personal journey

A new chapter in a new world

Hello and welcome back :)
I know I said this morning that I was hoping to have something by the end of the week but it seems I was on a roll tonight

So the new chapter is now live and you can read it here: "Invalid Entry" 

In my previous blog post I already explained that I had been thinking hard about how and where the story would be taking place and that I, with the help of some tools, created a map of the world the story will take place in.
You can see it by following the link in the previous blog entry.

For now I just want to focus on the new chapter.
About a week ago I got stuck a little bit. I just finished chapter 1 and was working on chapter 2.
That is when some ideas started floating around in my mind about the order in which I should be telling the reader what happened to the MC.
At first I just wanted to go through the life events from 0 to 100 but as I was writing the second chapter I thought it would be better to start with the same characters from the prologue.

For that reason I switched chapter 1 and 2 and I wanted to make chapter 2 something of a flashback.
That way it would be easier to understand and the way the flashback would be introduced would make it more attention grabbing as it would solve a mystery of how and why the MC was where he was.

Well.... Things got stuck again.
I started planning where the story would be going and found that my initial thoughts on trying to tell a story of a year in the early life of the MC would probably not really be interesting.
So I took down the 2 chapters completely and started thinking about what to do.

During showers, walking the dog, on the road to work and back, I started thinking about the story beats I had in mind and what would cause the MC to start moving. What makes him get on the road that would eventually start a domino effect.
Eventually I figured that there was only 1 solution to the this and that was to generate some kind of world map.

A world map would give me a better sense of where the MC would go to, how long a journey would take, what the geology would be.
My first thoughts about the motivation to move was to destroy the home where the MC lived.
But how would that happen? Why would that happen?
And if it was destroyed, why would they be on the move across the country? Couldn't they just go to the nearby town?

So my idea of their home being destroyed went to the whole region being wrapped in death and destruction.
But how would that happen? Do I need to go the cheezy way of a big magical explosion? Or shall I go with something more natural like a tornado or something.

When I eventually generated a world map I was happy with, it clicked.
I chose where the MC lived, where the nearby cities would be, give or take, and the path the MC would go too, to the point where the story now starts in chapter 1.

It's pretty amazing how a world map can give you a sense of location, and scale. It also gives you a sort of limitations of where you can make the people in the story go.
if you let someone turn right 4 times you end up in the same place. I want to keep that from happening as much as possible and I now have the tools to do it.

Currently I am using about 4 tools to generate things for my story.
ChatGPT, TheSaurus, Azgaar's Fantasy map, and Fantasy name Generator.
That all works pretty well together and they are very good tools :)


This was a , relatively, quick look into my thoughts for this chapter.
Much of what you will or have read was decided on the fly.
There are however some things like the Journal and the waterfall/lake that I already wanted to include but just needed to come up with a logical way and reason why things got them to the location and for the MC to write in a journal.

I hope you enjoy, and I know that I must have made a lot of rookie mistakes here.
But mostly I just tried to think as if I was writing my own story and try to write what I think would have happened.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the chapter and if you feel you want to review it, please do so :)
There is no way to improve better than by receiving feedback.

Just in case, You can read the new chapter here "Invalid Entry" 

See ya in the next entry