In any good story, there’s always that pivotal moment when the main character has some major breakthrough, inspiration, moment of clarity, or some similar “aha” moment. Anything worth obtaining/achieving isn’t just something that happens by random chance. In part 9 of this ongoing autobiographical blog series, I’m going to talk about that moment for me. So, if you haven’t read up to this point, you might want to start with Part 1 of the series here. And if you’ve been following along, it’s time to dive into the birth of Evorath!
Searching for Meaning
You may have seen the quote by Epictetus that says “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” I think beyond the surface of this quote, there’s a deeper truth to garner. That is, people have a profound influence on their own reality. And as I mentioned last week, I had one of those moments when I was dumped by my high school sweetheart.
See, when that happened, I didn’t just get sad and move on. Instead, I questioned everything about me and my purpose in life. It sent me down a deep rabbit hole of exploring faith, which exposed me to all manner of new perspectives and different religions. It also made me question whether the trajectory I was on was the right one. And since I enjoyed writing about my own ultimate fantasy world, I felt pulled to do something crazy. What if I were to create novelized narratives about the people in that world?
Could I Have A Life of Purpose?
At this point, I had already compiled quite a bit of lore about my world. As mentioned in part 7 of this series, I had tentatively named my world “Gaia,” which wasn’t very original. But it captured the essence of what I was after, and I stuck with that essence. That is, Evorath is the goddess of the world I created, and the name of the world itself.
However fleshed out my world was, when I really examined it, I knew I had to trim some fat. It wouldn’t make sense to cram everything I had thought of into there, but I didn’t want to completely abandon my objective. And that’s around the time it really occurred to me what my objective was. See, I didn’t just want another work of fantasy that is a shadow of some other work. I wanted something expansive and original, something that gave a nod to all the things I loved most about fantasy while making a statement of its own.
And that’s much easier said than done. But the timing of this post does happen to fit well with how things unfolded.
History in the Making
When I first decided to create stories in the world of Evorath, I went back to my cast of characters. At the time, I had already mapped out some of the world history, the idea of a world that was besieged by demons in ancient times. But it wasn’t just besieged by chance. The goddess of the world (still not named Evorath), had an enemy goddess (Frogatha, though not yet named either). And her failure to win in the demon war motivated her to find other ways to drag on the fight.
Though it wasn’t a straight path, I new the characters I’d created from my childhood needed to exist in this world too. See, the first characters I had mapped out were more intended for a “modern” state of the world in question. That is, a young wizard, an elvish archer, and a great evil overlord. Those three had to exist in my first stores, or so I thought. And so I set on a sufficiently old timeline. I started to write the idea that later became The Legends of Evorath (the unreleased series that I’m still writing as this posts). In other words, The Shadows of Erathal that’s about to release next month was originally intended to be the first book every written in Evorath.
The Wrong First Book?
But as I started to map out the plot for this first series, I realized there were some key things missing. First off, I needed a better way to allow readers to understand the relationship between Earth and Evorath. If you’ve read the first trilogy, you understand the Evorath exists in a different dimension, or a different universe if you will. And the humans that live in Evorath were pulled into the world during the events of the Evorath trilogy.
And thus, I knew I couldn’t start with the story of Jaldor and events of The Shadows of Erathal. Instead, I had to go back further. I had to really flesh out the great evil, Yezurkstal. And I had to lay the foundation for the legacy of Evorath, featuring many generations of heroes that span the passage of time and the tides of history within the world.
Of course, writing my first book and getting it out into the wild was a journey all it’s own. Next week, I’ll talk about that early release and dive into a more important chapter of my life: the time after college. Until then, keep reading good fantasy books. I’ll see you next week!
