I’m Tony Del Degan, author of the Plight of Steel novel series. I decided to create this website to give my readers and fans a better look at the world I have created and at myself, including some insight into the journey I had to take to get the first book written.
The Plight of Steel first came about after I thought up with the idea to write a screenplay for a television series. I started it back in early 2017, and I quickly began to realize that nothing was going the way I wanted it to. To give you an idea, Cassara was named Cassara Seavale, and she was the queen of a watery castle on the coast that was built on a den of alien-like creatures named Strith. It may sound interesting, but it wasn’t.
After reading some more fantasy novels like A Game of Thrones and The Eye of the World, I began to develop an idea for what I wanted the story to be, and how I wanted it to play out. My dad then suggested that I write a novel instead, as a screenplay would likely go nowhere, and I would have to wait a long time before finally getting anything out of it.
I came up with the idea of having multiple kingdoms in a large world, each with their own storylines and characters. Once I created those, I thought up the story of the gods and the Specter King, and I focused my book mainly around that for a time, but I soon realized that I was doing something wrong. I was marketing my book as a story about a prince who has to defeat a monster, while everyone else is just going about their business, somewhat tied to that idea in some form.
Later, I realized that the story was not focused so much on Adrian and the Specter King, but on all of the kingdoms and stories involved as well. Now I market it as a book with multiple plotlines, each one connected, yet singular, and all happening in the same world.
I had to re-write the entire novel because I disregarded my outline (not very smart), and I ended up with a tangled mess of plot holes and dead-ends. If there is any advice I would give to those who want to start writing a book, I would tell them to plan before anything else. You don’t have to know exactly what you are doing, because I don’t believe that writing off of a schedule and a strict outline is helpful in any way, but you should have a basic idea of where everything is going. If you want, start from the ending and write backwards.
With that, I end my first blog post. As development of the novel moves along, I will give updates and things on here, as well as my Instagram and Twitter. Thanks for reading.