This is the “story behind the story” for the first draft manuscript of Nahla: Warrior of the North. The idea spent several years in my mind before being written. Read on to learn more about it! This is Part 1 of a two-part series.
The Story of Nahla
Old Earth is dying, but humanity endures despite the hardships of a far-future, post-apocalyptic world. Nahla, a disgraced and exiled veteran warrior, treks across the Endless Land and discovers a civilisation nobody knew existed. She wins the favour of the king, and soon becomes a trusted guard of the royal court.
But the king and his lords have a dark secret, and they will stop at nothing to keep it hidden. Learning the truth and gathering supporters, Nahla finds herself at the centre of an insurrection. One lord in particular would like nothing more than to execute her by his own sword.
Nahla teams up with the inexperienced Prince Myel to unravel the secrets of the kingdom. However, in doing so, they discover a plot that threatens to destroy the kingdom from within. Powerful forces are at play, but they never expected someone like Nahla in the middle of their plans.
Inception
I had a story idea when I read Edgar Rice Burrows’ A Princess of Mars, Book 1 of the Barsoom Series, published in the grand old year of 1912. You may be familiar with the loose film adaptation, John Carter, which uses elements of the book and its sequels. I was enthralled by the adventurous tone of the book, the sense of wonder and exploration, and the lively first-person storytelling. I decided I wanted to write something in the same vein.
My first idea was similar to the current version of Nahla: Warrior of the North. It was a far-future Tasmanian story with a hot and dry climate long after an unidentified post-apocalyptic event. The initial story title was Spiro of Tasmania, and it was supposed to be a homage to my father. He liked Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian, so I wanted to treat him to a story where his namesake would be a big, strong, sword-wielding warrior who saves the day. He would also have a sidekick named Princess Lynn, a tuckerisation of my mother.
I left the idea in my head for a number of years while I focused on other projects.
Exploring the Idea
I first explored the idea when I tried to write a short story in the world. This short story was set during one of the turning points in the book—a battle with disastrous consequences. However, it was the wrong topic to be told in a short story format, and I ultimately abandoned the project.
Instead, I opted for a more focused short story that showed the mysterious Tasmanian society and introduced the villain, Lord Johl. I completed this story and named it “Falsehood”. It didn’t do so well when I sent it to magazines, and I know why. Three reasons:
- It hinted at a larger tale, which is not what you’re supposed to do in a short story.
- Again, it was not the right story to be told as a short story—the conflict was too internal, and there wasn’t much in the way of a resolution.
- It was really just a snippet of the book that I would eventually write.
I stopped sending the short story to magazines. While it would have been nice to have a sale, I was content with the knowledge that I had achieved what I set out to do: explore the world. However, at this point, I was still leaning towards a John Carter-like main character named Spiro and his Dejah Thoris-like supporting character named Lynn. I couldn’t shake the nagging thought that the character dynamic was too derivative of A Princess of Mars and the story had old-school gender-based roles.
So, I reversed the characters. Now, the main character was a warrior woman named Nahla, and she would be aided by a Prince named Myel. I picked the name Nahla because it means “first drink of water” or “water in the desert” in Arabic, and water is a strong feature in the story. Myel is just one of those random names that scifi and fantasy writers dream up—it means nothing … or so I thought. I later researched it and discovered that it’s a real name of inconclusive origin, likely meaning something along the lines of “made by God”, “next to God”, or “light of God”, none of which have anything to do with the character.
Outlining the First Draft
After I published Space Trip and was well into production of Space Trip II, I decided I had time to move ahead with what was then called Nahla of Tasmania. The title soon changed to Nahla: Warrior of the North.
I did something which I had never done for my previous novels—I wrote the entire synopsis as one big chunk. I did this in my Notion mobile app whenever I had a spare moment, usually at my day job on my lunch break. Once I had a full synopsis, I then started my chapter outlines in a Word table. In keeping with my usual process for outlining, I did about half the story first to see how it would develop once I started writing the draft. Then, as I followed my outline, I revised slightly and outlined some more. As I neared the end of the story, I outlined the last few chapters, then closed the gap.
Ordinarily, I would have outlined in Scrivener, but I wasn’t going to write the first draft in Scrivener. No, I wanted to experiment with something else—Wattpad.
An Experimental First Draft Process
I had heard about Wattpad before. It is a big player in writing circles, especially among fan fiction writers and romance writers. It’s an online writing and reading platform where authors can post their stories (either free or paid) and readers can enjoy fiction at their fingertips.
While I was studying for my Graduate Diploma of Editing and Publishing, I had the pleasure of working with a Wattpad author who showed just how successful Wattpad could be. She had over 70,000 views on one of her books and was interested in either self-publishing or traditional publishing. For me, I wasn’t too fussed about the views. What I wanted from Wattpad was accountability. You see, I had a plan.
I started writing Nahla while getting Space Trip II ready for publication and while finishing my degree. Since I was focusing on the Space Trip Universe and cramming for uni, I spent only my weekends on Nahla, writing a chapter a week and posting it on Wattpad. This gave me accountability. Even if only one person read the draft chapters, that was one person who expected a new chapter every week, so I had a good reason to write and stick to my schedule as closely as possibly.
I missed a few weekends—one thanks to COVID, others because some chapters were particularly long or complex, and then several weeks in a row as I put Nahla aside to go 110% on my uni degree. Overall, my Wattpad experiment was a success. I wrote 90,000 words across 36 chapters over a span of 12 months, writing for approximately 45 days in total (almost always a Sunday). Not bad. Not bad at all.
The Guinea Pig of AI
Soon after I started writing Nahla, I started hearing a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) software, specifically how writers were using it. I never used the likes of ChatGPT or Sudowrite for Nahla, but I did experiment a lot with Midjourney.
First Attempts
Midjourney is an AI art program that creates images based on text prompts. Writers were using it for all sorts of products: cover art, character art, scene visualisations, and so on. When I started, Midjourney struggled with imagining the fine details of human faces. Thus, my initial attempts at visualising Nahla as a character were quite funny, but still interesting. Three examples are shown below.
These images were pretty good to begin with, but if you look closely, some features went a little awry. Noses and eyeballs especially. Nevertheless, I experimented some more and managed to produce the one which became the draft cover for most of the writing period.
New Version of Midjourney
The next version of Midjourney was released soon after producing the draft cover image, and it was vastly more powerful. I opted not to update the cover image because I was already using it for advertising each new chapter I posted on Wattpad. Still, it didn’t stop me from experimenting further. The concepts from the newer Midjourney version were far more detailed and precise. I had a lot of fun learning about art styles.
Other Characters
After experimenting with Nahla’s character art, I decided to visualise some of the other main characters. I had a great idea to create them as charcoal art, as if one of the in-world characters had drawn them. The intention is to use them in the printed book. Colleen McCullough does something similar in her Masters of Rome Series. Have a look at the results.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with buildings to help me imagine some key scenes. It’s important to remember that the world of Nahla has regressed to a previous era. Therefore, building styles have changed to reflect current technology and the general needs and desires of civilisation. See the examples below.
I’ve had a ball experimenting with Midjourney. There is still so much to learn, so I won’t be stopping!
An Important Decision
About halfway into writing this first draft of Nahla: Warrior of the North, I realised that I had to alter my plans. The story was just a little loo long for one book. Well, to tell the full story in one volume was certainly possible. Longer books have been published before. But I had to look at it from a business angle. Here were my options:
- Traditional publishing: If I wanted to submit it to one of the major publishers, there is no way they would accept a 200,000-word manuscript from a relatively unknown author.
- Self-publishing: If I chose to self-publish it, producing a 200,000-word book would be cost prohibitive. The printing fee alone would have been around $20 per unit.
Therefore, I made an important decision: tell the story in two volumes. This is actually the first time I’ve publicly stated that there will be a sequel. However, if you have read the first draft on Wattpad, it should have been clear that the story could not possibly end where it did.
After the First Draft
Editing
The first draft is written! I can now have a breather. I’ll leave the draft on Wattpad for a few weeks. However, when I begin editing, I’m removing it from the platform. Wattpad will have served its purpose.
I feel I’ve written a fairly clean first draft, but I know some elements need improving:
- Worldbuilding needs refining and expanding.
- Dialogue needs to be tightened.
- Some characters need to be fleshed out more.
Beta Reading
Once I’ve edited the manuscript to a sufficient standard, I’ll hand it over to a team of beta readers. They will give me their honest evaluation of the story, characters, and world so I can improve the manuscript even more.
Production
At this point, I am still unsure whether to submit the book to an agent/publisher via the traditional route, or simply self-publish it. I’ll think more about this over the coming months.
Sequel
I can’t leave readers hanging, and I really want to continue the story to its original conclusion. So, while editing the draft, I’ll outline the final half of the story and write it. I have considered posting the chapters on my new Patreon page instead of Wattpad this time. However, if Patreon is not suitable, I’ll use the same Wattpad process as the first book.
Conclusion
Overall, I am extremely happy with the writing process and how the story developed. It was fun writing a sword-and-planet story, and equally fun writing a full-length novel from a female character’s perspective. I’m looking forward to continuing the story!