Ripple (Rough Draft)
I’ve uploaded yet another redesign of my blog. The previous version of the blog was brighter, but I thought that it didn’t really reflect my personality accurately enough, so I made a few tweaks to the coloring. I actually wasn’t going to upload the design yet; I wanted to finish making a portfolio page first, but earlier today I realized that my search form on the sidebar (on the previous version) was very badly broken, so I had to fix it as soon as I could. It is now fixed.
A Rough Ripple
Ripple’s rough draft is now done. In fact, I finished last Wednesday, but things have been so hectic I haven’t been able to post anything since then. The draft is 92,361 words and I’ve saved a copy of it so I don’t lose it. “What do you mean lose it?” you ask? Well, it was only a rough draft and still has a few rough edges that need to be fixed. Like I say in a “Disclaimer” (yeah, it’s not actually a disclaimer, it just sounded nice) at the beginning of the draft,
This is a rough draft. As such, please expect it to have some rough edges, spelling errors, dragon teeth marks, singed edges, and untied plot lines that don’t quite make sense. There are also quite a few incongruities in the text, since I’ve removed or rethought out some of the things that appear in the beginning of the story.
Moreover, there are also a few things that some may consider explicit, inflammatory, or inappropriate content. This content will most likely not make it in to the final version of Ripple, and are only there on account of the naiveté of the author at the time of writing.
This version is meant to be a super-exclusive edition, and will likely be never seen again. It will never be published. Even if there is a “First Draft” version of Ripple published, it will be a revised version of this draft with the aforementioned elements resolved or removed. Please do not share this document, as you will likely make me explode from embarrassment.
Finally, I would like to remind all readers of this work that this is an original work of fiction, and any similarities to locations real or fictional, events past or present (or future), or persons living or dead (or fictional or not yet born >_< ) are purely coincidental.
Enjoy! =^.^=
Unfortunately, there still is a long way to go for Ripple, but now that the hardest chunk is done, the rest shouldn’t take two and a half years. Hopefully. I might get more busy, or things outside of my control might happen, or… really, who knows?
Splash
Ripple was a bumpy desert road with a lot of… Ripples. Though it has been influenced by the many things that have gone on in my boring (what a paradox) life, I really started to pull them together in a meaningful way in the summer of 2008. I had created vivid dreams from other combinations of thoughts before, but really, the idea of a game in which relationships forged would be more of a “you should actually feel attached” instead of something like Dream of Mirror Online‘s (yes, I have played that game before, but… due to… complications I no longer do) relationship system’s “Oh, marry with this person and you can get special skills to kill stuff!” Since I knew I would never get around to figuring out how to create such a game, I let my imagination run wild in a hotel room in Rome on a People to People Student Tourists Ambassadors program. There was nothing else to do. You, the player, a hitman sent out by an unnamed organization to kill target after target after target. You rescue someone. You befriend the someone. The someone helps you. You are asked to kill the someone because the someone won’t love them. It was a fun game to imagine.
Fast forward a month. I’m staying at a well known university for another trip, this time a People to People Leadership Summit. We learned how to be leaders there. Incidentally, I am in JROTC, so there really wasn’t much there for me except for the chance to visit said college. And one other thing. Ripple. I met someone there who wrote. I expressed my desire to start writing. She told me, “Just write!” We were eating breakfast.
And then there was the question of what to write. I scratched my head a bit, and dived into the murky depths. It wasn’t long until I rammed my head right into the aforementioned (I love that word. 
) game idea. I thought, hey, if the game idea was way beyond my abilities, but writing is simply limited by my vocabulary, why not try writing that? I can put the game idea into words…
Now of course, there were the details I had never thought of before that needed to be fleshed out. So on the way back to the dorms that were our temporary abodes, I thought. There needed to be a setting. Great, I’ll just use my fantasy setting Lemonia. I needed an organization. CLIMA, Center for Legalized Murders and Assassinations! With an I in the middle for good measure! I was on a roll. Or rather a stroll. Since I was still walking back to my dorm. It was taking a while. How to make it more interesting. Fantasy setting… Magic? Magic!. There would be magic. Finally, a title. A title… a title… a title title title. I thought of beginnings. A good name for a beginning. A story that symbolized a beginning. “Hey, have you read Twilight?” No I hadn’t. But that was an interesting title. The beginning of night. I thought about the things I liked. I always saw myself as a watery type of girl, so why not a water themed title? And… Ripples! They start out as teeny little circles… and then continues through the medium to affect everything. Perfect.
The First Ripple
A few days later, after I had gotten the time to revive the ideas, we just happened to be going on a bus ride somewhere. So I grabbed my computer and left. On the bus, I decided that I was going to use Google Docs to write my story, now named Ripple. I had Google Gears installed, so I could write it even offline. I opened a new document. A blank screen. But my mind wasn’t blank. I started to write, “The pod landed with a deafening thud.” Oh No! I forgot character titles! I pulled two names off the top of my head. I switched one of them, and then decided that I was going to use them. Jonathan and Ashley. The date was Thursday, August 14, 2008. Fast forward.
I’m at home. I tell my parents I’m writing a story. “Oh, let us know when you give up in ten pages.” Paraphrased. At first, I didn’t doubt their assumption. It is true that I’ve really never succeeded with any of my projects–just look at Mesh, which I blogged about a bit after I redesigned this blog. There’s also Downlink. Yeah, I’m full of ideas, but I don’t have the motivation to actually execute them in their entirety. In fact, I’m currently debating whether or not I should continue writing this blog post.
But just like I persisted in writing Ripple, I shall continue!
They were right with one thing–I did, in fact, stop writing in ten pages. It wasn’t because I gave up, though. I simply realized that writing about a fictional world in which fictional rules about what one can and can’t do is a bit too… free. I wanted swords, but I wanted cars. It was a mess of technology. So I decided to rewrite everything in a modern world. And so I did. From page one all over again. This time, however, I decided to write it in Microsoft Word. I’m not saying I like the program–it’s just that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write it in Google Docs–their export features weren’t that great back then. So Word it was.
The Second Ripple
Now in the modern world, several changes had to be made. CLIMA was no longer really “legal.” It became an acronym that wasn’t really functional, but the name stuck. I’ve almost backnoymed it to Coalition of Likeminded Auralites. Kidding. Agents now lived at home instead of in CLIMA’s secret fortress. CLIMA became secret. CLIMA now became a nice organization that did more than kill people. (In fact, it started out as a job search agency for auralites… that some smart person decided to request another person dead on.) Most importantly, auralites are now special people, born that way, in this world that we pass on the streets, every day, unnoticed by most.
Push
So, I decided to watch Twilight. And hey look, it’s a trailer advertising a… oh my. It was almost as if some movie had plucked an idea from my mind and ran. I had to see Push. During the wait before it came out, it spurred me to write Ripple faster. And it worked. Push was different enough to allow me to continue writing Ripple. Sure, there were a few changes I had to make, changes that I’m going to make now, to move Ripple farther away, but Ripple stayed, and it was now better than ever because of the shock that Push gave me.
Push wasn’t the only force that pushed me forward. My friends (the names Regina, Lauren, Liz, Tina, Eric, Solluna, Corey, Milachi, Melissa, Vivi, among many, many others come to mind) had urged me forward, telling me they looked foward to seeing Ripple, telling me what they thought about random passages I dumped into their IM windows, telling me not to give up. I even have to thank my parents, who’s relentless attempts at trying to get me to stop wasting my time spurned me to work harder and prove that I wasn’t wasting my time.
The Last Ripple
The future of Ripple? I’m not quite sure myself. I’ll probably try to find a way to publish it, but if I can’t manage that, there’s always the story that I can send to my friends. They’ll (hopefully) enjoy it.
Any more Ripples? That depends on the readers.
Jonathan Lenoor is your average sixteen year old teenage boy. He goes to school, has pimples, and kills people for a living. Life is all fun and games for him–until he receives a mission he can not execute without destroying all he holds dear.
Now… to wrap it up… how about a poll? 