So it’s been a while since I started posting chapters of the story I’ve been writing for a while: The Necromancer’s Daughter. This isn’t the first draft of this story and will by no means be the last. With that out of the way, this is a version I’m quite happy with. The first arc feels like it makes sense to me and hopefully I can start uploading the next arc next week. I have several chapters of really rough drafts ready that I’m going to be editing down over the next few weeks to hopefully get ahead of schedule. What am I saying, I won’t get ahead of schedule, I work best under pressure.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the story so far. Starting with the epigraphs. I learned that the little blobs of information at the start of a chapter are called epigraphs. It’s an interesting word to know. I got the idea from reading the One Piece manga. Its author, Oda, has cover arcs, which are one-page updates to side stories that are taking place in the universe but don’t require entire chapters dedicated to them. You can read my opinion about those here. I landed on using these to tell Fesquera’s story. Fesquera is one of the oldest characters that has stayed with me the longest. He was initially going to be a crucial part of the story directly, but only later during the writing process did I decide to give him more of a background role. His impact on the world will be seen and felt many times throughout this story since he lived a long and interesting life, but as is clear at the end of his little side story; he is no longer amongst the living. He’s currently taking a vacation in the afterlife and as Ianari said, there is no way back down.
His story was initially a prologue, but after a while I realized that there were many stories I want to tell with The Necromancer’s Daughter. I realized the best way I can do this is through these epigraphs. So I hope you’re looking forward to more short stories.
The story itself so far didn’t do much more than set up some of the main plot points. Charlotte lost her empire and her family, Liari lost her family as well. The two women will now journey together to find a new place in their world. Perhaps they’ll even try to get the empire back. Who knows? No one, no one knows. I don’t even know yet. That’s the fun about writing for me. I have certain scenes I want to include at some point, and there’s plot points I’m working towards, but I don’t have a plan for every character. Some of them will just go where they end up. We’ll go back to Liari and Charlotte in a few chapters, but for the time being we’re going to take a look at some different characters. There will be a familiar face in the mix though, so do not worry about feeling lonely too much.
All in all I’m happy looking back on these chapters. I don’t think I’ll make any major changes to the story as it is. What I do want to make changes to is the next few chapters. I should probably stop stalling by writing this post and actually get to work on editing chapter 6. For now, I hope you enjoyed the first few chapters of my story, and thank you for reading.
Opal Kaharis 