A Thousand Scars – Years of Backpacking across Thickets of Nothing

Welcome to part two of my writing journey. This time, I will take you from the early days of Counterbalance, right up until the moment that changed it all for the better. It was certainly an intriguing path, but extremely frustrating and ended up with me swearing angrily at my computer for years to come. Oh, what the fun I had!

The Beginning 

So. In October 2012, I decided to give novel writing a go. George R.R Martin and his bloody Westeros really got me wanting to write something. I had a world of sorts I wanted to further enhance, and some elements from my fanfiction I liked the idea of. (That was a 200k torrent of bullcrap, but at least some parts of it got revived into this world.) It took me six months to work out some kind of storyline, and some kind of world. The fantasy world I had made from my teenage years was still viable but would need a complete rebuild to be even close to viable.

I will not lie in that this was a gigantic undertaking. It has gone through many different forms. I originally was going to write a massive epoch exploring the politics (using Game of Thrones as heavy influence) on all the manners of Harloph (The birthplace of my fantasy world, and the hub of this series) before the Great War which develops between the Bale Empire and the United conglomerations of the Selpvian Dominion.

This was the early idea before I realized in late 2013 that it was way too ambitious. For my first novel, and when I had no clue what I was getting myself into, this was out of my league. I got about 30,000, maybe 40,000 words in before I hit the wall, so I decided instead to scrap all of that for Counterbalance, and decided to focus solely on the final year of the threatened Great War, which leads into the Counterbalance series for real. It is cool seeing all my notes and watching how it all evolved, however.

The Abandoned Storyline 

So, I really bit off more then I could chew on the original plot. A massive combination of politics, archaeology and civil war might have worked for a more experienced writer, but for my first go? A tad too ambitious. I recognized this and decided to reign it in. Here was the overall gist of Alpha Counterbalance, as I now like to call it:

The gradual immersion of the scholar/archeology school in the city of Valare, which eventually links into the Counterbalance storyline. It was going to use a lot of ideas that were taken into the new (published) version which you will see soon, and also go into Valare’s history and detail a bit more.
The Kahal Civil War in which a fierce rebellion against the Pharos Order is underway, with three POV’s in an intersecting account of the war itself.
The Empire and its politics, culminating in Lance Ironheart’s manipulation of the Empire to fight a war it cannot win.

Yes, one of my major protagonists in the real Counterbalance was originally going to be a villain. Some elements of this were taken and refined, but I had to scrap it in the end.

Special tip of the week

Now, here is my main piece of advice: KEEP ALL OF YOUR WORK! No matter how bad it may be, keep your work! I have never deleted a single word of my writing throughout my 4-year long adventure, and for how many years I have left, I will not delete anything. Save it. Put it aside. You’ll never know how useful it may be for later!

And this is exactly what I did. The first version of Counterbalance was shelved, but all of it was kept in separate folders. I have already planned on writing a novella based on one of the key plot arcs from that alternate timeline because it happens in the lore around 20 years before the events in Counterbalance. It explores the Kahal civil war and the rebellion of the Kahal tribes against the might of the fanatical Pharos Order. It was meant to have two POV’s on either side of the war, and alternate through the storyline as it went. While this won’t happen in the new Counterbalance, it is still an important part of history and lore, and it shapes tons of the characters even into this day. It is a horrible piece of the Order’s history.

Then I went through two years of writing the new and improved Counterbalance. Originally just one whole book (A stupid idea since I was around 140k in, with no end in sight) I was getting there, but the work was awful. I freely admit that! I still have the June 2015 version of Counterbalance before my huge overhaul, and it is a load of bollocks. Just look at this bit:

Hardenne looked about himself nervously, as he waited at the foot of the stone steps; shivering. There was an ominous chill, and he didn’t like it. He felt something brush against his ankle and he started, his hand reaching for the sword by his side, but he found the tail of a rat slip past, and felt his face reddened with embarrassment. Coward, he berated himself, half amused and half annoyed with himself. What was making him so jumpy? He never liked the shadows, even as a child. When he was twelve years old, he and his siblings used to explore the caves and rooks of Bawsor, stepping into the deep underground tombs of the capital. He always hated it, found the catacombs terrifying. They laughed at him for that. He looked up above his head at the midnight sky, a beautiful, cloudless night, but he could feel the bite of the cold even through his woolskin tunic. Hurry up Aldmer, he thought irritably. Why did he want the council to meet in here of all places? He was an elite member of the high council, not a gutter rat.

Abandoned POV, 2015. 

First draft, but it was pretty appalling. Right up until June 2015, I was making slow progress, but I really did not have a clue. During my parent’s holiday away during the summer of 2015, and while my girlfriend was staying with me (I usually stay home during their little jaunts.)

Everything changed by complete chance…and my first meeting with somebody who actually knew what they were doing.

But that is a story for another time, Part Three!

A Thousand Scars – The Beginning