Toy Saga #1

Introduction To My Novel Series

I’ve mentioned my different story worlds in my article here, but I wanted to dive deeper into one of the projects I am currently working on.

Toy Saga.

Toy Saga is my youthful fantasy story, with fun action, vibrant characters, and a poetically filled story. The amalgamation of the fantasy series I grew up loving, I always knew I wanted to make my own. My own Star Wars. My own superhero world. My own shonen.

I don’t know what I would have done without my toys as a child, which is why with my book, Toy Saga, a fantasy of toys with the power of imagination, I will be setting up an NFT project where I can help get toys in the hands of children who’s families can’t afford to buy their own. I believe toys to be building blocks in shaping a children’s imagination and sharpens their minds.

As a child, I would often find comfort playing with my toys, and creating stories with them, and a lot of times I would use story arcs inspired by the tv shows I watched; My favorite toy was my Red Power Ranger. I would sit for hours having the toys creating different social groups within my toys, and having them compete in different games I would make up for them. And of course, as a fan of shows like Dragon Ball Z, I would have them train to learn new powerful abilities.

When I was in high school, I always thought I would create my toys into 3d models, and then create my own video games around the stories I created, but I soon realized that the technical side of doing that was not something I enjoyed, but as the visionary to create the story, the writer, the director, that’s where I feel my place is.

With Toy Saga, I think getting toys for children who’s families can’t afford them is a no brainer because I believe without my toys I would have never become the writer I am today, never would have been able to find my passion for directing, and I don’t want any child out there not being able to find their passion because they don’t have any toys to play with.

And with that, I am in the position where I would like to start sharing my progress with everyone.

Toy Saga Progress Update #1

I am currently writing my third draft of the first book in the Toy Saga series, about 20,000 words deep (I’ve been rewriting from scratch on this draft). I have gone through many different outlines, different pacing values, and my writing schedule is finally starting to become consistent.

Originally, Toy Saga was going to be a 9 part series! I felt that was too much, and a few of those 9 lacked in comparison to others, so I was able to make them into 3 long books, considering them epics, however after realizing that these books might be too long, I have now settled on a 5 book series. A perfect length for an epic saga.

I am writing in multi-POV (multiple point-of-views), and I believe I have a rather complex, but fun, political system. My biggest challenge is making sure every character is unique and has their own voice.

I recently finished a chapter that I was struggling on for a long time, inspired by the Five Kage Summit in Naruto, a huge inspiration of mine.

What I’ve learned:

• With different chapters coming from the minds of different characters, I need to make sure to commit to each character’s voice, making every single character incredibly unique.
• Look for the structure of my sentences, both dialogue and internal, since each chapter is from the mind of an individual character.
• Make sure that anything written is actually known by that character. If a character isn’t a history expert, it doesn’t make sense for them to know a lot of history.
• Don’t worry if I think the early drafts are bad, that’s what editing is for. Getting the words on the page is the most important part because you can mold the clay thereafter.

I plan to update on my progress of Toy Saga as often as I can, and hope you join me on my journey!

You can follow me on twitter @DanathonJames.