Nicole Eatough's Blog, page 11

Genie Wizards – The Original Version

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, genie wizards didn’t exist in the version of The Genie Whisperer I wrote back in college, just like genie whisperers didn’t either. I also didn’t have the origin of The Society fleshed out, something that will become extremely important in the series soon. 

Genie Wizard

Within the story world I originally created, the only antagonists who could stand up to the genies were humans with their own genies. And, of course, with the whole plot of season one (books one and two) being Ali stealing all of the genies she encounters, either accidentally or intentionally, that option wasn’t that helpful so far as creating viable antagonists went. Additionally, as the series continued, I didn’t want Ali’s genies running around fighting other genies who weren’t really the bad guys, but were just unfortunate pawns. 

Instead, I wanted antagonists who could truly stand up to the genies and overpower them, so the genie wizard race was born! They make handy villains, and I’m quite happy with their addition to the story world. Without Ali increasing her genies’ abilities as a genie whisperer, the wizards would be an overpowering force, but with her help, there is some balance of power between the genies and the wizards. Kind of.

With all things being equal, if a wizard struck first, they could completely incapacitate the genies with the right spell, but if the genies struck first, the wizard could easily wind up dead. And wizards can’t kill genies. That’s a pretty good edge the genies have on everyone – they can’t die. 

Coming up in the series, there is more genie wizard villainy planned, Society masters to beware of, and perhaps even some genies to be leery of . . . 

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Meeting Shadow – Original Version

On to the last of the genies for how their original story went! Going in order, we have finally reached Darios, the dark shadow genie. 

Black Opal

Darios’s original story is the most similar to what I ended up publishing. He was always with Ethan McMichael, and he was always going to torture Ali to try to make her do what Ethan wanted. I knew this before I ever wrote the story, and even had a prologue in the original version of Ali about to be tortured before the story goes to her at the park where she meets Tavor. 

Though, technically, I didn’t actually get to the point of writing Ali meeting Shadow in that first version. I got right to the point before that would happen . . . and then got distracted with college and decided I would hold off on writing until I graduated. And then wrote a bunch of other stories before coming back to The Genie Whisperer. (Thank goodness, because my writing improved immensely with all those practice novels.)  

The biggest difference between the story I had planned back in college and what I published is how Ethan got ahold of Ali. In the original, he basically snatches her off the street. Since genie wizards didn’t exist in this version, Tavor wasn’t protective of Ali, and didn’t insist she carry genies around, so she went to school without them. In the published version, Ethan would have no way of knowing whether Ali had her genies on her or not, so could never simply confront her, leading to the plot line of him kidnapping her parents to blackmail her into coming. Which, honestly was a convenient way to also handle her parents, because they were definitely a problem. 

Other changes in the published version are that Shadow gets introduced much earlier. His frightening magic is shown off in the Museum of Horton when Ali meets Rajan, and he himself appears after Illan is stolen, when he’s sent to investigate what happened. I had a lot of fun teasing his appearance prior to Ali actually getting to meet him.

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Meeting Ocean – Original Version

Today’s post is about Ocean! And will probably be the shortest of the posts covering the differences between the genies’ original introductions and the rewritten ones I ended up publishing. 

Sapphire

As mentioned in Rajan’s post, Ocean was originally introduced at the museum along with the fire genie. Since that scenario didn’t really make sense, I reconfigured things to take Ocean out of that part of the story entirely, meaning I had to create a new story for him, including giving him a master. 

There are basically no similarities between the original version and what I ended up publishing, other than that Ocean was always a stuffy character. Given that, and now that he had an actual master rather than his gem just randomly hanging around a museum, it felt perfect to make him a genie who was a stickler for following his master. Unlike the rest of the genies up to this point, Ocean doesn’t have a rebellious bone in his body, and believes in following wishes to the letter. 

His slight personality redesign also meant that he would be the first genie who didn’t want to go with Ali. This presented an interesting challenge, since Ali would never force herself on anyone, even an enslaved genie. It took me a little while to figure out how to convince Ocean to join her!

Ultimately, I was quite pleased with how Ocean’s story played out. It gave me the opportunity to show how unwilling Ali is to impose her will on anyone else and to show off Tavor’s dark side with him killing people behind Ali’s back (for the first time). And, of course, this version of the story provided way more opportunities to showcase Ocean’s character compared to the original version where he interacted with Ali in a museum for five minutes.

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Meeting Garan and Light – Original Version

I’ve got a lot to cover for this one! There are actually three versions of Ali meeting Garan and Light out in the world. There was the version I wrote a decade ago, when I first first wrote down genie story, then when I revamped the whole story of The Genie Whisperer for publishing, I wrote 45,000 words of Ali meeting Light and Garan that just didn’t work. At all. So I had to start over. My next attempt was also not right, lol, but I didn’t get very far before realizing that. The fourth version I started was finally the charm, and that was what got published. 

Green & Yellow Diamonds

So, back to ten years ago, the biggest similarity between that version and the published version is that the green and yellow diamonds always belonged to the obnoxious McMichael twins. That, and Illan being present for the thefts, are about the only similarities. From there, just about everything is different. 

In the original version, Ali went directly to the twins’ home to steal their genies right after stealing Illan from the triplets’ home. Ali, Illan, Rajan, and Ocean had a few scuffles there getting the light and plant genies, but escaped relatively unscathed. Rajan, of course, burned the house down. I mean, how else is a fire genie going to set up a distraction? 

When I rewrote the story, I think I was overly set on the idea of Tavor managing to convince Ali to go after the genies such that she was willing to invade the twins’ home to get the light and plant genies. In this version of the story, things got pretty dramatic. Ali and Tavor had a big fight over Ali freeing the other genies, and I think he revealed here that she was a genie whisperer (I may have gotten to reuse some of this dialogue in book five when I actually ended up having Tavor make that reveal).

Following their argument, Ali still refused to steal the genies, but then Ethan McMichael confronted her at school with Darios by his side, wanting his family’s genies back. Which, really, would have been stupid of him to do. Ali had a universal genie, plus an ice and fire genie at that point. She wasn’t taking them anywhere with her, but Ethan had no way to know and no reason to believe that Ali wouldn’t cart Tavor around with her everywhere she went. But that was the story I wrote, so Ali decided that since Ethan knew about them and they’d have to run away anyway, they might as well grab the rest of the McMichael genies. Following that, she and the genies invade the twins’ home in the dead of night to steal the genies. Ren was still around in this version and Mandy was still Rajan’s former master, but obviously the heist went down much differently than what I ended up publishing. 

That version had multiple issues, but the biggest was that Ali went to steal the other genies only because Ethan found her. She didn’t decide to do it because she felt it was the right thing. It was more of a ‘well, might as well as this point,’ and that really didn’t work for the story. Ali is the heroine, which means she needs to drive the story, not just react to what’s going on around her. Plus, if she’s not the one making the choice to go after the genies because it’s truly what she’s chosen to do, then her sacrifices along the way mean so much less.

The final version I wrote works much better on many levels, and fits a lot better with Ali’s character. She has her dreams and she’s bound and determined to achieve them, and they don’t involve playing rescuer when she can’t really save these genies from their enslavement. So Tavor has to engage in a little manipulation to get her to play along, but she still ultimately makes the decision to go after the genies herself.

I admit, there was one scene in the rewritten version of Ali going to the twins’ home that I just couldn’t let go of. There was an almost-kiss-on-the-lips scene that I adored, but it no longer fit, so I ended up moving it to The Doorway to the Future instead. 

If you’re curious about the first rewrite of Ali meeting Light and Garan, you can read it here, but be warned that I never edited it and didn’t quite finish it.

The post Meeting Garan and Light – Original Version first appeared on Nicole Eatough.

Meeting Illan – The Original Version

I’ll start off this post by saying that in both the original and published versions of The Genie Whisperer, Tavor advocated for Ali stealing the rest of the McMichael genies after she came home with three of them. But in the original version, the first three were Tavor, Rajan, and Ocean. Admittedly, Rajan’s and Ocean’s connection with the McMichaels was nebulous since they’d been in a museum for who knows how long, but I think my justification was that they used to belong to the McMichaels before they got lost. And then they got lost just because (this is an example of terrible writing, lol). And since Ali didn’t have special genie whisperer powers in the first version, Tavor simply just decided she should steal the rest of the McMichael genies, because why not after she already had three of them?  

With that background out of the way, on to the original version of how Ali got Illan and his gem!

Aquamarine

The billionaire McMichaels were always the big antagonists during the time of Ali meeting the genies. After all, how else would a massively powerful family full of megalomaniacs react to having their genies stolen? Even a significantly less powerful family with also significantly less egos would still react poorly. But in the original version of the story, Ali first learns about the charming McMichael family when she agrees to go after Illan, though in both versions of the story, Ali meeting the triplets is her first actual introduction to any members of the family. In the original version, Illan still belonged to the triplets, who I believe were always referred to as the three idiot brothers. 

That is largely where the similarities end between the original version and the published version. For one, it really didn’t take Tavor all that much convincing for Ali to go after the rest of the genies. She didn’t consider it the dangerous and ultimately pointless imposition that she does in the published version of the story. She was way more easy-going than the rigid, study-obsessed nerd I turned her into. And I fully admit that a lot of the inspiration for her attitude comes from me. I am immensely set on what I want to accomplish and how I want to get there, and I don’t like anything that interferes with that, even if it’s just for a day. 

The adventure to actually get Illan originally took place within the triplet’s home, since Ali was actively going after the ice genie. I had an explanation for Tavor being unable to get through the magic protecting the triplet’s home, so he was unable to join them (a recuring theme in writing The Genie Whisperer is inventing reasons to not have Tavor around because of how powerful he is and how easily he can solve so many things). However, elemental genies could get around that magic, so Rajan and Ocean joined Ali on this heist. Things went fairly quickly from there because, as I mentioned in the post about Ali’s original meeting of Rajan, Ali meeting all of the genies was at first smooshed into one book rather than divided into two. I ended up splitting it in part because I wanted to showcase each genie more.  

For writing the published version, since Ali only had Rajan and Tavor with her, and Tavor didn’t know she could steal genies yet, I had to find a natural reason for Ali to encounter Illan, leading to her criminal professor having a connection with the McMichael family that brought the ice genie her way. And her obtaining Illan, of course, tied in nicely to having Tavor finally realize what Ali is. 

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Meeting Rajan – The Original Version

Like with Tavor, Ali met Rajan in the same location in both the original story I wrote a decade and go and the rewritten published version. Ali was always a nerdy museum lover, so their meeting place got to remain the same. 

Ruby 

But the original version had several differences to the rewritten one – none of which made the story better. Ali actually encountered both Rajan AND Ocean at the museum via their gems originally. And, like with Tavor being in the park, I had no good reason for them being there. My vague thought was that their gems had been lost from The Society and in museum care for some time . . . which, of course, only would have worked if no one ever touched their gems. Which is just silly.

Though I suppose that would work if museum employees only ever handled the gems with gloves. Regardless, I needed a more solid reason for why a genie gem was there in the first place. 

Also like Ali’s meeting with Tavor, there was no antagonist in this part of the story. Ali touched the two gems, the genies appeared, she set off museum alarms, so they ran home. End of the adventure. Partly that was because I originally had Ali meet all seven of the genies in one book rather than splitting it between two, so it was more smooshed together with a lot less action in the beginning of the story.

Taking Ocean out of things and giving Rajan a real reason to be there (his master showing off that he had his family’s fire genie without him explicitly telling people), gave me an opportunity to show off how arrogant and conceited Society members, gave Rajan and Ali some real time together to get to know each other (they’re meeting is probably my favorite out of all the genies), as well as an opportunity for me to show how frightening Darios’s magic is before he ever arrived on the page.

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Meeting Tavor – The Original Version

For Ali’s adventures with meeting each of the genies, there are a fair number of similarities between the original version I wrote over a decade ago and what I ended up publishing. Other than the original version being a rather poor attempt at writing since I was such an amateur at the time and hadn’t really studied the craft of writing and story telling yet.

I’ll do a post on the differences between the original and final versions of Ali meeting each of the genies, and we’ll go in order of Ali meeting them. So first up is Tavor!

Imperial Topaz

In the original version, Ali and Tavor still met at a park . . . but I had no good reason for Tavor’s gem being there. (Genies being housed in gems was always part of the story.) It wasn’t dropped off by a bird, it was just in a tree. Because. There also wasn’t any antagonist involved in their meeting and getting to know each other, so the two of them just kind of hung out for a while before Ali went off to visit the museum by herself, since she didn’t want wishes.

For the updated story when I rewrote everything, I, of course, needed an actual reason for why Tavor’s gem was at the park, so Sterling Dixon The Society master and Gary the transformation genie were created to fulfill that purpose. I also needed an antagonist to liven things up, so in came Brandon the genie wizard. I’ll have a post specifically on genie wizards later on detailing more information on their addition to the series.

Tavor himself largely stayed the same, which is true for all of the genies’ personalities and looks. He was always the scheming leader of the story. 

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Ali’s Family – The Original Version

I mentioned in my previous post about my original vision for Ali’s life that I took a lot of inspiration from where I was at in life at the time. For Ali’s family, I did the same thing. I gave her kind, loving, and supporting parents like mine. 

Ali’s Family

However, that scenario didn’t lead to conflict (which is essential in storytelling) or help mold Ali into being the character I needed her to be. One of the most important parts of who Ali is for the story is her stubbornness in absolutely refusing to make wishes. So I changed her parents to be uber-controlling people, giving Ali an obsession with making all her own decisions and achieving everything she wants under her own power and abilities. 

The one nod to my relationship with my parents that I kept is how Ali and her dad treat museums. My dad and I are fierce museum lovers who like to stop and read nearly everything. This was brilliantly showcased when I was 12 and my family went to New York for my brother’s high school graduation trip. We went to the American Museum of Natural History where my mom and siblings ushered my dad and I along, annoyed with our dallying. Then both my siblings started not feeling great, so my mom took them back to the hotel. My dad and I returned to sections we’d already viewed to go through them in greater detail. Did we see everything the museum had to offer? Not even close. Did we have a wonderful time? Absolutely.

Having this for Ali and her dad still fit the story and gave me a reason to have Ali at the museum where she found Rajan, so it stayed!

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Ali – The Original Version

I first wrote The Genie Whisperer shortly after starting college, when I had very little writing experience and hadn’t studied the craft beyond being a voracious reader. (Back in early junior high, I spent time in between classes and whenever I finished classwork early writing . . . until I realized I could use that time to read, so switched to that. In retrospect, I regret missing out on all that potential writing practice, but it turned out okay in the end!) I didn’t quite finish writing that original version, but I did get through Ali obtaining all the genies except for Shadow, and all the way up to Ethan McMichael taking Ali away. I still have it, and it is one sad attempt at writing. 

Ali

Since I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time, I started with where I was at in life. It was my first year at college, so I made it Ali’s first year at college. I attended college while living at home (’cause I like being frugal and saving money), but worried how this would affect my ability to understand what it means to live on your own and be responsible for all the bills and such, so I decided to put Ali somewhat in that situation. My degree, at the time, was Communications, though I later switched to Political Science (yes, I have one of those soft science degrees that Ali openly disparages), so I had Ali going to school for Communications. 

When I revisited this story nearly a decade later to write it for real (as in with the intent to publish it), I was armed with far more knowledge of how to craft stories and characters, and knew Ali’s backstory needed some serious adjusting. There were three particularly big changes I made to her: 

I changed her degree to Mechanical Engineering. I loved the idea of making her a science nerd (a topic I enjoy, and my dad’s degree is in electrical engineering, my mom’s is in math, and my brother is a computer programmer, so there’s plenty of nerdiness to go around in my family), and I wanted her to utilize her scientific knowledge to help solve problems in this magical world she’s thrown into.I made her family controlling to give her a desperate motivator to want to fight for her own independence and do everything herself, which was an essential characteristic with genies who could give her anything she might desire being thrown into her life.I made her a genie whisperer. She was just a normal human in the original version, which meant that stealing genies was possible in that version, a feat that’s far more difficult, if not impossible, in the version that exists now. If Ali was going to be at the center of all these genies’ lives, I needed her to be a special snowflake, so the idea of genie whisperers was born.

In the next post, I’ll cover the changes to Ali’s family in more depth.

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Story Origins – The Genie Whisperer

The story of how I came up with the idea for The Genie Whisperer originated from me not having a Facebook account and knowing nothing of the games on there. I was in my first or second year of college (and my older brother accused me of being like an 80 year old man who refused to keep up with technology for not having any social media accounts, and there was some truth to his accusation). 

I came across a Facebook ad for some game on the platform with an enticing genie graphic and some little blurb about helping a genie. Naive me was hoping for a game with a plot based off the description it gave. Instead, I found essentially bejeweled with genies in the background. I was very disappointed, but then asked myself, okay, what kind of story would I want with genies? What kind of story do I wish I had found?

From there, I developed the bare bones idea for The Genie Whisperer (which I just called Genie at the time since there weren’t actually any whisperers in my original idea).

In later blog posts, I’ll explain more about my original ideas for The Genie Whisperer! 

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