a blog about Ivory and Derideal

This time I want to talk about planning stories.

in general, there are two ways of making a story:

• Planning everything, and use structures.
• Going with the flow (use intuition)

Derideal is the second type of story, mostly because when I came up with the story I had 17 years old or something. I've learned everything along the way, how to make better looking pages, drawing, how to tell a story...

It's easy to THINK you know exactly the story you want to tell, but a story is also flexible, you can change the entire meaning of a scene or an episode, by just changing a panel, or changing a dialog... or just changing the order.

Ivory came to be because I removed Laura from the story, but Alpha in part 2 is a character with little agency, I mean... he's pretty much depressed and crushed compared to Aden... I thought I needed another character to balance things out.

funny enough, Ivory was made as a female version of Alpha, because I wanted to include some fanservice shots, or just have a seductive girl in the story... and that's why she's often seen being flirty and easy going, she moves carefully, and always seems to know exactly what she wants.

She was made to be very different from Laura, almost her opposite...
Laura is innocent and fragile. Ivory is strong and independent.

she was also designed with the FOE color and uniform in mind... originally, I wanted her to tag along the FOE during missions... but then I scrapped that idea, but outfit remained.

thing is, she became a strong presence as I was writing, she was just supposed to go along sometimes... but her desire to be with Alpha make her reckless in the story, she's always more present, because, she wanted to be... and it was inevitable to feature her more and more.

I guess this is why they say some characters tend to "take over" your story, because after a while there are just certain ways they would act...

she also became a little more complex, she's really more of a young girl in love, and she's completely into those feelings (unlike Laura, who's always much more reserved). I think that the end of part 2 and during part 3 it will become more apparent how transparent she is, innocent even. She's not much into thinking things for long.

Also, she's made to be a female version of Alpha... because I thought it would be nice, and would make some sense too, considering the Consortium wouldn't have re-written Alpha's DNA entirely to create her.

but at first, I wanted her to be younger and more of a cold killer... huh.

During the writing of PART 3 she became sort of a driving force, which almost led me to entirely focus the story on her (would have been a mistake I think).

anyway, she wasn't originally included in my original idea, but she came to it. make a mess of that original idea, made it almost impossible to continue the same way... but it ended up making a new, different story that I liked more at the end.

Stories also change depending how much you grow, or how different are your interests.

Anyway, I want to try to write another blog about "STORY IDEAS" vs actual stories, and how much having "many ideas" make you lose focus and the less experience you have, the more you underestimate the scope of a project.

this for now!