In Review: A Fool's Goddess - Chapter Four

Good morning, and welcome to part four of In Review. I’m gonna do things a little differently this time by beginning with some personal thoughts that have nothing to do with the story directly, but then we’ll get into my usual ramblings.

Sound good? If not, then please skip ahead. You won’t hurt my feelings. Mostly.

I’d like to start by talking about the concept of inspiration. I have a bit of weird relation with the idea, since I spent most of my life thinking I was okay with not having any ambition and simply living a mundane life. I would get ‘inspired’ at times, but I wouldn’t do anything with the motivation and just let it sputter out. Ideas for books and such would come into my head, but I’d simply wait for them to pass.

The first event that changed that was meeting good ol’ Steven. He had been practicing art for years by the time we first met, and to be honest, seeing him show off his creative skills made me rather envious. That jealousy festered within me and eventually encouraged me to revisit my own passions, if only loosely. Perhaps it seems deplorable to let myself be motivated by such a foul emotion, but it’s how I felt. I’ve since outgrown that envy and learned to focus on improving myself, though I don’t lament my roots.

It’s probably obvious, but I tried to inject some of that sentiment in Chapter Three’s dialogue between Lior and Chen. It doesn’t play out the same way for them, but I thought it was a neat idea to mention.

Anyways, Steven helped push me to begin writing with a level of serious thought, though I mostly just jotted down ideas or concepts and went nowhere with them. Granted, those ideas have since become the foundations of several short stories, but it was such a halfhearted affair back then. It was like I just wanted to show I could be creative without putting in any real effort.

Pathetic.

So, I continued to shuffle along dully, right up until Steven recommended me a visual novel. If it hasn’t been painfully apparent yet, I’m a shameless weeaboo. I could go into all the Japanese crap I enjoy, but let’s leave it at ‘Peter jumped at the idea to try out a well-regarded VN’.

That VN was Doki Doki Literature Club by Team Salvato, and suffice it to say that it broke me out of that vacuous doldrum.

For the uninitiated, I’m sure the name comes off as hilariously stereotypical and silly. I certainly felt that way. I very much can’t say anymore without ruining it, so I’ll simply say, please, check it out for yourself. It’s free on Steam, itch.io, and directly from it's own website. It’s a wonderful game that truly stands out within its genre and I cannot overstate how much I adore it.

Now then, after playing through DDLC, I went into a period of awed stupor. I was simply blown away by what I had experienced and spent a couple days just sort of floating by, trying to organize the thoughts in my head. I had felt that way before, with movies like Inception and books like Sophie’s World, but this one shook me to my core like nothing else had. Honestly, I would erase my memories of that game if I could, just so I could experience that first playthrough again.

Well, that feeling proved to be the final catalyst I needed to get actually get my ass in gear. Suddenly, all that inspiration bubbled over inside me, no longer content with being ignored. As my heart pounded with excitement, I began writing again. Not just outlines and concepts, but genuinely writing. I started by revisiting a short story I had begun five years prior and stopped after ten pages. For the next month or so, I’d spend at least an hour writing after work, desperate to prove I wasn’t just talk. I would eventually create my first short story, An Indulgence, concluding at sixty-eight pages.

But that wasn’t enough. I wanted more.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Dan Salvato at a convention later that year, and doing so only fueled my passions even further. After that, I then pledged to complete a total of ten short stories, with the intent of compiling them into a VN of my own I would pridefully title, The Peter Varnicrast Collection. Steven even offered to make the art and music for it.

Ultimately, I would change my plans and instead focus on novelization, but I still have those tales lying around. He was Chosen, The Special Man, and Forging are my favorites of the bunch. I’d love to share those with the world one day, perhaps after cleaning them up with what I’ve learned since writing them, but even if they remain hidden, I look at them fondly as the teachers who helped me reach my current level.

In the end, I only wrote nine complete short stories. I have three that are sitting unfinished, abandoned because I grew dissatisfied with my inability to express what I wanted those stories to be. Number ten would become A Fool’s Goddess, and I believe I already explained how I let a thirty page short story evolve into a beefy novel. So I technically failed my pledge, but I’m happy with how things turned out. At the very least, it’s been incredibly fun.

So, to bring this all together, I wanted to state how curious the sense of inspiration can be. Creative minds are always in search of inspiration, but it’s also something you can never find. In my experience, it just sort of happens. Honestly, I don’t think it’s possible to find the muse. She will evade you, elusive and ephemeral as she is. Stephen King put it best in On Writing: the muse is more akin to a surly man with a cigar who sits in a recliner. He will help you, but only on his terms. But if you learn how to appease him, he will share his secrets more often.

Considering how my own muse proved to be from cute VN, an idea I would have laughed at years ago, I would like to advise anyone looking for inspiration to keep their heart open. The muse takes many forms, and like a mischievous child, he is always looking to surprise.

God, looking back, it saddens me to realize I spent so long without any desire to express myself. I dabbled in writing on occasion, but nothing really came of it. I worked my job, wasted time, and planned to die after a meaningless life, but then a couple assholes came along and broke me out of that peace. Now here I am, a novel under my belt, another one in the works, a myriad of other ideas currently lying dormant, and a weekly blog I love to update.

Seriously, what the fuck.

As you can guess, I took a lot of those feelings and put them into A Fool’s Goddess. Though faith is a central theme, I wanted to use the story to also express my views on artistic creation and inspiration, particularly when the latter comes from an unexpected source. I don’t think I’d be able to write about something that’s not based somewhat on emotions I’ve felt, so I can only hope my feelings were able to carry over to you, my beloved reader.

Okay, that’s enough of my life story. Once again, I went off the rails and wrote too much, and I’m sorry for that. Let’s get to the good stuff and talk about Chapter Four, shall we?

… Which, unfortunately, there isn’t much to say. Like Chapter Three, it’s kind of short and not much happens. I think I said I’d go over the setting more than anything, so I’ll try and do that.

I prefer not to base my stories in reality, both because I don’t find it very enjoyable and to avoid any unintentional faux pas, so I often fear that I didn’t make it obvious enough that the novel takes place in a Greco-Roman sort of time and place. I think the pantheon-based religion and focus on sculptors helps, but I also never describe much of the architecture. At the very least, I’m sure the technologies stated make it obviously pre-Industrial Era, but I apologize if anyone assumed a different age.

I went with that setting mostly out of an old love for Greek mythology. I’ve always enjoyed reading about the kooky antics of Zeus and pals, with Hephaestus being a favorite. Of course, the smaller tales likes Orpheus and Sisyphus are great too, but I didn’t find a good place to include anything like that in A Fool’s Goddess. I tried to slip in some small myths in a couple areas, but ultimately had to leave ideas like that out to keep the story manageable (yeah, right).

Similarly, I never really discuss the other Gods of the pantheon anywhere. Again, there just wasn’t a good time for it. And since they’re not really focal to the story at all, they remain mostly as one-off mentions. I don’t even have any real unused material for them either, so it’s not like I was holding back. Knowing what is and isn’t important enough to your story is a fantastic skill to have when writing, one I am still working on everyday.

Now, why didn’t I go for a different era or setting? Well, mostly because I just had a level of comfort working with make-believe ancient Greece. I briefly considered making it modern, but people are too skeptical today to make a story about a guy who falls in love with a heretic Goddess interesting. Lior in modern times would probably just get labelled a weirdo and ignored, no more interesting than the millions of other folk who express their idiosyncrasies through the internet today.

Which is kind of weird to think about in its own way. Hmm.

Moving on, Chapter Four also has my first example of what I call ‘voiceless characters’. This chapter introduces Gili (“my joy” in Hebrew), but it should be noted that she has no dedicated dialogue. She was also nameless in my first draft, but she has enough significance later on to justify a name. But, in an effort to curb my appetites, I avoided giving her dialogue. I did this to keep her character as minor as possible and reduce page consumption. She also doesn’t get any real physical description, again to keep things in check.

To a degree, I then don’t know why I even bothered giving her a name. It feels like she should get a larger part because of that, but then there’s the sense that having too many actors makes the play unwatchable. So, Gili and a few others later on get the ‘voiceless’ treatment: names but nearly no dialogue. Hopefully they help make the world feel more alive without overcrowding things.

Finally, this chapter has Lior realize his feelings for Tornara are not just a simple fixation. This was one of the sections I had to redo the most. It was really hard to balance out my desire to make it feel impactful without Lior coming off as a lunatic. My first draft had him more in denial of his feelings, then it became more like he wasn’t as surprised by Chen’s statements. For a bit, I had the two friends practically arguing, but I eventually reduced it to the more mellow, kindhearted exchange they have now.

It’s also a good scene for reinforcing how much of a pal Chen is. He really wants nothing more than for Lior to be happy with himself, no matter how strange the rest of the world might see him. He might lack much ambition on his own, but he’ll do whatever he can to help his friends realize their dreams. Maybe that leaves him a bit shallow, but I still love him.

And our chapter concludes with the pair finally heading off to meet Lior’s next master. A fun fact would be that originally Chen begged off work to help Lior, but I changed it to Gili sending him away to give her a little more involvement. But there Chapter Four ends, relatively unimportant and honestly kind of forgettable.

Or maybe I just say that because of how much I adore Chapter Five. Hint, hint.

Well, let’s stop here for the week, shall we? Looking back, this In Review is more of my personal story than actual review, so again, I apologize for such ramblings. I’ll be back next Sunday with Chapter Five, and we’ll go over it the Sunday after that. I’d like to think I’ve got a lot to say, but only time will tell how honest my assumptions are.

Alrighty, enjoy your week, my friend. Say hi to your surly cigar man for me, would you?