Brainstorming Part 1 of "White Tiger"

This is a tentative title that I will most likely be changing... at least to relieve my conscious of being plagued by the fact someone stole my story and tried to profit from it... not that I'd been losing sleep over it, but until this venture ends in a success story, it's going to bother me, if only for a little bit.

I'd been scribbling a couple of things in my notebook and have been coming up for a few ideas here and there for what I can do to make this story... fuller... I guess is a good word for it.

I decided that I was going to break the story into three parts, three parts of the story of this one character... who she dealt with adversity, overcame it, found love and sacrificed herself for it... 
Quite a bit of part 2 isn't going to change at all... if there are any changes, it will be omissions, particularly of conversations... not just taking out one or two people, but the repetition that, after a while, I just couldn't stomach... you know things are bad when you're a drama queen and that particular trait has you annoyed with yourself

Until now, I've, quite simply, skipped over explaining this part of the story entirely... all I'd written were that beatings from her kind were frequent, being ostracized was the norm, a fear of humans still linger despite the fact encountering them involved the few moments where the comforts of home were provided... food, water, shelter and a warm place to sleep...

Other than that, the only two solid events were meeting Lucas and finally finding a new home with her godfather... I simply skipped past all that because I didn't know what I could possibly add.

What I ended up with was a new use for the name "Silas" and seeds of doubt being planted that involve the only way of life she knew... 
albeit, it's a little dark... not to mention malicious...
It goes without saying that half-breeds are outcasts and being half-human entails not being able to belong among the race of the parent who raised you... so some violence will result from that... the degree of said violence ranges from bad to horrific... and there are only a handful of individuals that would participate in the horrific... 

When I was doing the initial work up of the logistics of this world I've created, I decided that the following things were given:

• Tigers are relatively peaceful, non-confrontational race in the "if you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone" school of thought
• Because of this supposed war that erupted between these two races, there are few tigers left
• Kirakotsu (Chihiro's mother) was one of the most powerful members of her race and greatly respected

As I'd worked through trying to map out how human interaction varies from interaction with her own race, I'd found a few road blocks...

If there are so few tigers left and humans are more fearful than violent, how she not only end up on the brink of starvation, but broken?

That would have to mean that some of the things she had grown up knowing prove to be false. The race is scattered and however many are left are extremely good about covering their tracks, assuring that their way of life is unable to be found by anyone outside of their own.

The end result is that she manages to track down a number of clans... somewhere between 8-10 along her journey, just to throw out a number... but she is unwelcome based on her parentage... once or twice, violence occurs in retaliation, fearing that humans might use her to track them down with or without her knowledge...

As she dwells further down this road, she learns more about her mother's relation to their race. Learns that she and her family were outcast simply based on her actions to consort with a human. Also learns that she had several suitors interested in her, all of which were infuriated when she chose a human over all of them... they don't find this out for several years because, as a general rule, "tigers are extremely good at hiding if they don't want to be found." 

On top of that, I added another "general rule" that, when I really thought about it, I found a lot of sense in...
Tigers are a race that believe in soul mates... once they find a mate, they are unable to [completely] fall in love with anyone else... it doesn't matter if the distance is in miles or life & death... once they pick someone to love, they will never have eyes for anyone else...
This also goes on to explain why Chihiro feels so strongly about Lucas... the mere idea of him dying being so unbearable that she'd rather die so he can live...

Eventually, she manages to cross paths with these former suitors... I think only one of them has a solidified territory... the others are part of nomad parties that travel around the region without settling down... I suppose there is a kind of poetic symmetry to this...

Chihiro's clan was predominately female... meaning almost all of her family was female... I don't know why, but I have trouble imagining any males being part of it... and yeah, I'm aware that in nature, tigers are solitary by nature and my model is closer to the lioness structure, this was never meant to be completely anatomically correct.

These nomad parties are made up of males... which goes on to explain why a select few individuals treat her in the way that they do... heck, their mentality is likely no sharper than that of a frat house... at least one of these parties shares that degree of mob mentality...

I should make it clear, though, that I DO NOT believe that all fraternities are made up of guys that want nothing more in life than to drink and get laid... sometimes when it comes to cheating spouses and such, I hate the increasingly viable fact that men seem genetically programmed to be that way... and that's more or less where I'm coming from with this.

The evidence starts to pile up little by little throughout this, eventually explaining to Chihiro why her mother wasn't as respected as she was raised to believe... 

part of me is still trying to determine whether or not to take some liberties with her age... it originally started with her being 9 and then I changed it to 11... playing out some scenarios, I had her going through an unexpected growth spirit in this time she's wandering... 

if I make her too old, she might seem ridiculously naive. Taking the plot this route, the idea being pounded into her skull (and the rest of her body) that Kirakotsu wasn't thought very highly of, and by extension, her life was worthless... I can't make her too old because there's no way she'd believe it.

Part of me is also leery about her being too young. Unless it's the way of the animal, there's no way I can have a huge growth spurt. The other way for that to happen is for her to be on the run for years... and with all the factors, there's no way she could make it past a couple of months.

I had a few late bursts of inspiration before I went to bed and also a couple after I laid down. In one of my random "alternate/deleted" scenes, she encountered a handful of individuals that trashed Kirakotsu's reputation... it's a given that she is on the offensive to protect her honor, only to pay the price.

It'd be cool if I could use some of that for the story, but I'd have to change the setting where this all takes place... otherwise, she wouldn't think to trespass into one of a series of caves to get out of a storm, where she happens upon her godfather's clan.

There's a natural progression that has to take place where it goes from bad to worse... oddly, the few bright spots that come into part one... other than the "bookends" of the journey, is when she's in the company of humans.

They're kinder as she goes further north, most likely because the aligning villages are in good standing with Kohaku... he has a great attitude about alliances and allegiances and such... as I will go into later

Humans originally start shooing her away. In the first case, one wants to go after her, thinking she'll lead others to them, but another in the group talks him out of it on the mere fact she most likely doesn't belong to anyone... some see her and out of pity, leave food out for her... only a handful invite her to talk with them, but by this point, they're doing most of the talking

The climax to this part comes down to Silas... who was to be Kirakotsu's life partner until she found love elsewhere... as a result, he "curses" (not in the literal sense) her family and wants to be sure they pay for whatever they may have done... humiliation, shame or just being turned down... and he has the powers of sorcery on his side...
symmetry again... Lucas has his adversary in Ivan... the same race, but its pure blood vs. half blood... Chihiro & Silas, same thing... 

By the time she does encounter him, she's close to the end of her rope... battered and bruised, both physically and mentally... although all of the dialogue will be available for the reader to see, she will attain none of it, falling in and out of consciousness... oddly enough, the one thing that saves her from him bewitching her mind to the point of torture is this powerful memory she has of Lucas... apparently he's unable to trifle with "true love"... or whatever pish-posh I wanna throw in for the benefit of the story... her heart is her strongest weapon in this and even though for a while it might not seem that way to the reader, her being a strong individual, hopefully I can bring that point across... 

It becomes clear that he has targeted her for a reason, bringing several of the nomads to do his bidding... getting his final revenge on Kirakotsu for spurning his affections by breaking her only daughter's spirit... 

Everything does connect later on... but it'll be an 11th hour thing when she finds out why the massacre happened, why her family was killed... that's reserved for Part 3 in the biggest of climaxes.

At the moment, I'm determining whether or not it'll make sense to bring Lucas into the narrative at that particularly important moment... before that, not really mentioning him again... because if I do, I might end up doing it excessively and I'd rather my readers not get bored in her pining for him... that's all of Part 2, lol

There's a decent chunk of time until he actually comes back INTO the picture... 

after Silas leaves her for dead, she makes her way to her final resting place... which becomes her new home... and the rest of Part 1 is about Kohaku picking up the pieces and building her back up... faith in family, which takes her a little while to accept...
along the way, he acquaints her with a neighboring wolf pack, whose leader is on his last legs and he thought she should get to know his successor...
Sandy doesn't make an official appearance until much later... ;) I liked him a little too much to take him completely out of the picture and I'm confident I know him well enough as a character that he's not going to become the Jacob of this story...

some of the circumstances echo "Twilight" in an eerie sort of way... 

while on that subject, I want to aim for part 1 to be a minimum of 20 pages... which is roughly how long "Twilight" was before Bella & Edward met for the first time...
not that I'm hinging the whole story on the same things, but I'd like to keep a certain few things in mind when it comes to how long these things are... 

I'd love for Part 1 to be 50 pages... then part 2 would be 100 and part 3 to be another 50... that would bring me to 200 pages... dream scenario... everything matches up the way I want it to and the grand total is 300+ pages

that would be just be incredible.

(to that end, my final Twilight reference for the entry... that book is 498 pages... I'm a LONG time away from 500 pages... so I'd like to at least manage 200 solid pages first... then shoot for 300)...

I guess the biggest key to all this is finding a sense of balance to the story... between how many pages each part is, to how many times "Lucas" comes into the conversation in part 1... I've got plenty of ideas down here all ready and hopefully soon, I can get this thing started.

The most important thing is for the morale of my character to be just right with the believability intact... how will these experiences shape her perceptions about people and life? 
I've already kinda figured that her fear of humans is a moot point, given that there were some pleasant encounters towards the end... maybe her initial fear of Bastian at the first meeting is because he know magic and at Silas's hand & will, she only knows the negatives about it... 

Although that might be a good reason why Kirakotsu didn't pursue him with any interest, he could have been dabbling even all that time again... I just know the dude has a major grudge and there's nothing he won't do to exact his revenge.