Road Warrior

There is absolutely no connection between the picture and what I’m about to write about, but whatever.

So, I’m almost done writing Darwin & the Beast Collector, which means I should go back to my notebook.  It’s been in limbo for a while.  I even stopped halfway through designing the last of the squad mentors.  Why?  Well, I’ll explain a bit.

The series in question is being called ‘The Phi Beta Files’ for now.  Not sure if I want to keep that last word, but I can’t think of a better one that starts with an ‘f’ or ‘b’ sound to fit the pattern.  The story is about a group of miscreants who are cadets at a mercenary academy, which specializes in 6-man squads.  The four main characters are put into a squad on their own with the hope that they flunk out or get expelled.  Think of ‘Animal House’, but it’s at a fantasy warrior academy.  Much inspiration was taken from things that happened in my own college days.  At least the freshman year, which is where the ‘Phi Beta’ crew happened.  This is definitely an action-comedy series.

It took me a long time to figure out that I wanted to go with 6 books (Each school year, spring break, and summer session) with a short story collection style.  The stories are connected like chapters, but it doesn’t make me feel like I’m going too far.  I can give the proper attention to each event with the overarching story being carried along by other incidents.  Do I have the stories planned out?  No because I’ve been dragging my feet on this project for the following reasons:

1. Kept going for my books when I was home.
2. Tried only doing this at work, but I was always feeling tired and worn down.
3. Health issues at home made it difficult to work on anything.
4. Doubt in myself since everything after ‘Legends of Windemere’ have fallen flat.
5. Misplacing my notes.
6. Rivendell Lego Set over the summer.

Anyway, I think I’m going to really try to make progress before the end of the year.  I have some half days coming up where I can’t leave work, which I can use to my advantage once I figure out my newest issue.

So, there are the 4 main characters of ‘Phi Beta’ that make up the 6-man squad.  I designed the recurring enemies and the other 5 squads they interact with.  The last of the squad mentors will be done soon.  After that, I have only one thing left before tackling the actual books/stories.  That would be the core supporting cast, which would consist of characters based on the rest of the people I hung out with during the ‘Phi Beta’ period.  This adds another 10 characters to the mix whose roles are to support the main team.  For example, there is an explosion expert, a healer, a bard, a horse trainer, supplier, etc.  It’s going to be a wild and busy house after they’re recruited in the second book.

This also gives me about 17 characters to juggle in some scenes.  I don’t think I want to go that far, but I gave each character a purpose and would feel bad leaving anyone out.  There are incidents in the books after they’re recruited where I would only need a few either specific or random ones.  There’s a point where only 1 of the 4 mains are at the academy and has to pretend to be the others to make sure they don’t get expelled for leaving in the middle of a semester.  The support team would be very important for this to work and it’s going to span an entire book.  Looking forward to that mayhem.

As you can tell, I’m not willing to cut any characters because of the memories that are connected to what’s going on.  I tried, but then I realized the fictional, magical exaggeration of real events required those that I sidelined.  Just wouldn’t feel right to put anyone else in these positions, which I guess sounds stupid to anyone who wasn’t with us during these days.  I think my options for how to fit them in would be:

• Rotate the characters throughout the stories to give everyone a chance.
• Stick with whoever was actually there, which means a few will not get much page time.
• Keep whoever is there and choose another random or two due to exaggerating the events.
• Just take names out of a hat to see who gets to be in a scene.  This sounds oddly fun because it means the solutions for the problem will be determined by whoever I get for the scene.  The bard will bring a different set of skills than the poison expert.

Has anybody else had to juggle such a big supporting cast and make sure everyone got something more than an introduction?  I’m really curious about this, especially since I don’t want to introduce a character and then they stay in the background.  That feels oddly insulting to them and their origins.