Done to Death or Done to New Life?

Done to death means nothing when you do things the way you’d like to do them.

You’ve got Dracula, and then there’s Edward Cullen.

The world has seen shifters in werewolf form and in titan form.

These concepts aren’t unique in the sense of being done first, but the way they were done in their respective stories.

One vampire is a refined, gothic figure of nightmares; the other vampire is a refined guy who won’t leave you alone and sparkles.

Werewolves are everywhere in fiction, from classic movies to the series I mentioned earlier and Stephenie Meyer’s take on them.

Attack on Titan’s titan shifting is a unique spin on mecha tropes and transformations.

These examples span the spectrum of what is possible in fictional media to make things your own.

In my Orchestrylus Odyssey series, there are phoenixes that rule the spheres, but they fly by fire rather than physical wings, though they have them.

There are even dragons in the world, and the dragons are cats.

They aren’t reptilian beasts in the normal sense, but they have a fearsome reputation as gigantic beasts of prey who are revered and honored on the sphere Mozartide (pronounced Mot-zar-tee-day).

This is something I thought would be an interesting spin on creatures that aren’t just a species swap.

One of the dragons—the leader—is the size of a house cat, yet the most powerful of them all. A race of beasts normally spanning several measures on some spheres.

This was a fun little idea I had that might flip the idea of power on its head.

The world has rainfall in a normal sense, but most of the weather patterns come from particulate matter created from the ionized auroras that become flower petals and full blossoms.

Auroras are so prevalent on each sphere because they each have a small Flame that offers heat to individual spheres.

The solar wind is so close to each sphere that the entire spheres are enveloped in plasma, but the Flames are supernatural objects that don’t irradiate the spheres.

Gases and particulates become bloomfall blossoms by mechanisms that will be revealed around Book 15. There is a common myth in the world of Orchestrylus that there are giant flowers in the sky that disperse bloomfall, and that’s one theory.

Even the School of Reasoning doesn’t fully understand the bloomfall.

I was looking at a tree in the spring of the year I wrote The Symphonist (2023) and realized a world could be surrounded by something that made petals and blossoms fall as rain.

Strange rains have been done before, but this is my strange rain. Since I love auroras as a real-world concept, I thought it would be a cool setting to have a world where auroras drop these petals and flowers.

Making these concepts your own means you can explore what it means for the world in different ways.

Purifiers are employed by the state to clean up the bloomfall. Some chordels gather the petals and flowers for good luck.

Stanzielle Quintette loves to cover herself in flowers all over her clothes.

The concept of alucinized instruments comes from a Kabbalistic idea of filling with light, but if instruments were made of music notes themselves, vibrating motes of light with the music of the spheres. The word “alucinized” is a made-up word. But it comes from being filled with light and is based on the Latin words for a grove and light. So the instruments symphonists play illuminate and enlighten the world around them.

The path of a symphonist is a path of self-initiation into higher understanding.

War in this world is as awful as in our world, but the symphonists who fight across the spheres are only trying to protect those they love and the ideals of Maestraumus. There are a few nations and factions that have sinister motives and would love nothing more than to conquer others, too.

I’ve mentioned before the antiphonal metaphor combat system I created for the series.

I’ve never seen another work do this, so I thought it would be cool. The battles are physical, but the reader experiences each attack as call-and-response poems.

There are enough ideas here that make my work stand on its own merit and with its own original flavor.

But I even use tropes for my purposes. Dragons are there, but they are literally giant cats of prey.

Phoenixes rule each sphere, but they fly with fire, not by flapping their wings.

Auroras are present, but they drop bloomfall.

Don’t be discouraged by thinking your idea isn’t original enough.

Do things your way and watch the story soar.

Happy writing!