So.
I’ve decided it’s probably going to be a good idea and a helpful tool for me to open a blog so that I can have a place to discuss themes, ideas, processes, and other miscellany for the writing I do. If you begin following this blog, you’ve probably heard of me from fanfiction.net and my TLoU fan fictions, Aftermath: Parts I and II.
After completing the brilliant, masterpiece of a game called The Last of Us, I felt compelled to start writing again. Prior to starting writing those fan fictions, I hadn’t really done much creative writing since the days where it was an assignment, and seeing as I took AP English in high school and was a physics major in college (i.e. English beyond AP level wasn’t a requirement,) high school was the last time I really did any writing besides writing lyrics for a band I used to play in for a while.
The Last of Us really stuck with me, and after stumbling across fanfiction.net via Reddit, I read some TLoU fan fics on there. It left a dissatisfied taste in my mouth for a couple reasons.
- I don’t know if people are just bad at spelling, don’t understand what spell check is, don’t proofread, or some combination of these, but many of the stories were just riddled with typos and poor grammar. To me, this was immersion-breaking and I couldn’t really enjoy them as much as I’d like.
- People didn’t seem to capture the characters of Joel and Ellie as well as I would like them to. They acted out-of-character and I couldn’t hear their voices speaking the dialogue.
- JoelxEllie fan fics. That’s all I’ll say about that. *shudder*
There were one or two I really enjoyed, but beyond that, I felt like if I wanted some high-quality fan fiction, I’d have to write it. If you want something done right, do it yourself, as the old proverb goes. I realize that might sound somewhat arrogant or conceited, but take it for what it’s worth. Maybe it is, to some degree.
I honestly felt like the biggest nerd in the world when I began writing my first fan fiction. I mean, seriously, only über-geeks do this, right? To this day, only a handful of my close friends know I write the stuff. But when I started reading reviews that people had left on my writing, I felt buoyed, and so the writing continued and it’s turned into a full-fledged three part series. Fancy that.
One of the reasons I haven’t written much since high school was that I really didn’t have any “stroke of genius” ideas. There wasn’t really anything worthwhile to write about. But partway through Aftermath: Part II, the stroke of genius idea I was waiting for finally came. It started as a simple concept, but gradually it grew and took more developed shape. My roommate is of very similar mind as myself, and I threw the idea around with him for a couple weeks before I decided it was something off of which I could base a novel. Now, the history of the world is rich and multi-faceted, and it really enables you to ask a lot of interesting questions.
I won’t give too many details about the novel here, but I can give the basics. First off, it is near-future post-apocalyptic fiction. Yes, yes, I know it’s overdone, but if there’s one thing I learned from The Last of Us, it’s that the fact that the genre is saturated with cliché and overwrought in its tendencies does not mean there isn’t anything original left to be done with it. If you come up with a provocative setup, a richly detailed and broken world, it creates a fertile tapestry on which to weave a tale. And as far as my opinion goes, the tale is a pretty good one.
So good, in fact, that my roommate also decided he would begin writing a novel of his own that’s based in the same universe with the same history. Once we got into it, we had been in contact with a friend of ours who is studying in a field that’s relevant to the back story of the book, and upon hearing our idea, he too decided to write his own novel in the same universe. I’m sure some people would be pissed that other people might glean something from their original idea, but I’m actually pretty stoked about it. Having three novels that take place in the same universe but telling three different stories and being told by three different authors will give something for everyone to enjoy. Whereas my story tends more toward the tone of TLoU, my roommate’s is almost a youth lit story with more innocence at its heart (his story follows a 10-12 year old boy,) and our other friend’s story is more action-adventure-y in nature.
I’ve been writing it in conjunction with the Aftermath series, and I’ve found that writing the two at the same time is actually helpful. Sometimes it’s handy to jump into a world and into characters who are already written for me! It aids in alleviating those small bouts of writers block that pop up while working on the novel.
The novel doesn’t have a name yet. I need to come up with a name for the series, and then come up with a name for the novel itself. The three of us have each sort of agreed that we’ll each be writing a trilogy, so we might be getting nine books in this series! We’ll see if that happens, but it’d be pretty exciting.
So. That’s what this blog is all about. I’m going to be posting about writing both the novel and Aftermath: Part III, which at the time of writing this hasn’t been started yet. I’ll use this space to toss out ideas, explain my thoughts on each chapter, delve into the characters motivations and some of the heavier themes.
If you want to stay updated on the Aftermath series as well as the novel I’m writing, I recommend subscribing to this blog. Oh, and if you feel like following me on Twitter, you’re welcome to do that, too. My username is, you guessed it, “thehammerofthor”
Until next time
Jeff
The Hammer of Thor 