Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Update: The Many Paths and So Little Time

So it's been a while since you've heard on any updates on the latest story. You've gotten insights about the development process, but no progress update on how much I've written. To be fair, it's probably always a bad idea to share how far you are in a story because something may happen that causes a complete rewrite. I believe I've hinted at it before where if I had the time and energy, there is one major change I would like to make to Shining. However, at some point, enough is enough. Even though this change I would make wouldn't change the story, it would require a lot of changes to dialogue and then making sure it fits with everything else. As such, I'm being very deliberate about what decisions I would like to make with this next one. On the bright side, the chapter I wrote years ago is still as I wanted it to be.
Now I don't recall if I shared this with you but one of my goals with Neostriker from about the beginning was to create a game. As I was brainstorming, another story was being made and I kept thinking how well it would fit into a game. While I have played many games, my knowledge about coding them is next to nil. As a result, I decided to pursue learning more about programming games and see if I can possibly make a demo for my projects. If anything, then I can get hired at a company who might be interested in helping me flesh out the Neostriker world I have planned. I'm still slowly writing the next novel but it will take longer than I had originally planned. To be fair, that's the kind of thing that happens when it's only one guy doing everything and not getting paid for it. However, since I love this series so much, I'll continue to give it my best to create the best world it can be.

J. D. Nyle

Monday, July 13, 2015

Characters: The Women of Neostriker

Sorry for long delay! I meant to post something last week, but I forgot all about it. To make up for that, here's some insight about what to expect in my upcoming novel.


When people talk about diversity in some stories, women tend to be one of the categories to be mentioned.  However, I do not intend to include any women among the primary cast this time. So will there be no women? Not at all. In fact, there are a few that the characters will meet and they will be important in some way or another (and none are damsels in distress), especially as I set them up to be major later. There is one character I'm holding off on introducing until later but you may be surprised to see how much she is involved in the first story when I do reveal her.

So why won't there be any among the main cast this time? One major reason is I'm personally tired of seeing romances and so no characters will be romantically involved with anyone they meet on this first quest. The easiest way is to simply not include women as part of the main cast. Second, I have some adventures planned specifically for the feminine characters and I want to save those for my second and third novels after I use this first story to set everything up (I'm even holding back the Legends that relate to them until then). Third, I want to focus on world building for the first story instead of distractions. Fifth and perhaps the greatest reason, they just don't fit into my story to be part of the adventuring party this time. Instead, for their greatest impact and glimpse into cultures, they need to be among those met along the way.

The essential point I want people to consider is to let the artist or storyteller convey the story as it comes to him or her. Sometimes we can be too demanding to see "equality" that we consider them essential to a good story. That isn't the case. While they can bring about interesting topics, sometimes we neglect that diversity is a relative term and that there is plenty just within the white-male stereotype as we can see in Lord of the Rings. On the other hand, perhaps these men aren't white and people will just imagine them that way based off stereotypes.