What if you could rewrite your story? Become the hero?

What if you discovered that your entire existence was simply a supporting role in someone else’s story? What if you were tired of standing in the background while someone else became the hero? And what if you had the power to change it?

These are some of the questions at the heart of my latest Word Guardians adventure, The Word Guardians and the Story Thief.

The Otherworld is built from ancient stories. Its kingdoms, characters and legends have existed for generations, each story becoming part of the fabric of this realm.

But what happens when one character decides that the story he has been given isn’t enough?

The forgotten knight

At the beginning of the story, we meet a knight who is tired of being a minor figure in someone else’s tale. He’s been used and discarded, but he has never been the hero.

So, when a mysterious Grey Witch offers him a bargain, he sees an opportunity. Help her find her missing sisters, and in return she will help him claim a story of his own.

At first, it sounds like an irresistible offer. After all, don’t we all want to have absolute control over our own story?

But there is a difference between changing your future and rewriting the stories that have already been written. The knight begins stealing stories. And the consequences are far greater than he realised.

When stories become reality

As the knight reshapes ancient legends so that he becomes the hero, and king, the world around him changes. Histories are rewritten. And beneath these stolen stories lie something even more dangerous: ancient archetypes with the power to affect reality itself.

This is one of the things I particularly enjoy about the Otherworld. It allows me to explore an idea that has always fascinated me: Where does a story end and reality begin?

We often think of stories as something we create. We write them down, tell them around a campfire, read them in books and pass them from one generation to another. But stories also shape us.

The heroes we admire. The villains we fear. The journeys we recognise. The idea of the quest, the sacrifice, the betrayal, the lost kingdom or the unlikely hero.

These patterns have been appearing in stories for thousands of years. They have a power of their own.

Who gets to be the hero?

There is another question behind the knight’s desire to rewrite his story. What makes someone a hero?

Is it the role they are given? The way history remembers them? The number of battles they win? Or is being a hero something that comes from the choices we make?

The knight believes that if he can change the story, he can change who he is. But stories have consequences for everyone involved in them.

And when you change one part of a story, you may discover that you have changed everything else as well.

This puts Yas and Sam, along with the enigmatic Penn, in a difficult position. They aren’t simply trying to stop someone from stealing stories. They are trying to understand what is happening to an entire realm as its stories, and history, are rewritten.

And Penn has a particularly important connection to the knight. One that reaches deeper than anyone else realises.

The danger of becoming the author

There is something strangely tempting about the knight’s ambition. Who hasn’t imagined changing something about their own story?

Perhaps we would rewrite a mistake. Take a different path. Give ourselves a different ending. Make ourselves the hero instead of the person standing at the edge of someone else’s adventure.

But perhaps our stories aren’t meant to be controlled completely. Perhaps the unexpected parts, the mistakes, the detours, the people we meet along the way, are what make them ours.

The knight discovers that becoming the author of your own story can be very different from simply living it.

Because once you start rewriting the world to fit the story you want, what happens to everyone else? And what happens when the story starts rewriting you?

A new journey into the Otherworld

The Word Guardians and the Story Thief takes Yas and Sam back into the Otherworld, where ancient stories are not just remembered. They are alive and evolving.

It’s a story about identity, ambition, imagination and the power that stories can have over the worlds we create.

But most of all, it’s about the danger of believing that we can have complete control over a story simply by determination.

So, read The Word Guardians and the Story Thief, and if you need to set the scene first, start with book 1 of the series, The Word Guardians and the Battle for the Peacekeepers.