So it’s Monday again. Time to blog.

In a previous blog, I talked about how sometimes you get an idea and it totally changes the direction of the story you’re writing. I said I’d talk more about the specific example when we were a little further into the current Funnies storyline.

In the current storyline, Deema’s adoptive father, Tomaw, has come for a visit. This is in parallel with Deema’s origin in my Star Wars campaign. Deema, a Trandoshan, was adopted by one of my player’s (Fab’s) character, Mowat, a human. Fab has a deep history with the name Mowat, and it didn’t feel right to appropriate it for my purposes. I saw nothing wrong with rearranging the letters to create a new name though, hence Tomaw.

Okay, so that explains the name, but what does this have to do with storyline changes?

The original direction I had set was that Tomaw would visit, and everybody would like him as one of those stand up type of guys. He’d have great stories to tell of his life as a ranger and good advice to give to everyone. A nice idea, but no inherent comedic potential. What to do? Now, given that Tomaw is directly inspired by Fab’s character, I asked Fab if he were to cast Mowat as an animal, what animal would he see him as. He chose a wolf. Or at least, I seem to remember he chose a wolf. At any rate, he’s a wolf now. Was that something I could work with? Well, hey!  I’ve introduced a wolf character before (the leader of the Pickle Patch Bandits)! Wouldn’t it be funny if the two were related? Twins even? One twin became a criminal, and the other decided to be a law official. Cliché perhaps, but I decided to go with it. This set up the case of mistaken identity when Tomaw arrives on the scene. It allowed me to revisit one of my favorite Sass gags as well. Perfect! Now, what else?

I wanted to give Barnaby some screen time, so I wanted to think of a way to involve him directly into whatever direction I was going to go with Tomaw. Then it came to me, “What if Tomaw had a grudge against bears?” This held with the spirit of Fab’s character who started out with a grudge against Trandoshans (which is why I made Deema a Trandoshan to begin with). That gave me a hook to involve Barnaby and Nektara, but it made Tomaw come off a little less likable. Still, I could work with that.

When I plan a storyline, I like to give myself a rough estimate of the number of strips I’d like to fill with the storyline. I have certain storylines I want to tell at certain times of the year. For example, I want the next storyline to take place during the summer months. That means I need the current storyline to come to a close by the end of June or very early July. I’ve already used a good number of the strips I’d allotted to the current storyline and I haven’t much touched on the original ideas for Tomaw (where everybody likes him and he becomes like a surrogate father to the group). Two decisions I made when fleshing out the character led to a somewhat different story from what I had planned. But that’s okay. I like the direction the story has taken so far. I can always go on for a few extra strips or at worst, I can have Tomaw visit again in the future.

So that’s all for this week. I hope you have fun following Tomaw’s storyline.