WRITER'S WORKSHOP
Of all the fan outlets for inspiration it is my long held belief that
fan fiction is the least respected among fans. When a fan draws a
really cool drawing of Alucard fans don't hesitate to compliment the
artist and ask for more. However, when a talented writer publishes a
thrilling story exploring a character's motivations and inner demons
fans seldom care to read. Why? There are probably many reasons.
Primarily it takes more time and effort to read a fan fiction than it
does to look and study a fan art. Nonetheless there are also those out
there that regard all fan fiction's as "crap" and written by people who
"don't know the first thing about writing." This site exists to prove
otherwise. There are a lot of fan fiction writer's out there with great
talent. I do not consider myself one of those talented writers
but I do consider myself a writer. This section of my site exists to
show others that even an amateur writer puts in a lot of thought and
effort into their work. I hope others will see this and appreciate the
work we put into our stories.
LoD has been without a doubt my most ambitious story ever. It also
happens to be my first, my longest, and it took the longest to write. I
think the story went through so many changes as I wrote it that it is
also my most flawed. I made a lot of changes midway that had ripple
effects. As a result I don't think there exists a single authentic
version. They all have discrepancies. My most recent attempts at
revising it have been sidelined by other things. A final version is yet
to be created. However, here for the first time I am going to publish
some goodies related to LoD.
| QUIET NIGHTS: View Scan View Text |
Quiet Nights is the original
opening to LoD. I had thought at first that I would start my story with
the return of the castle. I always had in my mind this idea that while
Henry and his family lived in the villa the castle had to have been in
ruins. Why else would someone build a villa in the middle of a castle?
Obviously the castle hadn't been there before. Hence my idea that the
castle rise from beneath the ground. |
| ALTERNATE CHAPTER 5 |
When I reached the end of
chapter 4 I had to stop and think about how I would explain Coller's
presence. I had worked out a general back story for Coller in my head.
My first instinct was for chapter five to be Cornell and Coller sitting
by the fountain exchanging stories. Obviously since the reader is
reading Cornell's story we didn't need Cornell to verbalize his. I did
need for Coller to tell his. Thus my first attempt was to have Coller
just literally tell his story. Now I had most of the details in my head
so when writing Coller's monologue I wrote it as if I were Coller
telling the story to Cornell. Just by reading it you can see it wasn't
such a good idea. After the first page I realized that this was to much
spoken exposition. It also seemed a little silly. Therefore I made what
was probably one of the most crucial changes to LoD. I decided that I
would divide LoD into three parts. Cornell's story, Coller's story and
finally Reinhardt's. This decision finally gave a structure to my
massive story. This helped immensely to not only focus on what needed
to written at the moment but also plan ahead and set up things for
later chapters. |
| CONCEPT ART: Map of Wallachia Sketch of Reinhardt Belmont coat of arms Bridge view of the front of the island. |
During my time writing LoD I would on occasion doodle. I consider myself a writer, not an artist but I thought it would be fun to show off some of my stuff. |
Thy Brother's Keeper was my first real attempt at writing a mystery.
Consequently it was also one of my most planned out stories. I have an
abundance of notes on it. I think it turned out 90% how I originally
envisioned it. The origin of the story is two fold. First I wanted to
do a story that I thought my brother would like. We had recently bought
some Hammer horror movies on DVD and I know he was a big fan. So I
wanted to capture that sort of Victorianesque horror. I racked my brain
for an idea that was just really [pardon the phrase] screwed up. I
wanted to come up with a really twisted idea. Coincidentally my
girlfriend was at around that time showing me one of her favorite
movies, Mary Reilly. BAM! The movie struck a chord in my head and
suddenly I had a story. Below are scan's of my extensive notes.
| Scene Breakdown Page 1 Page 2 |
Something I rarely do is
breakdown my story into scenes. For this mystery type story I found it
very useful because I could track the development of the story and how
the mystery unravels itself. One of my intentions was to keep the
reader guessing as to what was really going on. My favorite kind of
mysteries are the ones that put all their clues on the table and then
at the end show how they fit. |
| Plot Notes Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 |
Before I actually outlined the
events of the story I had to brainstorm. These notes show how I was
juggling the many different aspects of the story. One of the most
difficult aspects of writing a mystery for me was having to work
backwards. I have to know the ending first and then work my way
backwards to a point where I don't know what is going on. |
CASTLEVANIA TALES: BLOOD UNDER THE MOON
BUTM was one of the stories I had always intended to write. Before I
had completed LoD I had already gotten started on ideas for further
adventures with the characters from LoD. That explains why I
introduced Reinhardt's brother and established his disappearance in LoD. My
original idea was to write a short story starring each of the main
characters from LoD. Collectively they would have made up an anthology
of stories that I would have called Castlevania Tales. Thus why all my
stories are titled in that manner as opposed to just Casltevania. The
original anthology would have been comprised of the following stories:
Lost Blood- Wherein Reinhardt searches for his brother
untitled- Wherein Henry hunts some supernatural force and defeats it
with a mixture of science and magic
untitled- Wherein Carrie goes up against Actrise once again
untitled- Wherein Cornell searches for the origins of the Man-Wolf and
discovers a horrible secret
untitled- Wherein the ultimate fate of Coller and his wife are
determined
untitled-All the characters reunite for an epic clash with Dracula
You'll see that most the stories that I have written are based on the premises above. The final story obviously became Blood Under the Moon. The Carrie vs. Actrise story went through many different versions until it became Lost Souls. My epic idea for a Cornell became the lackluster "A Tale of Wolves." Coller never got his moment in the spotlight and my attempts to incorporate his character sensibly have resulted in various rewrites of things that I established in LoD. My reconstruction of Coller's character is still incomplete.
| Timeline
|
Here is a little timeline I cooked to keep my character's age straight. |
| Plot Notes |
You can see in the notes that the basic premise behind BUTM is I wanted a lousy ending for the heroes. I wanted to give Drac a victory. I mean it is kind of silly that the main villain be a push over and never win. I think he should he small victories here and there to sort of reemphasize that he is not a pushover. In a way, I think the little victories, the personal ones, are the worst. The victories that leave scars are the best. |
