The Writing of The Bonds of Love (Intro) · 6:45am Mar 3rd, 2023
Hello, everyone! I promised I would discuss my writing process for The Bonds of Love like I did with A Day for Family and at long last, here we are.
Originally, I intended to post this discussion as an additional chapter to the story itself, so everyone who read T.B.O.L. could immediately read about its writing process after finishing it, rather than having to hunt it down in my Blog.
Or, well? That was the intention—to post it as an extra chapter. But then this project swiftly ballooned into something far, far too extensive to haphazardly cram into a single chapter. Thus, I ultimately conceded to turn this thing into its own separate “story.”
And then it got mass-reported within the first day of its existence, and a moderator informed me such a notion was entirely unallowable—as was the original plan of making it additional “chapters” to the T.B.O.L.
That was significantly disheartening, though that goes without saying.
As a result, this massive author’s commentary shall now rest within the bowels of my Blog—split into individual pieces since no way can a single Blog Post contain how many words I wrote for this thing during the past year and a half.
Luckily, this Google Doc can, so for those who don’t want to bother hunting through my Blog for whatever part of the commentary their interested in, here you go:
The Writing of The Bonds of Love!
There is no significant difference between the Google Doc version and these Blog Posts, save the abundance of Bookmarks in the former and Fimfiction’s emoticons in the latter.
Regardless of format, The Writing of The Bonds of Love is here at long, long last. And hopefully we won’t run into anymore issues pertaining to its publishing.
The Bonds of Love itself is truly Completed, and everything from this point forward is merely me discussing the story’s development, what details and story-lines got cut or included, and anything else I think might be interesting.
Needless to say, get ready to have your immersion absolutely broken because I won’t be holding back on why I wrote everything I wrote. That said, I hope whatever I do say won’t detract from your enjoyment of The Bonds of Love.
So sit back, relax, and listen to some awesome tunes!
And without further ado, let’s talk about what it was like to write The Bonds of Love!
INTRODUCTION: DEVELOPING SOMETHING GLORIOUS
***
~ To Write a Sequel, or Not to Write a Sequel? ~
A Day for Family was written purely as an entry for Miller Minus’ Young Six story contestback in 2020, and I had no intentions whatsoever of writing a sequel. But then people read my story, enjoyed it, and requested I write one anyway.
The first was FanficReader920. Not only were they literally the second person to comment on A Day for Family, but they, alongside RTStephens, reviewed my story for Seattle’s Angels(Thanks again for that!).
The second was Redsopine who remained a consistent commenter throughout T.B.O.L.
After the initial shock of people wanting to read more of my writing wore off, I began putting some serious thought into making a sequel, and I loved the idea.
A sequel would afford me more writing practice which was certainly appreciated, and more importantly, it would allow me to explore other aspects of Gallus’ character and trauma that I couldn’t in A.D.F.F. such as his sense of identity, his memories of Griffonstone, and his relationship with Grandpa Gruff. Even better, I’d also be able to discuss the other Student Six’s reactions to his breakdown.
Plus, I could do this all without that contest’s accursed 12k word limit. And considering the story ended at over 300k words, you can tell I took advantage of this especially.
While there were numerous pros to writing a sequel, however, that didn’t mean I was entirely committed to the decision. Especially since I had a completely different story I had been working on from even before A Day for Family, and I was excited to get that one done and published next.
Nonetheless, I decided to test the sequel idea out by writing Ch.1(Transition) and seeing how I felt about it going forward. Halfway through doing so, I was really enjoying myself, so I kept writing. And I kept writing. And I—you guessed it—kept writing. By the time I got to the first Gallus/Starlight counseling scene, I was invested enough to go through with it.
So, on April 12, 2020, I announced A Day for Family was going to have a sequel, and much to my surprise, yet another person, TippyToe8, expressed eagerness for it as well. This only further reaffirmed that A.D.F.F. deserved a sequel and creating one was the right decision.
But ohhh boy! I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I made that decision…
~ Oh Woe Is Me, Writing Is Hard! ~
No initial sequel plans naturally meant no initial outline or concrete plan I could follow regarding it. This granted me plenty of breathing room concerning how major story events happened, allowing T.B.O.L. to grow organically as I wrote it. However, it also meant two very unfortunate things:
Issue #1) I had to post each chapter as I finished it. Kinda. When I announced The Bonds of Love, I mentioned how the first chapter was finished and I was, at the time, working on the second and third. But I also said this:
Personally, I’d rather finish the entire thing just so I can make absolutely sure it’s as perfect as I want it to be, but I don’t want to just drop off the face of the earth until then.
Yeah. If I had had my way, I wouldn’t have posted a single word of T.B.O.L. until after I had completed it, but I didn’t want to vanish for(As evidenced by how long T.B.O.L. actually took me) over a year. So in the end, I decided I would post a chapter once the next two were completed, and if I couldn’t do so in a timely manner, I would post the finished chapters regardless. And I kept this up through the entirety of writing T.B.O.L.
I! HATED! IT!
The middle of every month felt like a glorified guillotine hanging over me at all times. Whenever I wasn’t spending every spare minute writing, I was half-berating myself for not spending those precious few minutes writing. And considering the chapter lengths, I needed a lot of spare time to write. I’m not a fast writer, people; there were nights when I would spend from 9 P.M. all the way 4 A.M. just writing and writing and writing, only to then frantically go over what I had written to ensure it was perfect. All the while, I still had real life problems to deal with like work, family, and the whole Covid-19 fiasco…
Needless to say, it wasn’t fun. At. All.
Oh sure, I had plenty of fun writing The Bonds of Love, but the stress of doing so? The sheer, overwhelming terror of not being able to finish a chapter on time? The desperate rush I would often make to get further into a chapter even at the cost of its quality?
The looming, all-consuming anxiety that people wouldn’t like the story or see issues in the plot, and the panicked over-corrections I would make to preemptively “fix” said issues? The subsequent, horrifying realization that once I posted a chapter I couldn’t fix any significant story-related mistakes with it now published for all to see, leaving said mistakes to forever taint my story’s quality because I had failed to catch and rectify them?
The overall impact these problems had on my sleeping schedule and mental health?
All of it. I hated all of it.
I’m glad I could give myself a schedule for T.B.O.L.’s development and never missed any of the chapter release dates I assigned myself, but I never want to do something like that again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m obviously going to keep writing, but when it comes to whatever my future projects will be? Well, let’s just say I definitely won’t make the same mistakes I made with T.B.O.L.
And yeah, most of these issues stem from my horrendous sense of perfectionism, but if I’m gonna do something, then why shouldn’t I put every last drop of effort and passion I can into it? I was writing a story about Gallus’ emotional trauma, recovery from it, and the role his family played in said recovery. I wasn’t going to randomly whack at the keyboard for half an hour and publish whatever nonsense I typed out; I was going to put my heart and soul into it!
Which I did, resulting in me spending over a year of my life working on this thing. Speaking of which?
Issue #2) I severely underestimated how far this story would go and how much work I was in store for.
I’d like to once again call your attention to the Blog Post announcing T.B.O.L. where I specifically stated it would have 7-8 chapters. It ended with sixteen.
Heck! I originally intended to finish The Bonds of Love by the end of December 2020, not spend a whole year of my life working on this thing. But nope. I couldn’t help myself and kept on writing, never knowing when to shut up.
Goodness gracious, those chapter lengths…
In all honesty? If I hadn’t been so determined to finish what I had started and see T.B.O.L. through to the end…? If I hadn’t been as passionate for the story as I was…? If I hadn’t drudged up the willpower to keep writing…? I don’t know.
A part of me wonders if I would have canceled the story or simply put it in on hiatus if I didn’t have the drive to keep going. But ultimately, I did have that drive, and I did complete the story. So…? A happy ending, ultimately, though not without some baggage.
All that negativity and pity-partying aside, I really did enjoy writing The Bonds of Love! I loved writing the characters and the story, and I especially loved seeing people genuinely like what I wrote and look forward to reading more.
I’m not exaggerating when I say reading everyone’s comments helped me keep going when I was feeling especially burnt-out or anxious. Even now, I still feel a surge of joy whenever I get a notification(Be it a comment, message, or anything else).
Just… Knowing people were reading my story and caring about it—Not simply seeing a dumb number go up on the View Count, but seeing people enjoy my story enough to comment on it, or even Favorite it…!? It helped me remember others actually cared about what I was doing, and I wasn’t wasting an entire year of my life writing something no one would ever really read or like.
Does that sound cheesy? It probably sounds cheesy, but I can’t help it. It’s the truth. I’m gonna say this a lot throughout the “Writing of…” but thank you, everyone, for reading my story and loving it as much as you did. It means the world to me.
Okay, yeah, now that definitely sounded cheesy.
~ Let’s Write A Sequel! ~
I think most of us can agree it’s terrible when story progression happens off-screen. Granted, some things happening off-screen is okay(I.E. The other Gallus/Starlight counseling sessions that weren’t seen), but when significant plot/character developments occur, they should be given the presence they deserve, lest the importance and impact of those moments be diminished.
Knowing this, I decided to pick up immediately where we left off in A Day for Family to not skip any of that sweet, juicy character development time. This, in turn, resulted in A.D.F.F. becoming a veritable prologue to T.B.O.L. which I was perfectly fine with.
A Day for Family had a lot of problems, I admit, but the one I was primarily concerned with was how only Gallus got any significant screentime. Yeah, Silverstream was there, but like I said in “The Writing of A Day for Family,” I didn’t do as much with her as I would have preferred. The rest of the Student Six, meanwhile, got nothing. Nothing. They may as well have not even existed.
I made it a top priority to rectify this with the sequel, but how exactly would I do that? Easy! Have Gallus spend more time interacting with the Student Six. This is where things get tricky, however…
See? I wanted all of the Student Six to get some major screentime. Gallus and Silverstream would obviously still be the main characters, but I wanted Sandbar, Yona, Ocellus, and Smolder to all have their own individual time in the spotlight. To accomplish this, I intended each of them to have their own dedicated chapter.
This is why T.B.O.L. was originally going to have only 7-8 chapters. Each chapter—except the first and last—would focus on Gallus paired off with one of his friends. This is also why I stupidly said T.B.O.L. would be somewhat like Background Pony when I announced it would happen—I planned for every chapter to be its own self-contained story where Gallus would spend time with one of his friends and learn a lesson about how to cope with his problems from them.
Yep, The Bonds of Love was going to be even more Anthology-like at first, and you can still see shades of this in the final version—Looking at you, Ch.5(Normality). But as you can guess, I didn’t entirely follow through on that plan. Why? Because it got derailed immediately when Chapter Two had to be split, and by the time Ch.6(Stagnation) and Ch.7(Pride) rolled around, I threw the whole “Character-specific chapter” idea out the window completely.
Thankfully, the one part of this initial premise that remained was the one I was most determined to keep: Every chapter had its own individual conflict while also advancing the overarching stories of Gallus’ recovery and his romance with Silverstream. I call that a success.
And on that note!
~ A Tale of Two Lovebirds ~
There are many things, both big and small, about The Bonds of Love I am proud of and just as many I’m ashamed of. But I believe that, objectively speaking, my single greatest achievement with T.B.O.L. was portraying a genuinely healthy romantic relationship.
I’m beyond ecstatic I got that part right because—believe it or not—this was my first foray into the Romance genre. I’m still a newbie author, and Romance has never been a particular favorite of mine. But I had hinted at Gallus-Stream at the end of A.D.F.F., so I obviously had to expand on it. And I intended to do so by following a pretty strict guideline on things not to do.
1) No needless, constant, “Flirtatious” bickering.
2) No “Why U No Twust Meee!?” nonsense.
3) No “Will They, Won’t They?” junk.
4) And above all else: No third party love rivals!
Technically, none of these tropes are inherently bad. They’re tropes for a reason after all—they’re great conflict creators. However, I think it’s also fair to say they’re severely overused, and personally speaking, I dislike these types of story beats in general anyway.
Of course, it’s not like I didn’t entirely refrain from indulging them such as with Prince Guy from Ch.14-15(Family). But for the most part, I actively avoided them.
“Gallus and Silverstream love each other, so let them love each other and have any conflict between them come as a result of who they are as creatures and whatever personal flaws they may have.” — This was the rule I set for myself regarding their romance, and I stuck to it, writing Gallus and Silverstream as creatures who simply care about each other and enjoy spending time together.
And isn’t that the basis for any good relationship? 
We’ll address my numerous other additions to their romance later, but regarding the overall love story between Gallus and Silverstream, I’m really, really happy to know I did their relationship justice.
It bears repeating: Before T.B.O.L. I had no experience with writing Romances, so it was supremely encouraging when people like Sky Ash and Daemon Wolf 22 not only complimented this story’s version of Gallus-Stream but also praised it for depicting a proper healthy relationship. The same goes for Johnerose126 and Rininani who both noted how Romances weren’t usually their cups of tea either, yet my story worked for them!
So yeah. All that to say I’m relieved I did a Romance story right and grateful so many people enjoyed reading it. Of course, The Bonds of Love isn’t just a love story between two adorkable griffs…
~ Therapy for a Bluebird ~
All things considered, A.D.F.F. concluded nicely. Gallus’ issues may have temporarily gotten the better of him, but Silverstream helped remind him that even if his parents abandoned him, he’s still loved by his friends.
Obviously, real life trauma isn’t so simple, nor is it so easily overcome, so I had Gallus still wishing to know why his parents left him at the end—That was far more realistic than to have Gallus magically stop caring altogether. The main difference is even though he does still want answers for why he was orphaned, he’s more immediately concerned with moving on and spending time with his real family.
It’s a good ending, like I said. Gallus still had problems but was finally beginning to truly move on from them; plus, creatures in his life now knew how severe his problems were and were going to do everything they could to help him recover.
Sooo, where I do go from there? The answer was pretty simple once again: Actually show Gallus recovering from his trauma.
Before I say anything further, I want to make something very, very clear:
I am not experienced whatsoever in anything pertaining to psychology, mental health, or therapy. Yes, I know some basic stuff from perusing the Internet, but I know nothing about these subjects beyond that.
While I am confident I didn’t screw up too spectacularly where Gallus’ mental health/recovery is concerned—with one significant exception I’ll discuss later—I can’t say that for certain. So if I in any way misrepresented or mishandled these topics then I have only thing I can say.
I am sorry.
Nevertheless, Gallus’ mental health was a significant aspect of A.D.F.F., so I couldn’t just pretend he was a-okay after a single conversation with Silver. He was in need of serious help and to ignore that would be utterly disrespectful to people who do genuinely suffer from similar issues.
Trauma can’t be overcome in less than a day, and self-loathing tendencies aren’t going to vanish because someone told you they loved you. That is a fact.
Where this concerns T.B.O.L. is I had to show Gallus receiving therapy despite my ignorance of how real life therapy works. I would also have to delve further into whatever other issues Gallus might have had that I was unable to talk about in A.D.F.F. while addressing and healing the problems he already had simultaneously.
Technically, that’s just character development. You know? The most basic, fundamental story-telling rule? Yeah. Except it wasn’t just character development, it was character development which would necessitate serious discussions regarding mental health and trauma. So I had to be incredibly careful with how I handled these topics going forward, especially in light of my non-existent expertise.
I like to think I did that well. I mean? I still haven’t had anyone come after me with metaphorical pitchforks and torches following the events of Ch.9(Fear), but regardless, I won’t shy away from the fact I am/was entirely under-qualified to truly discuss these matters.
That said? I’d like to draw your attention to this expertly crafted video done by the Youtuber, Hello Future Me:
What you see is exactly what you get: A well thought-out discussion on the portrayal of mental illness in fictional media and the difficulties in writing about it. I highly recommend it as it helped me learn more about mental health itself as well as how I should handle it in my own writings.
Now, The Bonds of Love is by no means some masterclass example of how to incorporate mental and emotional health issues in a story—goodness, no!—and Gallus is very much not suicidal in this story. But Gallus was dealing with some serious issues at the end of A.D.F.F. and I had to address that. So despite knowing nothing about what genuine therapy and mental illnesses are like, I tried my absolute best to treat said subjects with the respect, grace, and care they deserved.
Ultimately, I don’t know if I succeeded since whether or not I did is entirely up to you, the readers. And while I do believe I handled the subject matter moderately well, I’m certain there are those who’d argue I completely failed.
All I can say in the end is that I tried.
Whelp! That’s about it for the pre-planning stage. How about we move on and start talking about the finer parts of The Bonds of Love itself?
Let’s go through the story chapter-by-chapter and cover everything from Gallus’ therapy and his romance with Silverstream to the myriad of things that got dropped from the final product and why!
Strap yourselves in; you're in for a looonnggg ride. 
I’m not kidding about that, by the way; several parts of this commentary had to be split up because:
#1) Blog Posts, according to a friend of mine, supposed can only handle roughly 16k+ words.
And #2) No way am I going to demand that you or anyone else waste an entire day reading through everything in one go.
Each chapter shall have its own dedicated discussion, and dependent on the length of the discussion, some will have multiple parts to them, and further still have I individually separated sections within each discussion, to hopefully make the reading experience at least a little more manageable.
Please, take your time and go through the commentary at your own pace if and when you’ve the time and will to check it out.
For those who do want to check out more than what was provided in just this introductory Post, here is the Google Doc link once again.
As for the overall release schedule for this commentary and its individual parts, I'm going to shoot for once-a-week, sometime Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, depending on my IRL schedule.
In any case, I am beyond relieved to finally be getting this project out there in the world for all of you to see. Hopefully you all enjoy walking down memory lane as we reminisce on my current magnum opus.
Writing on a death march. A self-inflicted monthly deadline, haha. Well, works of art can certainly come from that work ethic, and works of art can come from the opposite. It's just a matter of finding your groove. And maybe that's yours? Hate and stress are powerful motivators... You certainly took a hit dealing with all of that though, so my advice is a predictable "know where your stopping point is". If you'll be continuing to write as a hobby, I say take the sacrifice against your perfectionism and find a comfortable rhythm for yourself right now while you have the freedom to choose leniency. Take it from a former professional author (of young fiction novels, but still), you absolutely need to understand your limitations before you dive nose-first into a working contract with tangible deadlines. It will quite literally crush you if you're not made of sterner stuff. Negotiating the terms of a contract begins with you understanding yourself. At least now you have a good measuring stick for how not to tackle a story for your own good!
"When a bunch of uncaring men in suits start treating you like a business, you best know what you're worth."
And I can certainly say I too really enjoyed your Gallus-Stream. I really like wholesome things in general, so you can bet this fit down my alley. I like romance stories a lot, and I have no gripe with any which way a person writes their story. Obvious cliches or not. I'm a major advocate for the idea that literally anything can work if you spin it well enough. A good author can give life even to the most tired story beats. They can subvert cliches masterfully, or they can ride them straight in poetic beauty. I think it's less a matter of those tropes being tired because they're overused, and more a matter of those tropes being tired because they're overused badly oftentimes.
The best example of what I mean is in the manga "Koe no Katachi", and its movie adaptation that does equally as good "A Silent Voice". A fantastic relationship story with a lot of tropes, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
The whole of your story was filled to the brim with careful consideration and thought behind it. At the end of the day, that's what made Gallus-Stream enjoyable too. The fact that you stuck to your ideas and gave their relationship a mast and a flag for which to sail with.
Finally, I'll end my thoughts for your post by saying this: Understanding the symptoms of mental illnesses and playing to their natural progression is always a plus. Like with any other detail in a story, consideration is key. Though something that's often overlooked is that people are not made equal. In the obvious way Tourette Syndrome manifests itself differently in each person, so to do things like panic attacks, depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and anything else you can think of. So you don't have to tread too lightly on mental health. Remember, anything can work in a story! So you do you, boo.
I think I mentioned it before, but I really enjoy hearing what authors have to say about their craft. I learn a thing or two from each conversation, sure, but I also get to have a fuller look into a story that would otherwise have never existed. And a better look at the person behind the story too. Fascinating stuff people are.
P.S. Phenomenal choice in music. +15 respect.