Well, it's been almost exactly a year since I began posting HiS, and many hours of extensive research later, I feel like I've gone light years forward in terms of writing skill. At least I hope so. I'll leave you to judge.
At the time I wrote this, it was supposed to be the start of a large series, which I was calling Eternity. After writing this fan fiction, that series fell through. You can now assume that this fan fiction is a normal stand-alone story, and can ignore any references to sequels or a series within this thread.
The title of this fan fiction is Utgar. Utgar comes in at 25 pages, 12.8k words (including introduction), and ten chapters.
Much of this information is reiterated in the introduction. Be sure to read the introduction, as it contains some important information related to the setting.
I will post this fan fiction chapter by chapter, as I did with HiS. Note that this fiction was original posted on my website. I have since moved it here. It is no longer on the website.
So all that being said, let's get into it. This post contains the preliminary Author's Note and Introduction, and Chapter One is posted below.
And so we come at last to the beginning of the end. I’ve been writing fan fiction since December of 2010. Most of you by now know the story, of how I slowly began to build up my writing skills to get to where I am now.
Eternity will be my final fan fiction series before I begin writing novels, but I could never have gotten here without the support of the Heroscapers community. From the old days, with users like bumper15 and Son of Arathorn driving me to be better through their own writing, and Orcs Blade making writing fun with his encouragement and engagement, all the way to the present, with TheAverageFan and William099 continuing to read what I put out in an increasingly silent subforum, and users like BiggaBullfrog lending their invaluable criticism… you all made this possible.
Thank you for your continued support and efforts to make my writing better.
Author's Note
Spoiler Alert!
This author’s note is intended for those of you interested in the writing process, and specifically what this fiction tried to work on. If you’re more interested in just reading the fan fiction, you can skip ahead to the introduction.
My last fan fiction, Horizon in Sight, had some issues. Foremost among them was a lack of implication and suggestion, meaning character thoughts and revelations were blatantly shoved down the readers’ throats more than once. I’ve tried to avoid that in this fan fiction, and worked hard on the implication and suggestion of things I otherwise would normally just explain. I’ve tried to show character emotions and thoughts through dialogue and action, rather than internal monologues.
This is also the first fan fiction which uses the three-act-structure, and a true structured character arc. While doing research into how I could create better characters, I came across K. M. Weiland, a master of character arcs and the three-act-structure. From her, I learned of the different types of character arcs, and after creating a few test arcs, felt ready to use one here, with Utgar.
I’ve also never used the three-act-structure before. But through Weiland, I found out just how helpful it can be, especially since I’ve always been plagued with parts of my writing where I don’t know what to do. The structure removes that uncertainty. Once I studied it sufficiently, I felt ready to test it out on this fiction.
Problems. Every piece of writing has them. The first draft of this fiction (yes, I actually wrote a first draft for the first time) had some issues with stakes. Those should be resolved now. With that fixed, I feel like there are only two minor problems which might be left: a lack of clarity as to what is going on in the first few chapters (I’ve worked on this and believe it’s fixed now), and a slightly abrupt ending (which might or might not be just me). But next to the large problems I usually had, this is a huge step forward.
I hope to continue resolving issues in my writing with each subsequent fan fiction.
Introduction
Spoiler Alert!
Greetings, readers. By now, most of you know what Eternity is. But in case you don’t, or in case there has been confusion, allow me to clear it up quickly:
Eternity is a series of fan fictions. The series will be my final foray into fan fiction, but it has no set end, meaning I can just keep adding fan fictions for however long I please. Within Eternity, I plan on having subseries of fan fictions. These will be trilogies or the like, which all follow the same main character or group of characters. That part of things isn’t very fleshed out yet, but that’s the plan.
This particular fan fiction is the first in a trilogy, and that trilogy is a prequel series to the main series. The reason I’m starting off with a prequel instead of just calling this the first fan fiction in the main series is because there will be a significant gap of time between the prequel trilogy and the main series. So it seemed logical to separate them somehow. The name for this prequel trilogy is The Rise of the Valkyrie.
If you are reading this, there’s a good chance you know about HeroScape. If you don’t, don’t worry. While you’ll get more out of reading familiar names and places if you know the backstory, you should be able to follow along just fine even if you aren’t familiar with HeroScape.
For those lore-buffs out there though, note that I have taken some liberties with the timing of the backstory. This story takes place before the rise of the Valkyrie, but well after the wellsprings were created/discovered. It is important that you know that. Everything else should be explained as you read.
So on that note, I present to you the first of the prequel trilogy: Utgar!