Yes, the prologue of Book 4 will be posted in 2 short days, on the second-to-penultimate day of the eighth year after the beginning of the second millennium of the common era. I didn't make it to Chapter 13, but I might be at least close to finishing Chapter 12.

"Might be?" you ask. "Don't you know how far you are in the writing of your own epic?"

"Shut up, imaginary example reader," I snap, "I was getting to that."

After Chapter 10, the story skips ahead nine years. However, some important stuff is happening to Gyotaren during these nine years which I will show in the course of three "flashback-within-a-flashback" scenes. In the story, Gyotaren was just knocked unconscious as he begins to have these flashbacks. The plan is to have them all together, but I realized that an entire chapter of flashbacks might get boring.

So I'm leaving this up to whoever reads my epic series. You have 3 options here:

A. I go with the original plan and have Chapter 12 be a flashback chapter.

B. I have Gyotaren randomly remember these things over several chapters, and stick one of the already-written flashback scenes in every few chapters. (I'm leaning towards this one after I've written the scenes, because I revealed a lot that I might want to stay secret longer.)

C. I don't do any flashback scenes. (I'm secretly hoping no one chooses this--two full pages of perfectly fine writing would have to be done away with this. But don't let that effect your decision. )

To everyone who reads my epics and this blog, please specify which you'd personally like to see. By next week, whichever option got the most votes will be what I do. Until then, I'll take a break from writing and work on revising the earlier chapters, which will soon start to be posted.

Here is an excerpt from the prologue.

Turaga-Kal Krakana began the first part of the story from a large pedestal in the center of the stadium. The pedestal was shaped like a right triangle, with a steep, long stairway leading from the top to the ground. Krakana's voice was ancient-sounding, as if he had been through a thousand battles in his lifetime and came out of them a little worse for the wear.

 

"Have those ten years already passed?" he began. "Is it already time for another Story of the Dead? The hero that we will be discussing this month is someone who is very familiar to me... Moreso even to Turaga-Kal Xironu and Grunekt. He led a hard life and fought hard for all of you... More than anyone, the Palif-Matoran. Later in his life, he became something of a father to me and the other Toa-Kal. Would anyone like to make a guess as to who I'm talking about?"

 

Thousands of hands went up in the audience around the large marble stadium (unsettlingly similar to the place where Guutana had died). Only a few hundred Matoran lived on Tolliwam, but the Tirrakir (Tekarou's species), also took part in this tradition. While the Matoran lived on remote spots in villages, the Tirrakir inhabited the Marble City, originally a fortress made to safeguard the Tirrakir from their Skakdi rivals, long since driven from the island. Most of them had nothing better to do than attend this Matoran event.

 

Krakana chose a Tirrakir (for he had been paid a good sum of money by the island's government to make the Tirrakir feel welcome during these Stories of the Dead, in order to gradually improve the relations between the Matoran and Tirrakir) to answer the question. It was a young red Tirrakir, who had only recently gone through the process of rebuilding his body into a bigger more powerful one as a sign of becoming an adult.

 

"Turaga Onathei!" he cried out enthusiastically.

 

"Exactly," Krakana replied. "I'm glad to see that the Tirrakir are beginning to care about our humble Matoran heroes." Mentally Krakana slapped himself--suggesting that the Tirrakir had not always cared about Matoran would probably mean a considerable chunk out of his paycheck at the end of this story. "Anyway, I believe that it would be more appropriate for Turaga-Kal Xironu to continue the story from here. Undoubtedly, he knew Onathei better than any of us."

 

Xironu took Krakana's place at the pedestal in the center of the stage. As Krakana passed the former Toa-Kal of Speech on the long descent to the ground, he said "If there was ever a best time to use your concept, it would be now."

 

"Trust me," said Xironu, his voice sounding as young and healthy as ever, "I can handle this without having to use powers."

 

Krakana smiled. "Good luck. Especially with the ending."

 

"Thanks." The two long-time friends hit their fists together, and then each went on his way.

 

Xironu made it to the top of the pedestal and began his story. "Friends, Matoran and Tirrakir alike... Some of you probably know how difficult a story this will be to tell for me. I was Onathei's right-hand until I became a Toa... And in the end, I was there in his last moments. I will tell you all the story of his life to the best of my ability...but if I become a bit tearful towards the end, please forgive me."

 

Xironu paused for a few seconds, running over the first part of the story in his head quickly before he began. "If one wants to tell a story about Turaga Onathei, one must also tell a story about Toa Onathei. And if one wants to tell a story about Toa Onathei, as with many other stories, we must start at the beginning. The day that Onathei met Feyain, almost ten thousand years ago."

That is the entire second half of the prologue. To read the first half, you'll have to wait until Monday.

Writing Tip of the Week

There were so many tips I wanted to do for this week. I couldn't decide on what one I wanted to do, so eventually I just decided to do one that I hadn't wanted to do so I didn't have to choose.

The tip is on how to create a good believable main character (and by this I mean the main character, not just major characters). For the purposes of this tip, we'll assume you're creating the hero character. In Bionicle, there are many hero characters. So many that it's hard to pick out a "main" one. But in my series, the main character is Guutana--he is the sole most important character in the series. All the other characters and events exist to, in some way or another, contribute to a story about what happens to Guutana.

Even if you have 6 main characters (a Toa team, for example), you should generally have one that stands out. Perhaps this could be the leader of the team, or perhaps not. The first thing you need to decide is who your main character is going to be. Done with that?

From here there are three steps: Define who the character is. Define what the character is. And define where the character is. (When the character is, why the character is, and how the character is don't really apply, lol.)

To define who, you have to turn the character from a name with perhaps a vague description attached into a person. This can be the hardest part. You need to firstly develop the character's personality. A personality, according to the dictionary, is a set of characteristics that make a person distinct from another. I like to refer to personality as a set of rules for a character's actions and reactions.

The easiest way I've found to create a character's personality is to write about him or her. Do a freewrite for 5-10 straight minutes with your character of choice in any environment with any other character (preferably one with an already established personality) or alone. As you write, concentrate specifically on what the character thinks, feels, says, and does. Since most of us don't have characters floating around in our heads waiting to burst onto the written page (and if you do, you may want to see a therapist about your schizophrenia XD), you'll probably subconsciously model the character after an existing character you've read about or a real person you know. Avoid making this too obvious--if you have a character who goes around saying "Believe it", people who have watched the English Naruto dub will suspect that your story is a lame rip-off of it, even if it isn't.

Once you've got a feel for the character's personality, make sure you never betray it. Ever. If a character acts out of character, there must have been a life-changing, earth-shattering event, and he can't go back to his old personality afterwards. As a final note, it is vital that no matter how messed up your character is, he has a redeeming quality that lets readers sympathize with him. Readers do not read a story where the main character is so messed up that they don't care whether or not he overcomes his conflicts.

Next you have to define what the character is. In other words, what are his physical traits and abilities? Do not go overboard with what you character can do unless, like Guutana, they have a strong story-based reason to be omnipotent. And even if you have an omnipotent (or omnipresent or omni-anything) character, give them a weakness or someone as powerful as them as an enemy, because otherwise god characters are no fun.

If you're not doing a god character, try to limit the amount of powers to three--beyond that you get into a territory where the powers don't get equal screentime and one is favored over all the others. Make the powers believable and with limits. Also limit weapons to simple things like an axe, crossbow, sword, spear, club, and so on, but only one of each.

Lastly, you need to define where your character is. This isn't just referring to "on Bara Magna" or "under the Coliseum"; this refers to the character's entire world, and the people in it. Sure, the literal location of your character is important, but we can actually decide that later, assuming you haven't already.

Generally, any character has a few characters directly connected to him: the best friend, the love interest, the mentor, the rival. Continuing with my character Guutana, our examples would be, respectively, Desurk, Roqini, Dairuno, and a character whose identity I can't currently tell you about but who will star in Book 7. You can use any or all of those types of characters, or other types of your own. But make sure that these characters are the most important characters aside from your hero--they relate to him the closest and anyone else is just a medium between the character and his world.

I could have a lot more to say about this, but I'm tired and I've already covered all the major points. Follow this and you should have a believable hero character. Next tip will probably be on making a believable villain.