After thoughts
Indy posted this at the Acorn Café when
he published the final part of The Untold Ranger Tale.
Greetings, Rangerphiles!
I haven’t been able to get to the Week That Was for last week yet--I felt that I should honor my word and get part ten out to y’all now. I finished it up tonight (Tuesday), but I also wanted to take a few moments and write a little retrospective on this saga. It’s meant a lot of Chris and myself as writers, and as we’ve been discussing it and reminiscing we realize that no matter what else we write that the Tales will stand as some of our best work. Before getting to the story link and all, I’d like to speak some on the Tales, and what it’s meant to us.
On July 17, 2000, part one of the Untold Ranger Tales premiered. It was received with a combination of accolades and bewailment. The story was the first novel-length D+G story to appear, and at the time everything else was pretty much C+G. Some loved it, some hated it. Some flatly refused to read it.
Originally, Chris and I chose to make it a variant of "Good Times, Bat Times", and we realized as we continued writing that we needn’t have. I think that it was the dominance of C+G at the time that made us a bit leery of the reaction. We did jokingly mention torches and pitchforks quite often ;-)
The original story centered on the premise that a relationship would develop between Dale and Gadget. And at first, that was all we intended to explore. But, as with all good stories, we saw so many more possibilities that we had to keep it going. Eventually, the series actually came to center on Chip, and his quest for true love. Admittedly, Lahwhinie might not have been the first choice of most, but her character presented so many creative opportunities that I found her to be fascinating to write for.
I say that I did, because originally we were just going to have one girl for Chip. Chris wanted it to be Foxy, and I wanted it to be Lahwhinie. After nearly two hours of very heated IM debate, we went to our respective corners and reached a compromise. And it was one that would influence everything that came after it.
We decided to in essence make two Chips, and explore both possibilities in the same series. I should explain that we both came to love both choices, and worked equally to make the relationships real and fulfilling. Then there was Theo.
Theo Maplewood originated out of a story that we’ve never published, but might sometime. We loved his character, and realized that he had to become part of the Tales. Making him Chip’s adopted son opened up more plotlines and gave us new ways of interacting. And of course, it started the friendship of Theo and Bink, which we bring to a higher level in part ten.
Bink and Theo are graduating from high school in part ten, and they’re at the point now where they’re ready to take on the world. And that turns out to be good, because the world takes them on in this one. They both get proverbial trails by fire in this story, and give a good accounting of themselves. I think fans of the series will be pleased with them.
Part ten really brings together everything that Chris Silva and I have done, and even touches on the material I wrote before our teamup. There’s going to be situations, characters and ideas that the reader will only understand fully after having read most if not all of our previous big stories.
This was by far the most complex story either of us has ever tackled. It’s in essence two stories in one. The first one is the story of what’s happening in the world that we’ve come to know in the Untold Ranger Tales. The second story involves another world, and one that our characters will interact with some. To say much more about it would spoil the fun, so you’ll just have to read it for yourself.
There was also the added challenge of putting a detailed timeline in this story. There’s an event that happens in the story that necessitated scripting the story to a strict timeline for everything preceding it. So we actually use time and place markers throughout the story to help the reader keep up with what’s going on. Making that work in a nearly 100,000-word story was, I think, the biggest logistical challenge.
Such things keep the storytelling fresh and inviting, but at the heart of the Tales is the mandate of telling a good story, and that starts and ends with the characters. We’ve seen the main characters mature and grow in ways that neither of us would’ve dared to predict three years ago. Now that we’re bringing this to a close, we can look back at where it all started and smile, because the journey was worth it.
I hope the fans of the Tales enjoy this last portion, and I can assure you that we have.
/Indy