At first, Dual Wielding was something of a love letter to the fantasy genre. It was almost a fan-fiction of a variety of books I’d read but with an original setting and characters (original really meaning my own but greatly inspired). As I got older, Dual Wielding stopped being a love letter and became more of a discussion with the genre, specifically the Young Adult fantasy genre.

Everything but the basic plot has been completely reworked to better suit what I now believe the genre should reflect (at least to me). The teen characters making poor decisions became adults with complexities for discussion rather than because they’re silly little traits. What’s the term they use for them? Am I too old to remember? QUIRKY. That’s it. That’s the term. The older I got, however, the more I realised these “quirky” traits are really the ones that got me bullied and in trouble, or were really just normal behaviours for teenagers thrown into chaotic and overwhelming circumstances whilst they’re still just trying to figure out who they are.

I did rewrite the blurbs to show the difference between the original work and the current work but it would reveal a lot about the story that’s remained and so I’m going to keep that hush-hush for now as I’ve improved and built on the elements. Basically something that was obvious to readers is now a bit more of a secret. Readers are clever, they’ll figure it out, but I don’t want to help them with it this early on (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

What I CAN tell you that’s changed:

High School Students -> Adults

High School -> City Underground

Utopia -> Stressed & Complicated Society

Perfect Characters -> Flawed

Heroes & Villains -> People & People
(except well, the main villain. That guy still just sucks)

Brand New Language -> now has Linguistic Rules

Pure Fantasy -> Sci-Fi x Fantasy Magical Realism Blend

Frustration -> Real Tension

What’s affected the development of the story the most this time around is that I’m not treating it as “fan-fiction”. I’ve “killed my darlings” of sorts by taking out all of the idealistic elements with the objective of creating a world and story with depth.

Stick around to see what I come up with (૭ ｡•̀ ᵕ •́｡ )૭