My First Editor Roles
My Writing Journey Vol. 11
Welcome to this week’s Writing Journey post! Last week I shared the brilliant cover art a friend of mine did and brought us up to April 2020, releasing the last volume in my main self-published series a few weeks into lockdown here in the UK.
As I said at the end of last week’s, today I’m writing about stories I contributed to, as a co-writer but mainly as an editor, backtracking first to 2019 to Class 11 (Year 12) at my school. It’s tradition to put on a play at Christmastime in our final year, one that involves, music, movement, a lower year, and narration. So, we have to start working on it the year before. It’s also always a fairy-tale, myth, fable of some sort, something fantastical, an old story somewhat universal but always tied to some culture.
After a long choosing process, we settled on an Amazonian story, recorded by someone who had visited a native community, the Takuna tribe, and learnt and translated their stories, and then retold by someone online as ‘Wings of the Butterfly’.
It was that short retelling that we worked from, an odyssey story of sorts following a girl on her journey through the forest, first following a Morpho butterfly away from her community, talking to some animals, meeting a monkey lord who turns out to be a jaguar, before being transformed to a butterfly herself to cross back over the Amazon and back to her family.
It was a short story, with a few characters, but we needed more, we needed roles for the younger class that would help us with the play, and it generally needed to be longer. I think ten of us broke into five pairs to add more scenes, or expand on those there.
My partner and I wrote a scene for the lower years, expanding on a meeting with a woodpecker, making it a pair of birds, and adding a trail of ants that the younger children could play, showing that whatever size creature you are in the jungle, everything is important. Sadly, post lockdowns in 2021, we couldn’t work with the younger kids, so I was one of the few putting on antenna and prancing around in a line…
Anyway, once all of the pairs had written their scenes in 2019, there was the job of editing those with the original story, and making it flow together into one tale. No one else had volunteered, so I used a bit of my free time to do it and it was a very rewarding process, first just to read the work my classmates, friends, had done, and then working it into a cohesive whole I think everyone was happy with. Some things had to be cut and shifted (there was still more to be added after I was done, once we got into rehearsals, had to choreograph tribal dances, and adapt to performing outdoors). The main thing was working out the times of day, and how many days were passing, and where the main character would sleep each night. I tried to keep as much of the original prose and dialogue from the original as possible, and then it all went off to our teacher who had final say.
In a way, it was my second playscript, but I can’t take any credit for the story apart from that one scene, so it was my first real editing process (beyond my own work). When it did come to performing it in spring of 2021, I was happy with how it turned out, mainly happy it got to happen. We all had roles, the narration and dances all came together (it was also my only experience voice acting I suppose), and doing it around some trees and bushes in the school grounds ended up capturing a little magic of the rainforest and its creatures.
I also talked last week about the first book released that I’d worked on that wasn’t Minecraft-related. It was a fantastic idea my dad had had brewing for a long time, a story of children discovering something magical within Glastonbury Tor. Here’s the blurb I wrote for his book, and a button you can press to check it out on Amazon (the questionable retailer, not the lovely forest).
Join four heroes, Simon, Kira, Danka and Zac, as they say goodbye to their beloved Year 6 teacher and agree to meet later on Glastonbury's famous Tor. But later that evening, their fates will be changed forever as they discover an ancient chamber within the Tor.
They meet Aldric, The Keeper of the Cloaks, an old priest who tells them that they are the chosen ones. They are the four destined to save the world from an ancient evil that has come forth again. Then, old and tattered cloaks rise and settle on the four heroes' bodies and the ancient souls of the priests that fought the evil the last time inhabit and merge with the children. They share with them their wisdom and knowledge.
Aldric sets them off on a quest to find four artefacts that are needed to defeat this evil. Read on as the children travel from West Kennet Long Barrow to Stonehenge, Castlerigg and Avebury via the ancient ley lines.
Will these children defeat the world-ending darkness?
I helped a little work through the story from its inception, but the writing was all my dad and it was so gratifying to read through and work on with him 2019-2020 (it was released May 2020). It was of course visiting sites we’d visited as a family, except Castlerigg in the Lake District, which I only visited in 2021, camping with a friend. (It later played a part in Children of Shadows' sequel story.)
Maybe it was the story that brought back the wonder and magic and stories that can be told with prehistoric sites. In a way, children travelling between sacred sites was a continuation of the ideas in the original Children of Shadows that I talked about in this series ages ago. So, like stones at those sites, the storytelling went full circle.
As the editor, I’m really happy with how the story worked out, as a stand-alone book. (Of course I had to add sequel potential there, but who knows if it’ll ever be continued?)
Anyway, working on these stories that weren’t my own helped hone my editing skills for when it came time to work on my big omnibus volumes, collecting and reworking every Diamond Dimensions universe work in chronological order (including cutting between books). That’ll be a topic for a future post, but not next week’s…
I really appreciate everyone who gives up a bit of their time every week to learn more about me and my writing. Thank you so much for reading!
Harvey