Tag: backstory

Side Quests

September 16, 2021

Side Quests

Have you ever played those role playing video games (yes, I know they are called RPGs) where you are a character (or in the case of my personal favorite, Star Ocean, the Second Story, you are several characters)? Your job is to get from A to B solving stuff along the way so you can accomplish B successfully.

There are these fun little diversions called “Side Quests” that entice you to sidetrack. And yes, I do every side quest I can possibly do! I love these characters (I mean, seriously, who doesn’t love Dias’ tragic backstory and crazy loyalty?) and generally the side quests develop or highlight the character or relationship of one or more characters.

My mind does that to books too.

After watching “The Neverending Story”, I told my Daddy, “every story I like is neverending to me.” He laughed. But case and point: my girls and I are reading and/or listening to an engaging series by Flanagan called “The Ranger’s Apprentice.” I’m way ahead of them and dying trying to not give the story away!! We debate character, backstory, possible romantic interests, who will die, etc. In my head, I have taken bits of veiled hints and imagined child and teen escapades that Will and the other wards may have had. I dream of the life of Will’s parents. I wonder at Halt’s story. (Get to book 9 to answer part of that previous one.)

For me, “The Ranger’s Apprentice” is a neverending story.

Switch to writer brain…

Now, my uncanny love of fleshing out my characters with backstory and flashback experiences bombed when I had to cut more than 80% of “Web of Deception” during editing. While I perceived I was getting good at hinting instead of laying everything out, (aka learning to cut stuff) one of my proofreaders came up clutching the original first book in “Brantley Station Saga” and moaned, “what is the pirate baby story?“

…book one became book three because I needed to tell Ethan’s origin story in “Pirate Child” and “Little Thief.” It also gave me opportunity to build up and flesh out a secondary character in the series who becomes one of Ethan’s primary influencers.

A side quest turned into two additional books.

Now I’m constantly working on various huge books. One is codenamed “curse” and is actually an evil backstory. I have a spin-off of what may turn into actual books someday written to help me understand my characters better… All are backstory for one character in “curse.”

What side quests teach me about life is that often the character building moments in our lives come from what we perceive as inconsequential incidents. We may not understand at that moment that these side quests are really pivotal moments.

Anyway:

Enjoy life! With all of the bumps, dips, side quests, and shifts along the way.

Find your joy!

Thank you for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Brummen

June 21, 2018

Meet Brummen

Chef Brummen of Brantley Station didn’t start life dreaming of being the head chef in a mining colony more than a mile below sea level.

He began as a simple Grenadan lad.

Brummen studied and worked hard as a child and joined the Grenadan Guards at the earliest age allowed; twelve.  Brummen steadily and slowly ascended in rank until he was twenty-eight.

One night, he and his fiancée attended a party with several other Guards.  A Guard with whom Brummen already had conflict, was thoroughly drunk and insulted his fiancée.  Brummen reacted in anger and punched him.  This strike resulted in the insulting Guard’s death.  Brummen sank into a depression which expressed itself in a growing narcissism.

Brummen was tried by court martial.  The result would have been execution except that one member, who had been mentoring Brummen and watching his career, suggested banishment instead.

A friend suggested that he apply for a position on the newly designed underwater mining colony as it would be under Guard regulation but was a Qualizidian operation.  Brummen’s fiancée spurned his invitation to join but Brummen was accepted as the head (and only) chef for Brantley Station.

Since his galley becomes the place unruly or disobedient Guards are sent, Brummen’s experience seems to prove his narcissistic view of humanity.  But when Brummen discovers a strange, oddly acting boy stealing from his galley, he finds himself drawn toward the child with feelings he had buried. Quickly, Brummen realizes Ethan is no pirate child thief, and instead of letting the world “follow its course” regarding the boy, Brummen intercedes to keep Ethan on Brantley Station.  He won’t admit it to anyone, but he even will try to claim the lonely child as his.

Learn more about Brummen and follow Ethan’s story in the Brantley Station Saga!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Tawny

The backstory of the little dengee adopted by Alena in A Foundling Furball. Meet Tawny:

January 18, 2018

Meet Tawny

On Devonia, a world far from here, but more deserving of the name Earth’s Twin than Venus, a dengee (a strong, wolf-dog-like creature) female birthed a litter of pups.  One of those tiny, sightless, nearly deaf, fluffy balls was a tan-brown female with black rings on her tail and black markings.  Her first two days of life were normal for any dengee pup.  She shoved her way to her mother’s warm belly and warmed herself inside and out with her mother’s milk and thick soft fur.

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But then something unexpected happened.  She was too young to understand, but the lead pack male was forced out by a trio of incoming younger, stronger males.  In the dengee world, those males would then destroy all of the previous male’s young.  Although some of the mother dengees had been wounded while trying to fight them away alongside the pack male, others resigned themselves to their fate.  The new trio of males, one lead pack male and the other two his cohorts, hunted down and destroyed all the six dens with the old male’s pups.

What the pup knew was that mean teeth snapped at her and a rough angry paw tossed her out of the warm den and into the cold early morning where it was just as dark to those with open eyes as it was to her blind self.  Miraculously, the tiny female pup, now heavily injured, managed to elude her pursuer and slide into the edge of a frigid creek.  She called for her mother.  She cried will all her might.

Her new mother heard her cries.

Alena Summers, a human child fishing on the bank of the Ice Cube Creek that early afternoon, heard the pitiful calls of this lonely baby and followed the sound.  Joseph Taylor, another human child, swam into the cold water to rescue the blob of tangled fur from her prison in the bushes on the edge of the water, and there Tawny became a ward of the humans.

This little three-day-old dengee pup whose eyes had never seen her own kind was rescued from drowning by two children and warmed in her new mother’s soft apron.  Tawny’s life had already been so full of turmoil!  Even on the bank after being rescued, the other children considered tossing her back because dengees were deadly foes to the humans – attacking their livestock and more than once, even the humans themselves.  Thankfully, Alena wouldn’t have that; she took full charge of this tiny creature.

With slow, tender, loving care, Tawny’s wounds will heal.  Four days later, at only a week old, and without yet opening her tiny eyes, little Tawny will face another challenge as the council of elders on Devonia has to decide if Alena can keep this dangerous animal.  Of course, Alena and her friends will swear that this pup is nothing dangerous – but that remains to be seen.

For now, Tawny, the newest member of the Devonian settlement of Covenant, is resting with warm Brown-Sheep milk digesting in her belly laying on a soft rag-blanket-bed on straw in the Summers’ barn listening to the sounds of Alena’s pretty lullabies, Brown-Sheep ewes, and baby lambs and dreaming of new warm sun on her body and the soft, warm love of her human mother.

If you want to read about how Alena, Joseph, and their friends find and rescue Tawny, you can read A Foundling Furball!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Meet Jordan Binak

August 2, 2017

Meet Jordan Binak

We’re going to meet another fictional character today.  This one was created over 20 years ago!  Often when authors create fictional characters, they pull from themselves and add strengths they want.  If you study Charles Dickens, you learn that the character of David Copperfield has many traits and experiences that Dickens actually had.  Of course, the story is fiction, but the lead character is very close to Dickens.  I think of this as a “masked cameo” – like when a movie director has a cameo appearance in a film he directs.  Only in a book, since the readers may not know the author personally, the author can give his “masked cameo” a larger role.

When writing “Web of Deception,” I used many friends and family from real life and masked them or blended them together to make my characters.  (Don’t tell anyone!  And, no, I’m not saying who is who!)  Jordan was how I envisioned my character with his backstory.  Strong, bold, self-sacrificing for others, humble, frustrated, confused, content, fearless.  (Actually, he sounds like any teenager!)  I would work out the story in my backyard, acting out each part until I was satisfied with the way each sub-story played out and how the characters acted.  (Quite a lot of it was chopped later, or rearranged, just like a movie!  And my dog, Lady, was my first-ever audience.)

Jordan gets most of his character from his birth family.  This foundation is built upon by the family who takes him in.  He credits most of his character to his sister, who he looked up to and was always trying to be like.  He doesn’t realize it (most young people don’t until later when they choose to analyze themselves), but even his perception of others is influenced by his childhood village.  As a youngster he enters a military training school.  This is common in the World of Kings’ province of Swavaria.  Their Warrior-Spirits begin training between three and five.  Jordan enters “late” at seven and a half.

When he’s graduated from this school, he finds himself thrust into a twisted quest he knows nothing of.  This quest will answer more questions and touch more memories than Jordan knew he had.  “Web of Deception” was written using my “step in their shoes and walk around” model that I use for most characters.  Being that Jordan was my first protagonist (lead character), I discovered that when I was frustrated, it was easy to write confrontation and fight scenes. When I was calm, it was easier to drift to other characters and develop them.  This made for a great release of frustration!  I’d just turn whatever was bothering me into the creature Jordan happened to be fighting!  (This was a major stress-reliever!  When I created Kvortee, I was envisioning a bully we’d just dealt with.)

I completed the first draft of “Web of Deception” when I was fourteen.  When the first edition was published, the ending was cut, so this second edition contains the full ending!  Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

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