character.
Leaving the little characterization, she had to be inconsistent, A problem with her actions always being exactly what would solve the conflict no matter how big or small the issue was, she always knew what to do.
Other issues with her writing are how she interacted with the other characters themselves. The most important part of characterization is how the characters interact with the world around them, which includes other characters.
This is a fact because a character who has been characterized as a kindhearted person who donates their time to charity would not act like a character who just got out of prison for a felony.
To show how badly she was characterized I’m going to break down the character interactions between Adora and her friends.
By giving a description of how she interacts with each character, how it contradicts Adora’s characterization, how it affects Adora characterization, how it’s portrayed in the show, and how it could’ve been done differently, and why I think this happened.
I will explain her backstory and use that as a basis for characterization for this deep dive.
Her backstory: Her backstory was that she had been kidnapped by the horde from her parents (the king and queen of Eterna) and her twin brother He-Man and had been raised to be a child soldier that grew up to be a force captain of the horde.
You would never guess that it would be her backstory if I had not told you. This is the first issue, you could not tell that from how she interacts with people, going back to my original argument.
This is a fact because “a character who has been characterized as a kindhearted person who donates their time to charity would not act like character who just got out of prison for a felony that they do not feel bad about committing.’’
Adora is characterized as a charitable person when truly, she acts like a guiltless criminal.
You can tell this from the way that she interacts with people. for example, her main friend group that consists of her, Bow the archer/ her love interest, Glimmer the princess of Bright Moon/original rebellion leader, and Kowel the koala owl hybrid.
Gimmer’s personality: Glimmer is ditsy reckless hopeless romantic who often flirts with the men who introduced in most of the episodes. (Which Adora glares at her for.) she is the princess of Bright moon who had to become queen early when both her parents were kidnapped.
The way she interacts with Glimmer: Adora interacts with glimmer like She thinks she’s stupid and is constantly looking down upon her. She treats her like a child and talks down to her when she messes up or makes an honest mistake.
How it contradicts Adora’s characterization: Adora is supposed to be a good leader. Talking down to her subordinates is not something a leader should ever do. A good leader is supposed to guide their underlings when they mess up and help them learn from it.
Instead Adora does the opposite and bullies them when they mess up and scrutinizes them with a holier- than-thou mindset.
How its effects Adora characterization: It makes Adora contradict her good leader trait and her kind personality a little bit as well as with her coming off as a person who is superficially nice and is only nice at surface level.
How its portrayed in the show: It’s portrayed as Adora being helpful by scolding glimmer for her childishness and pointing out her flaws.
But she never tells her what to do instead, so it’s just telling her she did wrong without giving guidance at all.
Why I think this happened: I think this happened because of two reasons one Adora is portrayed as the strong female character and has no flaws supposably and glimmer is a feminine ditsy character as was portrayed in most of the media in the 80s as the norm for female characters who served only as an accessory to the male hero.
With Adora constantly pointing out glimmer’s flaws it shows superiority over the clique. So, making Adora flawless at the time was progressive. The other reason is the show was made to give life lessons to children with Adora being the mouthpiece of the show runners.
Such as her telling people what they did wrong bluntly would get the point of the lesson across easier. (which is pointless when you acknowledge the fact that there is a character named Loo key who literally tells you the lesson of the episode and what the character did wrong at the end of the episode.)
How it could’ve been done differently: what could have been done differently is you could’ve had both Adora and Glimmer call each other out for their flaws. So, neither would be seen as better than the other.
And they could’ve made Adora Glimmer’s mentor for becoming a good leader and future queen.
Bow’s personality: Bow is a bard (whether he’s good at it or not is debatable because of the showrunners flip-flopping between him being tone deaf and good at it.)/ master archer character that overcompensates for his insecurities by acting macho.
The way she interacts with Bow: It also shows when she talks to her other friend, Bow, who is stated to be her best friend, whom she intentionally leads on. Which could also be a good character flaw for Adora.
which could have been a great topic to discuss in the show. One being about leading people on and crying wolf. And another about only hearing one side of the story.
How it contradicts Adora’s characterization: Adora’s kindhearted personality trait should prevent actions like stringing her best friend along on purpose.
This also kind of affects her good leader characterization because she never once tells/ communicates to bow that she’s uncomfortable with his flirting with her and communicating is the most important part of being a leader.
How its effects Adora characterization: the way this affects Adora’s characterization is it makes her look bipolar and inconstant with her logic.
How its portrayed in the show: It’s shown to the audience as Bow being arrogant and narcissistic when she kisses him and flirts with him first but randomly picks episodes where she decides that she is uncomfortable with Bow’s advances and gets angry at him for it which makes her cry wolf at bow.
Where the other characters, like Kowel, jump in and dog him for it when it wasn’t his fault.
Why I think this happened: I think that this happened because of several reasons. First would be the nice guys finish last mentality that was being very popular thing at the time.
Since bow is characterized to be a great guy and a good person the show runners would want her to be with a ‘bad boy’ character instead. Another reason I think this happened is bow is a man, and this is in a show about female empowerment.
And what we’ve seen from the writers so far, they think that putting people who don’t fit the ideal of ‘’feminism’’ down is very feministic and empowering to women when it’s actually just glorified bullying that only fits the purpose of giving incel women an excuse to put men and other women that don’t fit the mold of what they think is okay down to make themselves feel better.
How it could’ve been done differently: they could have them do the same thing in the show as they did but have Adora outright tell bows she is uncomfortable and have him stop.
Or have the entire will they won’t they, Thing they have going on thrown out, or have it not being one sided and have it be a relationship that just needed Adora and bow to set boundaries which could be a good lesson to teach to kids that could stop them from being pressured into things.
Kowels personality: The other character from their friend group is Kowel, the koala owl sidekick they have that makes quippy lines and cruel jokes at the expense of the other characters, with his victim typically being Bow.
The way she interacts with Kowel: Kowel fundamentally breaks everything about Adora’s established character. Starting with her better than everyone complex, she never acts like she thinks she is better than Kowel.
The next part of Adora’s character that Kowel breaks into is her kind personality. Kowel’s need to constantly bully people is very rarely chastised by Adora at all with her even watching it go down she says nothing about it until she randomly cares and decides to say something that usually ends up being an Adora saying that what he said was rude with him responding he doesn’t care and Adora just accepting it.
which breaks the biggest part of Adora’s established character, Kowel breaks her sense of justice. When Kowel emotionally abuses her friends and coworkers she does nothing about it and even sometimes laughs or smiles at his jokes that make everyone around her the butt of the joke.
She never tries to give Kowel any amount of punishment for his actions even when he made bow so insecure he leaves Bright Moon and the rebels. She doesn’t even make Kowel apologize, she even brings Kowel along and he insults him even more and she does nothing other than disagree with Kowel.
Not acknowledging these flaws in the show makes her an unintentional hypocrite and inconsistent with her characterization.
How it contradicts Adora’s characterization: Adora’s have a kind-hearted personality with a strong sense of justice.
How it affects Adora characterization: if she never calls Kowel out for his awful behavior then her ‘kind personality’ is only surface level, and her justice is biased depending on if she personally likes the person doing bad things or not.
How it’s portrayed in the show: it’s portrayed as Kowel being his quirky self when he bullies the other characters and is shown to the audience as a joke.
Why I think this happened: they are not self-aware enough to understand that one Kowel is a bully. And two Adroa is a hypocrite. This also could’ve happened because Kowel acts like a feminist who wants to better than men and the women who don’t fit the mold.
How it could’ve been done differently: MAKE.KOWEL.HAVE.REAL.CONSQUENCES.FOR.HIS.ACTIONS. And have Adora called out for her hypocrisy and have her work on it.
Creating the characters: I could see that they wanted to make a strong female character but failed because they failed to acknowledge her flaws. With the knowledge I have gained by drafting other stories and looking at the flaws of She- Ra, I can see what they were trying to accomplish with character arcs and see where they went wrong.
I used this as an example of what to not do in my writing of the first chapter when it came to characterization. This is important because I based my characters off the friend group.
I started creating them by assigning roles that would be detrimental to my story. The roles I had were Lobotomized war vet or LB for short, skeptical friend, psychic, girlfriend esc character, and cryptid.
For these roles I used the personalities of the She Ra characters and tweaked them to be likable and complex with conflicting ideals.
LV: I gave the personality of bow to LV because of his constant mistreatment from his friends and the writing. I used these traits to make him a character who is misunderstood by the people around him with the people around him being put off by him not understanding social queues and his robotic voice.
Which would lead to skeptic character and girlfriend character to mistreat him with skeptic character to dehumanize him and treat him like he was an emotional punching bag and girlfriend character to a lesser extent but still a terrible thing to do, would lead him on.
Which would lead LV to not share his past with them at all which causes issues with skeptical character because he doesn’t trust easily and is suspicious of LV and his intentions.
Skeptic character: For skeptic character I gave him Kowel’s personality, but I changed it to where instead of being a jerk to everyone for no reason he instead is a jerk to LV because he makes him uncomfortable and to girlfriend character because he has a different world view from
Girlfriend character: I took the personality of She Ra and broke it down and gave one half to girlfriend character and the other to the psychic. For the girlfriend character I gave her Adora’s hypocrisy, and I gave her glimmers personality traits of being more emotional.
Psychic character: For the psychic I gave her Adora’s kind personality and her leader capability’s. The reason I separated these personality traits was so I could make two strong female characters on the opposite sides of the spectrum.
Having one be emotionally intelligent and the other more than what is traditionally considered to be intelligent. This way I could have two strong female leads that contradict each other but are still just as strong as the other to prove that neither female characters that are masculine are better than female characters that are feminine.
Cryptid character: I gave cyprid character the personality Adora’s original personality to show how her actions are not okay, and they don’t make her a strong female character but a bad person.
Their names: With their personality in mind, I started drafting designs for the main cast but before I formally started drawing them, I started by picking names for them. Because I struggle with naming my characters and I just wanted to get it over it with.
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So, I went on Pinterest to search for names. I went through and picked out names that would suit their new personalities.
LB: I chose the name Lockett Valentine for the lobotomized war vet to fit his initials LV. I decided on Lockett as his name because of the secretive behavior he exhibits throughout the story.
Skeptic character: I chose the name riot for the skeptic character because of his constant aggressive behavior when his ideals are challenged by the story.
Girlfriend character: I chose the name Agatha for girlfriend’s character because I wanted her to be just a normal person who was sheltered and is just now experiencing the cruelty of the world and war for the first time vicariously through her friend Lockett’s memories.
Psychic character: I chose the name Roberta for the psychic character because I also wanted her to be a normal person but instead of her discovering the cruelty of the world, she helps guide people through it like a guardian angel.
Cryptid character: I chose the name Sarona for the cyprid character because I wanted her to have a name that was a normal name but slightly off from the norm. like her personality being kind but superficial.
Their character designs: Taking their new names and personalities into consideration, I started drawing them out. The first one I made a design for was Lockett.
Lockett Valentine: I designed him to have long messy purple and dull pink hair that would only get worse when he was trapped in the dungeon. I made him a human that had gray eyes, and I drew him in a camo army uniform. When I finished his design, I liked it at first but later it looked lacking and boring.
So, when drafting his second design I looked through the details of my own crafted cinematic universe where I dug through the information, I had laid out in my one note document.
There I found the world building I had forgotten about that was perfect for the characters that I had not yet explored.
The information was the geography of layer two that has ‘extremely dense forests (where the elves/ nobles live), caves, and small patches of open dangerous ground where apex dinosaurs live, mushroom forests that ward off predators that are considered myths by the common person but were found by the Elves.’
Which is where I decided to place the characters in their story. And, when I decided to make them dinosaurs, I did this to show how powerful cyprids are because if the apex predators don’t stand a chance who does which will make the situation more hopeless.
The new setting gave me more insight on what I was going to do for their designs since in my worlds on him cause he’s an outsider and isn’t from burning rock.
With this idea in mind, I made his skin tone dark green because he can still blend in and it’s used as symbolism because of his military background and vets are never the same when they come back from the military.
I made him a dinosaur that has spikes on his tail and sides to represent how he keeps people at arm’s length.
Riot: I designed riot to be a triceratops so I could use shape language to convey his intelligence and temper with squares and triangles. I made him pear colored greenish yellow to represent his hard to like personality.
I gave him a tattoo of a flower on his right left shoulder. I dressed him in dull Salman colored shorts and sandals to show that he isn’t as joyful or emotional as Agatha.
Agatha: I designed Agatha to be a vibrant red t-rex to show her overly emotional personality that also tends to be her downfall. I put her in a vibrant orange colored shirt, and pants set that has flower decals on them. That’s topped off with a dark green sleeveless cardigan.
Roberta: I designed Roberta to be dressed like a nun to go with her strong female role. I made her a teal and dark blue colored pterodactyl so she could wrap her wings around herself like a robe.
Sarona: I designed Sarona to be as monstrous looking as she was vaguely human looking so, she would be just human looking for everyone to eventually trust her. While making her as unsettling as possible at the same time.
Writing the outline: When writing the outline, I used this format to organize the events of the story. Which includes actions, struggles, and themes.
Life as usual: (what life was like before the story starts to take off)
A. Call to action: (what starts the adventure)
A. Threshold: (the first win for the character)
3. New world: (new place or experience)
A. Obstacles/ new friendships: (problems that need to be solved and new friends)
4. Adapt to new world: (the grow used to the new world.)
A. True power of the antagonist: (the antagonist’s power over the main character)
5. desire achieved in a left-handed way: (a way to gain what they want in typically a morally wrong way.
A. Temptation: (something that makes the character consider doing bad things to gain)
6. Price paid for desire/ relationships questioned: (the price paid for being tempted or for being friends with someone)
A. Return to righteousness: (character returns to being good)
7. Return to familiar: (everything goes back to ‘normal’’)
8. Come to terms with the way the world has changed: (shows what happens after the story’s main plot)
The completed outline: When deciding what would happen, I would look at the story arcs I had planned out for each character and in addition to that I would look at the themes I chose to portray as well. Doing this I managed to come up with this complete outline.
1. Life as usual: the story starts out with Agatha and Riot talking to each other about a strange looking woman being spotted near their village (with them being surprised because they are hidden deep in the Forrest and don’t see outsiders often). With Lockett coming a little bit after having to be brought up to speed by the other two. Leaving to grab something for them to drink from the river. (Agatha’s fear of death is set up here)
A. Call to action: Agatha and Riot see the women after Lockett leaves, and they start to talk to her. Lockett returns and sees one of the women and attacks her like a rabid dog
A. Threshold: they manage to restrain Lockett by knocking him out in the process with the village goers, taking a back in surprise. With Roberta (village oracle) noticing when they took him away.
3. New world: Roberta follows behind them. when they lock him up and put him in a strait jacket, he becomes nonresponsive, and Roberta brought up the idea to go inside his mind. With Riot wanting to and Agatha feeling like that’s an invasion of privacy. They decide when Sarona tells them that she works in a mental hospital and can advise them, so they won’t cause lasting damage, and he won’t get stuck this way.
A. Obstacles/ new friendships: they cannot all go into his mind at once and half to figure out who must stay behind. With Riot and Agatha starting to see Roberta as a mother figure.
4. Adapt to new world: riot, Agatha, and Roberta enter his mind, finding out that Lockett can’t see faces. Sarona stays on the outside to assist when they need her to.( because she’s a mental health doctor.) and they go through his memory’s ( starting with more recent ones that involve the village people, to him escaping from somewhere, going to the military, then to the childhood)with them becoming more and more fractured the further they go in until they reach the mental hospital where they have to find many missing pieces before everything even having to go back and swap out pieces they had wrong.
A. True power of the antagonist: they have seen how shattered his mind and memories are. With them constantly having to look through riots notes to keep track of everything.
5. desire achieved in a left-handed way: they think they finally have his memories correct but Lockett’s still not responsive.
A. Temptation: Sarona convinced them to let her lobotomize him to fix his mind in the morning. With riot convincing Agatha and Roberta in the night to try to fix his mind one more time before the operation.
6. Price paid for desire/ relationships questioned: they try again and find out he had already been lobotomized and when they got enough of the right pieces the doctor became familiar, but they didn’t know why. They left his mind so they wouldn’t be affected, with Agatha and Roberta trying to convince Riot to let the operation happen. Ending with them agreeing to let it happen with riot being unable to let it go, he goes and explores Sarona’s cave to find documents that he had already lobotomized with him getting hurt trying to get the info to Agatha and Roberta. with Roberta staying behind to help Riot (he told them there was no time to explain where he found the documents.) Agatha goes to the dungeon to stop the operation (not knowing she’s trying to hurt him.) and when she gets there Sarona’s not surprised by the documents.)
A. Return to righteousness: Agatha gets to the dungeon just before Sarona tries to kill locket. With her telling her that she knows making the connection that she’s the doctor from his memories that ordered lockets lobotomy in the first place (saying it out loud were Lockett could her fixing the rest of his mind.) Sarona tries to convince her to let her do it in exchange for eternal life to which she says no and before Sarona can try to kill Agatha Lockett wraps the chain around Sarona neck snapping it by pulling on it.
7. Return to familiar: Riot and Roberta get to the dungeon in time to see the blood on the floor. With Agatha having to explain what happened.
8. Come to terms with the way the world has changed: Agatha, riot, and Lockett go looking for the rest of his platoon members that were killed in the asylum he escaped.
Themes included in the story and why:
War- I chose to include themes of war because wars in media are commonly glorified and not shown for what they are and how they affect people.
PTSD -I chose to include the themes of PTSD because it can be a major roadblock when it comes to people trying to communicate after a traumatic experience.
Trauma -I chose to include the themes of trauma because it is a main factor in physiology of people that affects the way they interact with the world around them.
The treatment of war vets after wars- I chose to include the themes of the treatment of veterans after the wars because of how they are expected to return home and act normally.
Lobotomy’s- I chose to include the themes of lobotomies because of the horrific effects that they have on the people who have experienced them. Showing these effects on Lockett in the present day compared to the past would give insight into how much the procedure changes people’s
Human experiments- I chose to include the themes of human experiments to show the dangers of experimenting on people and how it can affect them physically and mentally.
Oppression of disabled people- I chose to include the themes of the oppression of disabled people to show how badly they were mistreated alongside people with PTSD.
The horrors of mental asylums- I chose to include the themes of mental asylums to show how horrific it was to be trapped inside one of these terrible places.
Ideals- I chose to include the themes of ideals because of how they affect the way people treat each other.
Religious cult- I chose to include the themes of religion cults to show the pitfalls of being too involved in only alike minded people.
Fear of the unknown- I chose to include the themes of the fear of the unknown because it is a big factor in why ideals, sheltering children. Oppression of literature and science, oppression disabled people, wars, and not accepting change.
Sheltering children — I chose to include the themes of sheltering children because children who are sheltered typically don’t receive the education that they should and have certain ideas taken away so the people who homeschool them can force ideals onto them with the student getting to decide for themselves.
The oppression of literature and science — I chose to include the themes of oppression in because of how commonly this happens to sheltered people and people in cults.
Closed mindedness- I chose to include the themes of close mindedness to show how it can affect large groups of people and individuals in those groups themselves.
The dangers of not accepting change- I chose to include the theme of not accepting change because of the things that could spiral out of control and people still wouldn’t accept a way out because it would mean they would have to change.
Empathy vs apathy- I chose to include the themes of empathy vs apathy because of Agatha’s and Riots friendship leaving room for discussion and commentary on the different perspectives of people with these mentalities and how they go about facing the same issues.
How I incorporated the themes: While figuring out how to incorporate the themes I struggled with keeping all the themes plot relevant and not too in your face.
To solve this problem, I incorporated the themes by doing two different things. The first thing I did was break down the most important themes into one category and the lesser plot relevant themes.
I then took the less important themes and found ways to use seemingly one-off lines to imply these ideas so I could in the future expand Apon them ideas.
Why I made the main character Riot instead of any of the other cast members: The reason behind making the main character riot instead of everyone else is because he is the most flawed and logical thinking character and having him be the main character leaves more room for conflict, change, and development from the more interesting perspective of someone who’s basically a robot.
Rather than someone like Agatha who is overly emotional and a bit childish like most protagonists in most tv shows.
Why I chose not to make Lockett the main character: Lockett is the character that the story is about. But having the story be about him monologuing while the other characters go through his head would be boring.
Why I chose not to make Agatha the main character: Agatha is a sheltered person who is overly emotional and childish and is a protagonist better suited for a children’s media rather than the story I’m trying to tell.
Why I chose not to make Roberta the main character: Roberta is an elder character who mostly has everything figured out for the most part and wouldn’t have as much conflict as Agatha or Riot as a main character.
Why I chose not to make Sarona the main character: Sarona is a very secretive character and having her be the main character would take the mystery around her away.
Writing the first chapter: Actually, writing the first chapter was stressful and inspiration sucking. To help with this I made a checkless of things to make sure they were included in the chapter. This checklist included
1. Meets the 1500-word count per chapter
2. Describes the setting, characters’ appearances, expressions, and feelings of the characters
3. Characters think and act like they should, considering their personalities.
4. Show don’t tell
5. Be descriptive
Writing the chapter itself: Referring to the checklist and the outline, I went to Wattpad and started writing. Writing the first draft I felt the need to keep going back over the same sentences and refining the word choices repeatedly because I felt like all the writing, I did was lackluster and left more to be desired.
So, I used advice my mom gave me when I was writing. ’Be descriptive’. When I asked her what that meant. She told me it meant to be descriptive and selective with the word choice when writing so I could paint a clear picture of what the world looks like.
I took this advice to heart and kept it in the back of my mind when I wrote. This advice helped me quite a lot, even though it helped me I struggled keeping the descriptions clear and consistent So, when writing the chapter to help with keeping the image that was in my head for how setting looked.
I drew a digital piece of what I thought it would look like, and I imported the picture into the header of the draft. Struggling not to reuse the same words repeatedly was difficult to the point of me having to Refer to a thesaurus on google.
In between the using the thesaurus and the visual aid it helped me feel better about the word choses I used one of the big ones being the word canopy. That was used when I described the large jungle trees.
Trying not to edit as I worked was very difficult so when finely reaching the editing stage of writing the chapter it felt like a burden was lifted off my shoulders.
Going back and fixing the incorrectly spelled words was easy because I had the help of auto correct words and the pro writing aid addon I got from the website.
It made correcting my mistakes a lot easier so I could focus more on changing the wording to include a stronger vocabulary. When I finished editing, I used the websites preview function to check and see what It looked like to the reader.
Reading through to make sure there wasn’t anything I had missed or anything that didn’t make sense. When I iron out all the issues I found. I finally pressed publish button.
(Though the addon was helpful then, I discovered recently when I went back that the addon had been wrongfully correcting things and making mistakes that took hours for me to correct. With this discovery I have been slowly phasing out the use of Pro Writing aid altogether.)
Conclusion: Writing the chapter was difficult. It gave me so many problems that forced me to come up with creative solutions that would make it easier for me to continue.
From creating the characters to, completing the outline to, writing and editing the first chapter being able to complete that major task was euphoric and brought me more joy to finely be able to tell my characters stories.
The link to the story: Paradise Lost — Olive Sage — Wattpad
