In honor of my latest WIP, hubby took me to see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans today. I have to say, this is was one of the most well done prequels I have ever seen. They really tied things in with the existing storyline quite neatly. There were some folks on line squawking about how Kate Beckinsale wasn’t in it, but this movie explains the reason why her character exists in the future. And hey, PREQUEL. Takes place quite some time before Viktor turns Kate Beckinsale (whose Character name, I’m sorry to say, I don’t remember–though I will find out shortly, as we dug out the original when we got home and sat down to dinner–ah, it’s Selene.). This present movie is Lucian’s story, and I have to say it really made me root for the werewolves. It’s sad and tragic (which you kind of know from the beginning if you remember anything of Lucian’s history from the previous movies), but very very well done. And of course on my present kick of GMC, I found myself automatically saying “and Sonja’s goal is…” I really felt like they did a good job.
It brings up the issue of how I want to deal with the history between the wolve and the vamps in my own world. In a lot of lore, wolves were subjegated by the vampires. And in pretty much all lore, the two races despise each other. A lot of that will go back to the origin stories I come up with. But I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ve only just now started fleshing out my plot by looking at pack dynamics and exactly how that’s going to figure in to the rest of the story. The beginning starts off with this very violent, very negative sort of image of the pack and pack life. And over the course of the story that’s going to change for both my heroine and my hero (though in different ways). It gives me a way to further develop the world.
I keep coming up with layers, things to add. Which is good. This is stuff I’m happy to think about at the beginning for once given that so often when I try to go back and add them later, the book turns into something not really resembling the story I started with. It’s its own form of sexy next book syndrome. So the goal is to figure it out now in order to do it right the first time, even if the language itself needs recafting in a revision. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m working on a full outline now, and I’m hoping to get started on February 1st.