Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Lost in the Fray: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 3 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find my published stories and guides in the Books Directory.



In Part 1 of this series, I began writing my first stories, and though the grip of one on one role-play never lost its hold on me, I'd added more populous games to my repertoire by the time high school ended.

A large Dragonriders of Pern game taught me that, while my writing partner was forgiving of my overindulgent character traits, the internet at large was harshly judgmental. As I joined more diverse games not limited to one fandom, I discovered that most players used characters from existing works of fiction, rather than inventing their own original characters. Dutifully, I picked up my favorite characters from published works, and I found that the payoff of writing with friends did not diminish for the changeover.

As time passed, my writing partner and I diverged somewhat, and though we still played together in these large internet games, our intensive one on one writing diminished through my college days. We collaborated in other ways, inventing new premises for larger games, and I developed my first web skills doing basic HTML coding to get our first game off the ground. It drew a decent following, most of the players making an exodus from one of our old games and into new territory with us.


Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!


A new player and I became fast friends, and we developed a writing rapport based on the characters we played. When I heard she was in dire straits, I helped her move in with me from halfway across the country, and our rapport intensified once we were roommates. Though not strictly faithful to the published stories, we fostered an imaginative relationship between Reno and Tifa from the Final Fantasy VII franchise. Later, we added a romance between Renji and Rukia from Bleach.

Meanwhile, I retained old maps and transcripts of the fantasy game that would become my Tales of the Known World saga. I felt driven to turn my premise into a novel, and my old writing partner granted me permission to run with my ideas. But between my college courses, online games, and full-time job, I had little time to edit the convoluted transcript. When I learned my roommate felt left out of my fantasy project, I made the easy decision to quit the novel to make more time for gaming.


That's it for this post! Up Next: How I spiraled into a new beginning...

Download the Author's Manifesto here, or start your adventure below.






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