My grandmother once suggested to me, after I mentioned to her my difficulty of ever finishing anything I wrote, that I should start at the end instead of the beginning. At the time it didn't make much sense to me, mostly because when I began something I had no idea where it would end. Over time though, I think I understand the wisdom. Musings and wanderings have a way of leading you into the metaphorical woods of ideas, hopes, dreams, and the story you set out to craft doesn't evolve yet rather devolves into chaos.
I know alcohol has a lot to do with that, though on the subject of beginnings and endings it seemed at the onset a tool. Now I know that may not be true.
Writers like Stephen King say plots are stifling, my interpretation of his interpretation of them is that they take you prisoner. Yet perhaps I'm a prisoner of my determination to use the method that works for him, to let something grow from a seed to full flower all on its own. Trouble is drunk I'm capricious, impatient, easily bored by a story I was once inspired by once I approach the heart of it. Maybe it's too easy to just say fuck it because I had no path in the first place, and trying to forge ahead through a forest without a compass of purpose is the best way to get lost and hit delete.
So...
Just try a plot, stick to the script. The irony, really, is that you're still following King's method, you're just doing it the fast way, drawing the map before you build the road rather than letting the terrain chart the course. Same result in the end, for the most part? I hope so.
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Chapter 1:
The main character is a morose fox who's lost his mother and father to a bomber attack in the ferocity of world war 3. He returns home from school one day to find the small cottage he grew up in ruins after a stray missile strikes it. It's nothing but blackened rubble, and as he frantically digs through the wreckage he finds their bodies, charred and almost unrecognizable save for the wedding rings on their paws and his mother's lockett.
As the sun sets he digs two graves and buries them by himself, haunted by the memories of love and brightness they had given him as they raised him before the war. After he finishes the second digging an old friend shows up and helps him finish. As it turns out this old friend has lost his Aunt in the bombings, having been raised by her after being abandoned by parents who were the polar opposite of those of the fox; wreckless, selfish, and promiscuous, they dumped him at her doorstep when he was an infant.
The theme of this chapter is one of comraderie, solidarity, sympathy and sadness. The final line, spoken by one or the other, should be: "We'll survive this."
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Chapter 2:
(On the scarred and scorched hilltop, the grass flattened and torn by the treads of tanks and the boots of dead troops, I fall to one knee with the Infinity Sword clutched in my right paw. I cannot feel the hilt through the steel of my gauntlet, yet I feel its weight as the blade sinks into the earth. The runes are red, every last one filled with drying blood, and I realize that my hackles are up and I'm shaking. Tears trace tracks down my face and my ears go back. My eyes close. I can't believe it's over.
No. That's not right. It's never over, not so long as a single being with even a seed of greed in their heart draws breath.
My greatest fear is real. It will happen again. It's a question of when.)
After the surprise attack the duke of the invaded country initiates a draft of the able bodied and the protaganist finds himself enlisted in the army. Among the ranks are many who are frightened and angry that they've been forced into service, though there are many patriots who have come willingly and two factions form among the trainees. The protaganist joins the latter, having lost everything, though there are lessons to learn. The former aren't cowards, simply people who don't understand why the war even exists. They have families they've left behind, children and the old.
The draft makes no distinction between male and female in this world, they're beast folk for one thing and among some species the females are far stronger and tenacious and capable than their male counterparts. Gender is negligible in the war effort and ignored. A male could just as easily become a nurse as a female could become a Beret.
At the camps, officers determine the best roles for each recruit through a series of brutal and sometimes sadistic tests called the 'Crucible' by most cadets. Their purpose is to determine where each individual is most suited in the armed forces of the duke; infantry, armor, air force or navy.
The protaganist tests high in the aerial tests, with high perceptivity and dexterity the fox shows promise as a fighter pilot, and is subsequently assigned to squadron 69, where he finds his mentor Captain Taylor Grayson. They spend hours and hours together in a virtual world flying fighter jets and fall in love.
He also tests high in swordsmanship, having practiced with a mysterious sword that kept his father alive during the last world war. This sword, shrined and pitted and seeming little more than scrap, is in fact a legendary weapon that can call lightning and pierce any other metal if one's soul is sufficiently attune to the life force of the world. In legend it is known as the 'Infinity Blade', and according to lore can channel infinite power.
Keeping it as a good luck charm and as a talisman of his father's memory, the fox flies sorties with it in the cockpit.
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Chapter 3:
After being shot down deep in enemy territory the protaganist comes to in a dark wood with only the old sword and minimal rations. He crawls from the wreckage bloody, his left arm broken, and he has glass and wood splinters all over. Finding a stream he drinks, restoring a little of his strength, and is then ambushed by an enemy patrol. He's shot twice, once in the leg and once in the neck, the rifle bullet narrowly missing his carteroid artery.
The power of the sword awakes then, mysteriously, filling him with vitality and healing his wound. He slaughters thirty or so soldiers single pawed, the blade blocking even machine gun fire, though the channeling of the power robs him of much of his memory.
In the end he finds his way back to the friendly lines, is identified, yet is also recognized as the bearer of the Infinity Blade. The high command uses technology to restore his memory and transfers him from the airforce to the armored divisions. Riding on the prow of a command tank he spearheads the tanks divisions, summoning lightning and devestating slash attacks on enemy armored formations.
At this point the son of a simple farmer and gardener couple rises to the status of legend, revered by the army he champions and feared and hated by the one that must face his unusual power.
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Chapter 4:
Calamity strikes when the rival Duke, a sinister figure known to consort with demons and favor dark magic, targets the protaganist with a wasting curse that locks him in a shadow realm between the real world and hell.
Within in it, a devil calling itself Witman sets ten tasks for the protaganist in order to escape that purgatory, the final one being to defeat Witman himself. This is a reflection of the ten trials of Hercules though they are radically different from the historical bent. The nature of the ten are still to be imagined.
The protaganist beats the first eight, yet in a twist fails the ninth, for that would allow his flesh to survive yet murder his soul. Technically successful as such, Witman still challenges the fox to a duel and loses so narrowly that the protaganist is robbed of half his soul.
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Chapter 5:
Denied escape, the hero travels to Cinder, a hellbent town on the edge of a smoldering volcano. He makes an alliance with an enemy of Witman, and together they hunt the warlord in a forsaken nightmare jungle known as the Tangle. After fighting off attacks by giant spiders, cannibal gnolls and a troop of half monkey half wolf monstrosities known only as the Night Tribe, they finally corner Witman in a decrepit, ancient temple complex known only as the Satin Triangle. At the top of a pyramid whose apex is pure bloodsoaked platinum lost in cloud they battle the devil and somehow win, reclaiming the hero's soul and his ally's 'Book of Fear', a text which holds the true names of all the ally's rivals.
It's revealed the ally is in reality the dethroned king of that circle of hell, a ruler far more brutal than Witman. Faced with the choice of dueling the ally to save the inhabitants of Cinder from his monstrous administration or having him open a portal back to the real world the protaganist chooses...
Undecided.
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Chapter 6:
The fox returns to his world, stronger than ever after having literally been through hell, Infinity Blade in paw. He's far more clever, versed in the ways of intrigue and vileness after his long sojourn in such a place, and it shows when he meets the high command and deftly manuevers amidst the intrigue. He convinces the duke to appoint him general of the 6th, the spearhead infantry of the assault on the enemy.
In the course of the next campaign the fox firmly establishes his position as a military genius, anticipating the enemy again and again, and the devestating power of the Infinity Blade covers up his mistakes when his failures at tactics force him to join the fight. Gradually he forces the enemy back.
Calamity strikes again. An enemy general, Ivar Benson, is a powerful sorcerer, and after sacrificing thousands of cattle, troops and helpless civilians he is able to cast a spell that binds the Infinity Blade and casts it into the abyss. Stripped of this critical weapon, essentially powerless, the hero and his forces lose all their gains and most lose their lives.
To further the humiliation, Ivar traps the last of the fox's forces in a box canyon, slaughtering them all and challening the hero to a duel. The hero knows no real magic, and with only a steel sword he's no match for Ivar's sorcery. The enemy commander ties the protaganist backwards on a mule, slaps its rump, and tells the fox to tell the duke and his remaining forces that the tide shall soon turn.
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Chapter 7:
Disgraced, ashamed and nearly helpless, he's at the mercy of the mule, who meanders south beyond the border and into wild lands controlled by barbarian tribes. One such group finds him, imprisons him, and makes plans to roast him over an open fire and devour him in a ceremony called the Feast of the Red Star, when Mars first appears in the night sky.
The chief and shaman of the tribe recognize he has mystical potential however, and intervene. The chief inducts the fox into the tribe, while the shaman teaches him true magic.
With this magic the hero is able to summon the Infinity Blade from the abyss, though from that point on he doesn't rely on its strength yet rather his own. He learns how to shape reality with his will without the help of an item, fulfills prophecies written by the ancestors of his captors and evolves from prisoner of them to commander of them.
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Chapter 8:
After two years living among those who would have devoured him yet in the end deified him, he came to realize the war had indeed been lost just as Ivar promised. The enemy had overrun the duke's domain and the last free peoples were those he lived with. Indications were certain: they intended to turn to the rural lands next, and so he is able to convince the tribe he has become a part of and other tribes who used to be rivals to unite.
This, consequently, resulted in the fulfillment of another prophecy of the rural peoples: He was Madajave, or Monarch, a being imbued by magic and destiny to bring everyone together against a common enemy who threatened to end their existence.
They had no airforce, yet they commanded air magic. They had no navy, yet the jungle was landlocked. As for infantry...they were masters at jungle warfare. Though rifles and machine guns and artillery were costly, tanks unbelievably expensive, they paid with the gems and jade of the lost cities of their ancestors, and in the end-
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Chapter 9:
They held, and on the throne was a farm boy who fifteen years prior couldn't drive a tractor wore a feathered head dress and snarling mask wrought from solid platinum, a bullet proof cuirass, clutched a scepter tipped with a carved emerald the size of a hen's egg. The Infinity Blade was at his side, though he hadn't drawn it in battle since Ivar's trap.
Tentative peace negotiations were attempted, then collapsed. The enemy wanted mountains of diamonds, the natives wanted guarantees on the issue of borders. Both rewards were too rich for either side to concede or compromise.
So it went on.
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Chapter 10:
The history of a world even one made up. The motivations of life seem so simple at face value, yet you add consciousness, intelligence, and the machinations to acquire resources, raw power....the complexity soon spirals out of control.
Same I suppose, with social interactions. Factions, pecking orders, lines on a map, secret handshakes and stilleto smiles and-
No wonder I'll never finish anything. It makes my head hurt too much.
Nice try though.
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Chapter 11:
A grand invasion begins. The hero liberates his lover from a prison, the indigenous armies win again and again wielding virtue, magic and righteousness, the evil duke is defeated and it's happily every after...
Until the hero goes mad, drunk on power-
Just stop.
And somewhere, in one of the great cities, is a little kid who watches his mother get struck down by the spear of an arrogant soldier of the new king for nothing more than crossing paths on the way to the fountain, and his heart fills with hate and-
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Epilogue:
It never ends. No wonder I could never finish. It will live on, long after everyone here is gone. History is forgetful as fuck, and its fangs are sharp. You don't need a book, all it takes is the strength to have an inward look.