Thanks to the Wayback Machine I’ve been able to peek at some of the files I uploaded here in 2010. That was the year the RISE project went from a thing I’d scribble down when I was bored, to a full time distraction that spiralled out of control. And I found this quote…
“I remember signing up with the promise of seeking out strange new worlds, boldly going where no one had gone before. It made me feel as if I was going to become something special. What have I become?”
“You sound like you’ve lost hope.”
“I think I have.”
This was a moment in which an officer suffering depression was close to giving up, confiding in his closest friend. Although it went through about a dozen variations, this was the key to the project and while a lot of other things changed, this scene remained largely the same; one officer giving in and admitting defeat.
In 2008 something happened and I needed a distraction. There was a story in my head that’d changed and advanced over time that’d been in my head since I was a child. That year I tossed away all the mental notes and began from scratch.
I started to write a short story based on a franchise with a deep history, mainly so that I’d not have to worry too much about background. I then re-wrote history, made some major changes and found myself introducing things that I’d made up in my head and before I knew it, I had a shelving unit full of notes, sketches and a hard drive filled with hundreds of pages worth of story and detail.
But after spending a year writing six hundred pages of story and a further six hundred of notes and history, I figured I may as well do something with it – so I started posting it here piece by piece, re-editing and re-writing as I go. Which was a good plan at the time and it gained a lot of good feedback, but after a server crash and life in general swept me back into reality it faded away to be re-written and revised over and over again.
Not too long ago I was inspired to finish the tale. I knew I’d never do anything with it, but I worked here and there until something happened and all of a sudden – half filled pages, dozens of notes, scenes scattered across two hard drives – I needed to finish it right there and then.
I know this story will never be anything more than a thing stuck in my head. But I may as well tell it somewhere, right?
So here it begins: The story of RISE…