Don't throw away your old outlines and stories.
I started writing stories when I was eleven years old. I completed around twelve fantasy stories by the time I graduated from High School. During that time, I was also piling dozens of incomplete stories, manga adaptations, sketches, and blurbs.
Every now and then, I want to take an old story, strip my poorly structured characters, flimsy scenes, cheesy dialogue and give them a makeover.
When I have doubts about doing it, it’s because of these three questions.
- What if I trunked my story because it’s not good?
- I already have new ideas to write about.
- Maybe they deserved to collect dust — It’s embarrassing to read!
I believe these aren’t wrong questions to ask, but I also think it’s a scapegoat not to use what could be rich content. Somewhere under the run-on sentences, and vomit of grammar mistakes, there could be a gold nugget—waiting to be polished.
The Black Wing series has colossal worlds where the past, present, and future intertwine with the series.
So what do I do when I want to create another book in the same world?
What better opportunity than dusting my bags (I don’t have a trunk) and revive one of my middle school/ high school stories?
My Blue Book. The papers feel soft, almost translucent in blue ink.
I will spare you the embarrassing parts of Blue Book and generalize what the story entails.
A materialistic, self-absorbed woman has the worst luck when she’s no longer on Eart. One mistake leaves her wedded off to an insufferable man. She must now live among a prominent village with iron-fist rules. This village is protected by a shy and very private dragon who is unable to leave his post by the coast. The woman must decide if she wants to adapt to her new world or become what the village people fear.
This story, aka Blue Notebook has been stored in my trunk (Microsoft bag) for 16 years!
But here is a warning
Fantasy writers, don’t blindly pick a story from your trunk, choose one that will fit with the world can add to your current series. Blue Notebook works well because the world I created has the same cultural, magic system, and medieval themes in The Black Wing series.
The setting in Blue Book is futuristic but involves swords and dragons. (I don’t know why I like combining sci-fi with medieval themes. But it showed 16 years ago and now)
If you can’t transplant your story into a current series, don’t sweat it.
Throw the setting/world away, but keep your characters, tweak them, give them a different hair color! Sometimes we give up on a story because the world we put our lively characters was not good enough. Don’t let your character’s pay for it.
This also works vice-versa. If your characters were not sticking to the plot or universe, you created — why throw both of them away?
If you’re going to trunk away your stories, don’t feel as though you have failed them.
One day, Blue Book will make a return.
