Dillemma

This is a story that I kind of created as I went along. When I sat down and started the first passage, I had the idea of maybe including wizardry cause why not. What makes Jess unique is that she is not a wizard. She has an ability that allows her to blend in with the wizards. I tried to keep this story as straight forward as possible. Mainly because it was going to be shorter. If it was much longer, I would have made elements like Jess being the only non wizard a much more dangerous factor. But instead it was used to make her standout from the readers perspective.

Early on I needed to establish her wants and  needs, she wants to be a hero, she needs love.  We can argue that nobody needs love but this is a story after all so therefore its a need.  In earlier drafts, she was wanting to be a recognized hero. Somebody with big plans that maybe nobody else saw or agreed with. Think of the Joker. I originally wanted Jess to be this villain masked as a hero. The reader wouldn't have known she's the villain until the end. I didn't know the need yet then, but once i started writing and the character herself changed, the want kind of stayed the same and the need fell into place. I chose these wants and needs because I think they easily differ. It kind of plays along the lines of using your head over your heart.

With being a hero, Jess wants validation that she is good enough for anything. For love she is into Joe the barista.  He is into her too but I only really made that truly apparent when they exchanged words. His feelings are represented more in the two paths that directly include him. These are different because her want is dependent on independence while her need is her needing to be able to rely and love somebody else that is not herself.

The three ends went as such. She gets her want (hero), her need (the boy) and a balance of both. For her want I made it to where Jess ventures out on her own to save the town. For her need, she stays in the coffee shop with Joe. The balance is Joe assisting her in saving the town. This was the easiest way for me to accomplish this. I again reference the idea of using your head versus you heart. Staying with Joe was a little complicated. It was the shortest story because I felt there was no heroism in staying.  But she was staying and not trying to save the town. I was able to use per powers by protecting the two of them. In the other two branches efforts are made to save the town either by protecting the people or saving the monster. I felt that at least one time the story needed to branch from one path to another. So to justify this, If you want to fight the "monster", you have to go solo. If you choose to separate from Joe, you go to the "solo" path.

To try and keep the reader interested, I tried to make just about every decision a moral one. Even though in the end everything will workout, those first playthroughs may be a little tense. I also tried to add a little humor here and there along with actual dialog to give a characters a little bit of personality.