Good evening, this is Dennis with a note on being creative.
A question that writers and artists are often asked is where do we get ideas? It’s interesting even when it is difficult to answer. In the case of Friends of the Fae, the story is long and interesting.
Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I lived in a San Diego apartment with my young love, and we had guests over often for live action role playing games (LARP) and other fun things. At one of these gatherings, an environmentally conscious friend had a “Friends of the Wild” package she had purchased, where she got to sponsor a wolf. Now these things were offered by many of the edutainment stores, and at least some of the proceeds actually went to helping the species pictured, whether by research, lobbying, or actual conservation efforts.
Being the crazy person I have always been, I immediately decided that our fairy friends should get the same support – after all, they seemed to be an endangered species. This led to a creative brainstorm session where all sorts of mythical and supernatural beasts were put forth as the subject of such a novelty kit, which would contain a character profile, artwork and more information on supporting the continued existence of their magnificent species. The idea was fun and stimulating, and although my friends and I never got around to creating even a prototype product at the time, the idea stayed with me.
Years later, I plotted out a story and characters, and asked my friend Max to work with me on a screenplay that we could shop around for an animated series. The series was intended to have a strong environmental theme, combined with the benevolent supernatural creatures that our intrepid human children would befriend. It seemed like a can’t miss idea in an age where Harry Potter ruled the box office.
We never managed to get a serious meeting with any potential producers, and we didn’t have the money to create our own animation studio, so the script and all the story notes went back into a box for many more years. With the substantial reduction in the costs of digital art production, the rise of the webcomic, and managing to marry an excellent artist, a new opportunity for telling my stories has emerged, and so a new iteration of this project has been born.
The advice I would give anyone who wants to create is this: put your story on paper; work it; re-work it; imagine it in any possible form, and then gather what resources you have available and find a format that is within your means. Ultimately a story can only completely fail if it is never told.