When I started this project in 2008, I never really knew how much planning had to go into it. Of course I should have realised it, but I didn't. And three and a quarter volumes later I've found myself realising that perhaps there are things that need to be changed.
The whole point about this came about when I said to Kathryn I needed to cut it down the other day. We then spent the next hour (and would have spent a lot longer if we weren't seen a film :P) planning and drafting out the important parts of the story and changing it.
I suddenly realised that it took three volumes to get to some answers. Which really did consist of three hundred pages of "why are we doing this?" "what are the shadows?" (more to come about those! :P) and just general questions.
There are of course webcomics who manage to get away with slower moving storylines. The Pheonix Requiem for example, that's fairly slow moving (yet incredibly gripping all the time, as you may have seen it's my favourite webcomic) and I really admire Sarah Ellerton for managing to tell the story like that. But for Heartstones I don't think the slower paced kind of storyline would work. We're new at this, we don't know how to do it so we need to make the story a bit shorter and faster paced and also one that makes more sense for the readers (and to Kathryn and I!)
For example there are a lot of questions raised within the first chapter and some of these questions don't really answered until the beginning of VOlume three and I just thought it took too long to get to them. Although someone could argue that it was good like that becuase it set up tension within the storyline but then I realised that there's also several different kinds of tensions. Some of you may have seen that there's a character called Mr Stanter, obviously I can't say too much without giving away spoilers but he's one of the villains in the story. At least he was until the other come (remaining un named! :P) came along and then he sort of fisseled out a bit.
So he doesn't play as bigger role in the third volume as he did in the first, so therefore I want to go back and change it so that all the villains are slightly more connected and it makes more sense.
Mrs Hattigan is also another character that fisseled out as the story developed. At one point she was a main character and was there constantly within the story but then it developed we changed it and she didn't really have a purpose to the storyline anymore so we decided to change it, and cut her character out completely.
I think the fact that the story is getting changed (in terms of getting out the bits we don't need and changing it so it makes more sense :p) then the characters will slightly too. So I think I'm going to find it quite interesting to see how they've changed. :)
It may seem like I'm being quite radical or harsh (maybe even shocking) about this. I don't think anyone I spoke to this week about Heartstones quite saw this coming. But it's a nessisary change and I hope that we'll have a better, more structured story when I've finished it.
We want Heartstone Odyssey to be the best it can be. So we're aiming to get the story exactly right so when it comes to Kathryn drawing it, it'll be fantastic.
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