Golden Child [Rewriting]

Let's Talk About This Novel

Y'ALL. let's get into this, now that i'm finished with the revised draft i feel accomplished 

so lets talk about golden children bc i feel like i should

Let's get right into it!

IN THE BEGINNING:

There was an idea! Really though, this was all this novel was. The idea that "people have elemental powers", but "NOT LIKE FUCKING AVATAR." The hardest part of this novel for me personally, was getting it to be original, because at the time when I got the idea for this novel, I had just re-watched the WHOLE last air bender series as well as legend of korra. (The avatar shows, for those of you who aren't weeaboos..) so obviously a huge challenge was establishing HOW THE FUCK DID THESE PEOPLE END UP WITH POWERS?? A big part of the story is the religion, and the spirituality behind the Aurean people, that came to me while I was watching avatar, and ALSO reading a ton of novels. I liked the idea of a heriditary process, where powers are inherited, but the whole genetic theory didn't come until later. Golden Children for MONTHS was just a shitty idea that I couldn't execute bc I don't have anyone to discuss it with. The descendant theory came in while I was talking to one of my friends about the novel, and he helped me formulate a plot line. HOWEVER, this novel only started AFTER I chose the names and the genders of the characters. The story was just a story about 4 kids, who were being hunted by this dick who was unnamed and their "professor" who tutored them. Meri's name came first, along with her naive little personality (personally I hate meri, she's WAY too naive for my taste BUT eh.) then Nuri, originally he was supposed to be SUPER charming, and like BADASS, but then he morphed into this polite little shit after he had his first interactions with Ignis. WHICH BRINGS ME TO, IGNIS MOTHERFUCKING TENEBRIO. He's an EXTREMELY important character, not only STORY WISE, but also CHARACTER wise. Without Ignis, Nuri's personality would've never developed into what he is today, AND Avani wouldn't have had such a rich history. She was a SUPER one-dimensional character, the only character with dimension was Meri, ironically.

I tried a lot of techniques to get characterization down, and honestly it's my favourite part of novel writing, once I had the names, I associated  words to them, like I'm pretty sure Meri's were "timid, naive and smart" but I can't remember bc it was literally like a year ago when I started associating words to character names. The only two characters I made "sketches" of were Meri and Nuri, Vayu and Avani's characters only came into play AFTER they had interactions with Ignis Tenebrio (Lux). So Ignis isn't originally my character, he's a friend of mine's who rp'ed with me, and helped me get Nuri's character down. After both Avani and Vayu interacted w him, their characteristics became clear, like Avani became this pouty badass bitch and Vayu this cute little kid who just loves animals. Milo's character also came into play after that, he became the loving mentor.

PLOTLINE?

The original plotline for Golden Children was extremely different from the actual draft, ironically. And I'm gonna leave the original plot structure here for anyone who's interested. :-)

GOLDEN CHILDREN:

PLOT LINE:

Story starts out w Meri in Verglas, and Nuri comes to the village as the attractive nomad, looking for her but she doesn't know. Eventually he convinces her to come w him, and they set off on a journey toward the City of Gold. They stop in Lapid for a benefit ball, where they meet Ignis Tenebrio. Nuri and Ignis dance, and Ignis leads him to the secret garden. They hear a scream outside. Hades crashes the party and hits Ignis w a ball of black fire, temporarily blackening his flames, he shrugs it off. Nuri and Ignis fuse, and they attempt to fight the rest of the dark mages. Nuri remembers he forgot about Meri, and him and Ignis argue. Finally Ignis uses divination magic to find Meri, who had encased herself in a ball of inpenetrable ice. Nuri melts the ice, and then Ignis seals them in the secret garden. He slips out, as well as Nuri and they argue bc Ignis wants to hit Hades w a tracking spell. Ignis goes off to do that, and Nuri follows him unnoticed, Hades hurls Ignis through like four walls, and then finds Nuri hiding in the wreckage, telling him to make sure Ignis trains bc he wants him to put up a fight when they fight. They escape to Lapid once again, taking a gravely injured Ignis to a nearby healer, and four days later he wakes up. He agrees to accompany the duo to the City of Gold, and they set off the next day w a carriage Ignis organised for them. They arrive at the Manor, and Milo welcomes them all. He immediately takes Meri, and tells her about her past and her foreboding future, that her uncle Aziel is looking for her and the three other children he found years ago. Ignis and Nuri fight. Nuri accidentally uses his cursed move and collapses in a fit of memories bc he has a slight case of PTSD. Ignis snaps him out of the trance, but he's obvi still distraught. The day ends w them falling asleep together and Avani brings them breakfast w out a word. Meri and Milo talk about her training and she asks him a lot of questions about Aziel. The rest of the crew meet in the living room. Ignis meets Avani and Vayu, and they decide to go out into the City. Vayu disagrees bc his face is all over on wanted posters bc he accidentally killed a bunch of people, and they dress him up in drag. They explore the City, and Ignis takes them to the Royal Magic Academy in the Sovereign Capital through a Portal. There they meet Lewis Magister, the headmistress, and a trusted individual on the Magi Council, a servant to Iman Atthill. She mentions something about a Special Force, which everyone conveniently ignores. Avani and Ignis engage in battle, where Ignis' cursed ability shows. Avani's super interested and suggests they go back to the City and have a drink. They get a lil wasted, and Ignis remarks that there's this guy thats been watching them in the corner all night. Nuri sees his aura, and wakes Vayu up, who identifies him as Aziel Aro. They flee, but Aziel attacks, ignoring Ignis. He uses his light distortion skill to get them out, and brings them back to the Royal Magic Academy. They meet Professor Juvia who specialises in traditional magic healing and she puts Vayu to sleep. Avani is obviously distraught but it comes across as anger. Nuri brings up the events of the battle, and Ignis tells them about the cruel fate of the Lux Clan once more. Avani brings to light the story about Hades, not mentioning his name, insinuating that Ignis' clan was driven to extinction by insanity. Ignis gets angry, and storms off, while Nuri is annoyed with Avani's obvious disrespect. Meanwhile, William Atthill is seeing his uncle, the King Iman. He requests a Special Force, that he will use to hunt down the Aurean people, and attempt to find the person who murdered his parents. One of the advisors ask him about the upcoming coronation, which he declines and practically hands the throne over to his uncle, in favour of a special force. His uncle grants his request, and they set off for the Royal Magic Academy. They arrive in the dead of th night where William and Miss Magister converse, and she alerts him that a couple of Aureans had come to the Academy earlier, seeking Professor Juvia's help. A friend of Ignis, Alfus Pepper, overhears the conversation and rushes to warn Ignis and the rest of the crew. Nuri and Ignis are on one of the balconies, talking about their pasts when Alfus finds them, and tells them that Prince William Atthill is coming to get his Aurean friends. They wake Avani and Vayu drifts in and out of consciousness. Alfus leads them through a series of hidden hallways, and they emerge at the back of the academy, without Miss Magister noticing. Alfus organises for a beast tamer to take them back to the City of Gold, and one of their mutual acquanitances flies them back on the back of a Phoenix. Milo is in a flat spin as they return upon hearing the news, and hopes that William doesn't follow them back. Upon hearing Aziel attacked them, Meri demands to know why Aziel wants them dead. Nuri steps up to tell her the story, including the bit about his village, while Avani reveals why Aziel and possibly William would want to kill her. She used to be an assasin who worked under Iman Atthill. She was misguided and Iman saw her potential, putting her through rigorous training at the Royal Magic Academy while she was still young, and while Lewis Magister was only a meagre professor of Magi History. He sent her on missions to kill various people, and by the age of fourteen she had a death count of a hundred. Once Iman was sure she was ready, he told her to murder the king and his wife, and make it look like it had been done by an Aurean. She blindly betrayed the Aureans, and killed the king, having no regard for human politics, and then framed a dumb undercover Aurean servant for it. The queen however knew about Avani, and tried to tell William, but before she could, Avani had killed her, and made it look like another Aurean. William only remembers two space buns and a glittering pair of green eyes the night his mother was killed. After she killed both the king and the queen, Iman saw no use for her and threw her in the dungeon where she met Vayu. Meri contacts Aziel directly, telling him to stop his madness, and he tells her the only way he can is if he kills all four of them. She assures him that he will get the chance in a month and insists that Milo train her. They discover her cursed ability not long after, and work on trying to make it stronger than Aziel's - the one who started it in the 1st place. A month passes and Meri becomes stronger than Milo, and finally they set off on their journey to meet with Aziel outside of the Sovereign Capital. They pass through the Capital and actually run into William, half drunk in some run down pub, and unknowing about their Aurean descent agrees to comes along. He wants to murder Aziel as well. Before they meet Aziel however, their journey leads them to Suni Atthill, the supposed dead queen. She had gone int hiding, and when she heard William was set on killing every Aurean in the world, she returned to the Sovereign Capital, seeking refuge in her old family home. She finds William and reveals that Avani could not murder her nor Sein, due to everything they had done for her, and they staged an elaborate death together. William gets super angry because Avani had attempted to murder his parents and attempts to kill her, but she stops him and convinces him that the one he wants to kill isn't her, but rather his uncle Iman, the one who hired her. They set off to murder Iman, while Meri and the rest of the crew go and meet with Aziel. The battle ensues, and just as Meri is about to put an end to him, he confesses he never wanted to kill them, and that he was scared that they'd take over the human kingdom like they had before. She reveals that she would never, and kills him anyway, due to the fact that she's unsure he would change. Avani and William successfully murder Iman, and Suni and Sein are reinstated as the rulers of the Sovereign Capital. The Aurean Counil is reestablished and the Special Force disbanded. The Royal Magic Academy is renamed as the Royal Combat Academy, which caters for both Aurean and Magi. They employ Milo as a professor as well as Ignis as a specialist in both fire and light magic. At the end, Suni holds a victory ball, and invites Meri and the rest of the group. Everything goes great until Hades once again crashes the party, and the book ends w Hades saying, it's been a while, hasn't it, my grandson?

Okay.... Discrepancies.... Yay. So you can see that the story sort of got warped in the span of nanowrimo. Firstly, GRANDSOn??? Hades is Ignis' brother, I have no idea why I though grandfather first?? Also Iman was supposed to die in the first novel, but obviously that didn't happen, ha. Basically everything in the endgame was supposed to happen in the first novel, but will now be happening in the second one, yay!

Everything wrong with this draft though?  Avani has a MEAGRE role in the 1st book, and she's the protagonist?? the thing is ive decided let meri have her "spotlight" in this book, bc u guys SECOND NOVEL IS GONNA BLOW UR MIND everyone's who's team avani af is gonna love it ok also... kuro my son ur gonna MEET HIM AGAIN IM SO EXCITED FOR THE PARTS WHERE THEY MEET AGAIN GUYS i ship them way too hard

nevertheless, see ya in the next one, and THANK YOU FOR YOUR ENDLESS SUPPORT!

w love

dan :-) <33