Altering my YA Stories so They Become Wholly Mine

I’m not going to go into too many details with this one—can’t, the stories aren’t written and are subject to change, but the ones I wanted to focus on are those I originally planned for existing settings.

Each of these settings has its own set of rules, creatures peculiar to it, and cultures that exist only within its bounds. Because of this, any stories written for them are tied to only one possible publisher, and, if refused, must die stillborn. I don’t want to let this happen. I want my stories to live and entertain for a long, long time to come.

With this in mind, I took a look at the work I’ve done over the last ten years, comparing the older work, which I wrote because I had a story I wanted to tell,  with the more recent stuff, which I had been started with a particular market in mind. While I was doing this, along came the news that a new rules edition was in the works, and this meant that the worlds I was writing for would change, since they change with every edition, and *that* meant that these stories no longer had a home… which is a good thing, really, because now I can set them in my own world, and know that, if I do a good enough job, they will live longer and find a wider audience of readers.

The first of these, I’ll call YANovel2, since YANovel1 is already on the table. YANovel2 starts with a caravan, a forest and a dragon. Now, because it’s going to be wholly mine, the dragon can be more than an intelligent monster; it can have a culture, a people, and a breath-weapon that doesn’t have to be made of acid, and that’s just the start. I’ll talk a little bit more about YANovel2 in blog entries to come.

YANovel3A is part of a series, and will need more adjustments. It started at a particular location, which I can no longer use, and that’s going to take a little more work to adjust. The city needs to change, the physical landmarks have to change, the culture needs tweaking (although, since I can draw on real-world cultures to do this, that won’t be a problem). Some of the character backgrounds will also need to be removed and enriched in other ways, but, on the up-side, the essential story elements won’t need to be altered.

YANovel4 can be moved across to a setting of my own with a minimum of fuss. This one was built on characters, so only the main nemesis needs to be altered, and I have an idea for that already.

YANovel5A will be tricky. The whole world is going to need a re-vamp, as is the main character’s cultural background. The race, I think will work, as it’s an idea I’ve worked with before and seen multiple variations of in other fantasy novels. Some other minor setting elements will need to go, but development of those is for another post.

And, yes, I will be statting my monsters so they fit with a variety of rules sets out there, but that’s for another post or three. Anyone with a rules set for which they’d like to see more monsters, NPCs, or cultures, just let me know. If it’s second-party licensable I’ll try to cater for it.

The other good news is, that ideas I had set aside as not currently marketable, ideas that I really loved, I can now work on. I *know* they’ll be released, because I’m going to release them. I’m not hostage to the vagaries of some mythical market, or what lies within the budget of this publisher or that one. I can take the risk that the readers might not like my work, or the chance that they might love it.

As I’ve said in a previous post—terrifying and awesome!