When I started writing the Hesitant Hero way back in the day, it was a pretty boring concept. I just really liked the concept of writing about an Isekai story where the character that went to the other world was relatable. I like the genre a lot, but I’m so exhausted of having characters that I can’t relate to. Admittedly, as I was developing the early plans for this story, there were some anime that I watched that had similar ideas already and the need for a story like the one I was planning started to kind of go away. So I shelved the idea for a while until it was late 2021. I wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo – as I’ve talked about before – but the sci-fi story I’d been working on for years still wasn’t quite what I liked. So on a whim I decided to give the story that would become The Hesitant Hero another shot. What would I do if I were sent to another world and the people there expected me to become a hero? I’d probably freak out and have a panic attack. I wanted to write about that. To keep it interesting, I added a lot of fantastical elements to the first volume and kept the anxiety that Mana experienced relatively low. To be fair to her, as scary as her life has become, things have mostly gone well for our little gang, relatively speaking.
In volume 2, there is a bit of a shift. People get hurt, allies disappear and the stakes feel higher than before. This in turn results in more anxiety. I wanted to portray Mana as more subdued in this volume, but also confident in other moments. Anxiety isn’t something that’s always with you. Well, let me explain what I mean by that. I am a very anxious person. It absolutely sucks and I would trade it away immediately if I could. But that doesn’t mean I’m always on the verge of a panic attack. I’m a teacher now, and I have good days where I feel like I can take on life confidently. Then something goes wrong – maybe even something small – and the worry starts to seep into the cracks again. That’s the kind of anxiety I wanted to portray in Mana. I’ve taken situations from my own life and made them fit Mana’s life. The story about the casino and the club afterwards is based on a real experience. In reality, when this happened to me, it wasn’t as bad as it was for Mana and I was far too scared to ruin things to actually leave the group and run away. But I’ve also had experiences where my anxiety got so bad that I had to run away from everything at full speed without regard for anything around me. So I combined those experiences to turn them into a different narrative. Mana is a lot like me in some aspects, but she’s also much more brave than I am. I would crumble into pieces if I were in her shoes, but she’s strong. She’s smart and she’s incredibly kind. For a character that shares some of my flaws, I’ve gotten quite fond of her.
Volume 2 is definitely less structured as volume 1. That’s partially because I think I had a better view of what I wanted for volume 1 and partially because it’s not supposed to be incredibly structured. Their journey is chaotic and sometimes not even sensible. Wouldn’t the prince be much better off with the army and the hero on the front line for moral support? Teaming up with a pirate, traveling through foreign lands and helping out strangers along the way? All while the looming threat of a war is happening just off screen? None of this is very sensible. But I think that’s part of the charm. Mana and Cobal both have a long way to go and I’m happy they have Eliana there to help them out.
Speaking of Eliana, I had a lot of fun working out her characteristics. I know it’s kind of arrogant but I really quite like the idea of Mana calling her a theater kid. It’s so accurate to what I think her character is. She’s gone through quite the traumatic life herself and it’s a long life as well.
I’m going to spend the next month preparing ideas for volume 3, although quite a few plot points for that have already been set in stone. We’ll see some unexpected familiar faces in Marsolin and we’ll learn quite a bit more about the strange cult that’s been messing with Blueyerd and Cobal and friends. I also hope to develop Cobal as a character a lot more. He’s been a pretty stable center for the group to gather around, but he’s his own person as well. He’s not the biggest thinker, but Mana is slowly changing that about him. And since the story is told from his perspective we learn quite a lot about him as time goes on. Speaking of which, I once spent an entire afternoon writing a bit about Mana and Kimi sharing a conversation in volume 1, only to realize it doesn’t work since Cobal isn’t present for the conversation. Oops. Maybe I’ll eventually tell stories from other characters’ perspectives. I already have a spin-off series in mind that is crucial for some of the later parts of this story I want to tell. I have big plans. If they’re good enough is a different story, but they’re definitely plentiful.
What can you expect on this blog for the foreseeable future? Unfortunately, the amount of stories will go down quite a bit. I’ll continue uploading monthly chapters of The Necromancer’s Daughter. I’m still not perfectly happy with chapters 6-10, but they’re better than they were. At the very least they cover everything that’s important for the story to continue, and I can move back to Liari and Charlotte’s perspective without worrying. So that should be good. I’m really hoping to get some progress on a short story I’m writing called The Fae in the tree. It’s much more whimsical than my other stories, but I think it’s pretty good. I wrote like 4000 words in the middle of the night once and when I read it back the next day some of it still made sense.
But until January of 2024 there will likely not be any new chapters for The Hesitant Hero. I am also working on finalizing volume 1 and sending it to a publisher. If things go well, I’ll send the first version out before the year is over. I have no idea what I’m doing though, so be patient. If you’ve made it this far and you’ve read every chapter I want to once again make clear how much I appreciate you! I still cannot believe that people come back weekly to read the stories I write. I’ve been writing to only myself for so long that I thought I’d never write something that someone else enjoyed, but knowing that people enjoy my stories makes me so happy and gives me so much motivation to continue writing. Thank you so much and I promise I’ll keep writing stories for many more years!
PS. Knowing myself, I’ll probably do one or two more afterwords in the future just to put my thoughts on paper 😛
Opal Kaharis 