[Intro Music]

 

Hey all! Glad you could make it to this new podcast, “The Story’s Story”, about the background history of written works (both fiction and nonfiction). For now, I’m going to give you the insider details on my works’ background, but please, let me know what you want to see next! Be it your favorite fictional sci-fi writer or nature documenter, I’ll dig deep and bring back the juicy information for you.

 

Everything has a beginning, but written stories have two. The plot’s beginning, but also the beginning of the idea for the story itself. Now I’ve been fascinated with writing stories for as long as I can remember, but this particular over-arching one, with the story excerpts you can access easily on my website [click on the "Excerpts" tab above to view them], has been with me for almost a decade! 

 

DeviantART. The website amongst my sisters and I was all the rage. I recall on the night of January 8, 2011 my sister and I begged our mom to let me create my own account, which after some persistence from us, she did. The creation of my page marked the beginning of not only my journey as an artist, but as a writer as well. Within the year, I found a lot of people that I deemed friends, all of them inspiring me, but none so much as one called Nightstar. Me being the impressionable youngster I was, I decided to create my own characters for the website as she and my other online friends had. And on May 23rd, 2012, titled “Tribute for Nightstar”, I created Lightningstar to go alongside her Nightstar character. Now, the website and my page are still active, so you can follow along and see these drawings and whatnot I reference; trace the history with me, so to speak. There will be a link in the episode’s description to my deviantART [click here for the deviantART page]. 

 

So, if you go to this drawing, “Tribute for Nightstar”, you will notice that the characters are animals. At the time, my artistic ability was very amateur and drawing people was beyond my skill level; Couple that with my fascination with nature and love of animals, and boom, you get these very human-like animal characters. Over time, of course, I learned how to draw people at least somewhat decently, so the animals more or less disappeared from my art. In writing, I also struggled with ridding myself of these animal forms. See, okay, I get very attached to things, I’m very passionate with these characters and their story… so I couldn’t just throw away all of these little designs and ideas I had as a kid. That to me was like throwing away my computer; it was valuable and I was determined to weave some of these old concepts in.

 

This weaving, of course, was difficult. I mean, look at the main character’s name. Lightningstar. It’s an artifact of those old times. And while some of the characters earned new names when I began to revamp my old ideas in 2016, hers and some others I just couldn’t throw away. They (along with some of the old designs) became sort of iconic amongst my friends, family and myself. For some things I came up with a solution, but not for some of the names. 

 

These characters and their world changed somewhat drastically between their old selves in 2012 to what they are now in the story, since 2016. Being pretty young when I first made them, there wasn’t a lot of depth to them; They lacked flaws, their interactions felt childish, and the writing of course was lackluster. When I got into high school and began writing the main story, The First Meeting, I had developed them little, but they were starting to take some shape. Except, being a freshman, the writing was still pretty well… cringey. But I had accomplished finally writing a complete novel-length story, something I hadn’t done before. This sparked the motivation and passion into overdrive basically. I realized eventually that the overall ideas needed to be reworked and strengthened, the characters’ designs had to be revamped to be less childish in nature, and my writing needed to be refined.

 

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When you finish listening, be sure to check out the episode’s notes. There, I’ll have the links to the deviantART page and my website as well, so you can get to the free excerpts if you’d like a bit more entertainment!

 

The first written piece, I’ll call it, I wrote pertaining to the main character, Lightningstar, was back in 2013 on deviantART, about two years after I created my account on the website. This story, if you can call it that, is called “Untitled” (but actually called “Fear”, I just didn’t know what I was doing with the submission system). At the time, the characters resembled me almost identically. There were only a few things that really differed. Yet, when I started high school, I branched out in developing the characters. Of course, they still reflected me a lot, but they were beginning to take shape. I began basing them on myself but also things I’d picked up in stories and shows that I loved. I also took more English classes (and met more people of course) that expanded my boundaries further. Which, one piece of advice I have for any new writers out there listening or anyone curious, if you want some believable characters, it’s always helpful to listen to people around you. And I don’t mean necessarily talking to people, but just listening in. Listening to the different people around you gives you new perspectives and ideas on how people talk in real life. It’s simple, but certainly a helpful experience!

 

By the time I reached my later years of high school, I had been exposed to so many different personalities, lifestyles, speech patterns, and appearances. Subconsciously, I took note of these things and wove them into my characters and world; I began researching concepts for the ideas I had and instead of being these childish figures of imagination, they became “real people”. So to speak, anyways. And I mean, I got in depth with this development. I remember my teacher, great teacher, gave us links to personality tests and had written up this assignment which was a character profile. This character profile I had requested a couple of years before from my sister, who had the class before I could take it, so I was eager to dig deeper with it when I finally did get into the class. I took the personality tests for my characters and worked with my teacher to improve my writing. I went to my friends and family to work out the flaws of logic and writing in the new stories I began writing shortly after the class began, Still Unforgiven and later Behind Quiet Faces.

 

More recently, through a friend, I’ve picked out parts of the old The First Meeting to reform and rewrite it. Being so old, the story had become out-dated and needed a re-do, which made things problematic for the other short stories and novels that I’ve written simply because they were based off the old version of The First Meeting. Which brings me to some personal advice I’d like to share with you all, especially any writers out there (or anyone’s who’s curious!). You can start writing at any time, but be mindful of your growth as a person. The story I’m working on turned into a big project, something I underestimated back when I wrote the first installation of The First Meeting. So when the story developed, I had to rewrite it to be accurate and fit the story I wanted, alongside just writing skill. It’s just something to keep in mind when or if you ever start writing (which you should if you’re thinking about it!).

 

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Thanks all for listening in! Remember if you have any ideas for the next podcast, you can email me at bunnylove2arts@gmail.com! Check the episode’s notes for links mentioned in the episode. Wherever you are, have a wonderful day and night.