History of Khance

Just felt the need to remember something, and a keyboard was nearby.

I could sit here and explain my feelings, but what separates that from just being words on a piece of paper? No, you guys deserve a little more than that. Today, I’m going to write something that will hopefully give you a little bit of an insight to how I can write what I write. Did any of you know that most of my original ideas are inspired from idiotic conversations and petty instances that even I cannot explain? Well, hopefully after reading some of this, you’ll all get the idea.

 

I’d love to say something awe inspiring, something like, “I started writing before I could walk.” However, that would be quite a lie, since I didn’t speak until I was two. Now, if you’re a fan, that might sound familiar, but we’ll get to that later. I started writing when I was in primary school. There was a bit of a difference between then and now though, because I was hopeless. My father used to help me write my English essays because I wanted to make them funny and interesting. He would ask me my ideas and then show me how to write them down correctly… he always suggested things and got me to elaborate on them. It was only when I was much older that I realised how influential those days were. Now, obviously, I’ll be getting distracted when I’m writing, so don’t panic if I start randomly changing subject all the time. I have no idea what this is… I guess it’s just me writing about, me.

 

My first story that I will admit to was called ‘Summoner’. It was a re-name because the original text was called ‘Heart of the Necros’, but my friends thought it would be funny to change the ‘Necros’ to ‘Negros’… and call me racist, so that name changed quite quickly. So anyway, I was sixteen. The reason for the story was boredom. I had bought a new computer and I was sitting in the cold office looking around me. I had no games, and nothing on the computer, but I wanted to prove to my parents that I was actually going to use it. So, opening up a word document, I began one of my first ever stories. But I needed a name for him, looking around the room; there was a Chinese calendar that had a saying at the bottom.

“Take a Chance!”

 

So super imagination came into play, and I started writing with my main character named Chance. Although in Summoner, that didn’t sound very fancy or fantasy enough. So I changed it to Khance. So, hopefully you’re starting to see some familiar names. I never used that name as an alias, that was years later. But the story started going well… but here is where one of my huge faults comes into play. I need criticism.

I couldn’t convince people to read it, because there were few and far between that wanted to try reading a story they had no interest in. So, I incorporated quite a few of my close friends as characters in the story. To this day, each story I write has characters based on real people and situations. They, seeing amalgamations of their own names on paper were more eager to start reading. Evening study in secondary school is when I wrote down plots and intricate twists. I never planned out a story; I always daydreamed of what would be fantastic and awesome to see in a movie. Yet when asked to explain these things, I couldn’t. But with words on a page, it was just so much easier. One day, I was handing out one of the recent versions of Summoner to some of the guys in evening study, when it was confiscated.

My Spanish teacher took it up and started correcting it, he was also an English teacher. I was mortified, until the moment he put it on the desk in front of me with a ‘Very Good’, written at the top. Now, if you knew this teacher, you’d understand that praise was rarely given. It was always the little things like that, they made me want to write more and more.

 

The year progressed as did the chapters, but something happened that caused me to stop writing. It was called the Leaving Certificate. Those final exams that determine which college you go to? Yeah. I did my pre-leaving, just a test to give an indication of how you would do in the real exam. My result was the fantastic 45/600.
You can understand why I needed to prioritise what was most important. Which was more important, fun or exams? So, obviously I chose fun and tried to study. I realised that I can’t actually study unless I have some form of motivation. I read the night before and it seems to work… at least for now. Well anyway, to appease my worried parents, I stopped writing. Just so you know, I’ve never really had a fan base. Just a few people that casually see updated versions of stories and comment on what they think I’m doing wrong. It’s great fun.
Now, there were three stories that I started in secondary school. Some might sound familiar.

Summoner
Osiris
Agnostic

 

They were all the original versions. Some situations have forced me to re-write them. My standard of writing has changed and evolved over the years. The stories, whilst their concepts were sound… I kept changing them. Osiris was the biggest change. When I was younger and I was writing it, it was about Osiris as an adult. Yet nobody cared about him, they didn’t really know him as a character and just thought that it was a depressing story. The current re-write documents him as he grows up. How he grows up, his relationship with his father etc. A funny thing about Osiris is that it is based on me as a child growing up and my relationship with my father. Agnostic was based completely on me just hating religion class. It was an epic adventure that I enjoyed writing. Strong concept, but I didn’t do it justice. I think I was punished with my first ever virus. It wiped out the majority of my stories. Summoner was the only one I started back up again. Between them all, I lost maybe 120,000 words to that virus. But when you think about it, it’s not that much.

 

Osiris I eventually started back up as a present to a girl. Here’s a major weakness of mine. I write for people because their opinions mean a lot to me. First girlfriend, I wrote Marius for. But when Summoner was discovered, I had a few people spurring me on to continue it. Yet in my first year of college, I was confronted by someone and told that I wasn’t really a writer. Fantasy isn’t writing. It’s just a single genre.

I’m making it sound worse than it was; it was just a bit of light banter. But it affected me quite a lot. I went to Hughes and Hughes bookshop. I had to think of a story type that was beyond fantasy, something that could get an emotional reaction from people without having to take them to another world. I didn’t feel as though I had lived enough to write about interesting fiction. I attempted Love stories, yet they turned into comedies since I only had myself as an example. Now lastly, I considered sad stories. Being able to turn myself off to the world and knowing what emotional responses people will give to situations, I began. With something that actually meant something to me. It was titled, ‘Friends Forever.’

I made quite a few people cry with this one. It was based on a true story between me and a boy from my primary school. He was physically impaired and we were close friends. I won’t go into that because we’re keeping this light hearted. The other sad story followed up on the success of the first, but it was complete lies. Yet people enjoyed it. I don’t understand how people can enjoy crying. I hate it personally, but I get a grim satisfaction out of making others cry through my writing. It just brings things to life and you can see that you affect them. You all have to understand that these ideas are made up as I go along; there is no path to each story. There is no final cut scene. There is only the moment that my hands touch the keyboard. That is my writing style, and it works.

 

Characters are difficult to come up with, so I generally stick to what I know. You’ll notice that the majority of my main characters are unbelievably flawed, but behind a barrier that only shows perfection and arrogance. That is why Osiris came as a shock to many people. Osiris was based on a child growing up, with an innocence and playfulness that no other characters had in the other stories. This was my way of explaining how I turned out the way that I did. I am still that nice kid, but at the same time, life makes you wiser and your personality develops differently depending on your influences. Getting bullied changes you, or makes you a stronger person. Guess I’ll admit to getting a bit of both. But, I have no regrets. I like who I am.

 

Khance is generally me as I see me. Osiris is what I was as a child. Other main characters are aspects of my personality or at least what I perceive to be my personality. I can’t really liken myself to any of them; I just put likenesses on all of them and put my heart into writing them that way. Khance exists in every fantasy story I’ve ever written. I suppose it’s like a trademark. I just seem to add him in as a cameo in stories where he isn’t required. Well, as college happened, I befriended someone that liked my stories. I was introduced to the world of Anime and Manga. I started writing more than ever. I had over 32 stories going on at the one time. Many of which were for other artists on the internet that couldn’t think of stories. We started our own website based on collaboration work between writers and artists. It was a huge success as a community, horrible failure as it didn’t live up to its purpose. Dusk Manga Writers, died after a few months. As my friendship with that person faded, the site was deleted along with a number of my stories. They were nothing special though, so I’m not overly bitter about it.

 

I suppose I had just turned 18 by this stage. If you want to hear what happened over the next three years, yeah, just ask.  

Reviews

[Cattie Rain (Angela)]

Interesting. I think your style of writing (as far as where you get your motivation and base character ideas) is similar to mine. I'm glad I read this before looking into your stories. It makes me more intrigued to read them.