Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is how one crazy kid story developed over the years.
(This is the second post of a two-part series covering stories in my project Story Chronicles. You can check out the first part here.)
Building Block Mons
I was a LEGO kid back in the day. Before writing, before drawing, that was how I created. My parents bought me many bricks. They filled every part of the house.
I would create epic battles on top of tray tables and refuse to clear them for lunch. The story always had to be finished before everything could be put away.
Out of all my memories from those days, two characters stand out. I called them Windowmon and Doormon.
You see, I was also a Digimon fan. Pokémon had me with its games and trading cards, but Digimon hooked me with its show.
The story was great. Kids were trapped in a digital world where friendly monsters helped them fight evil monsters. There was never a dull moment. Villains ranged from demons to monkeys to vampires to clowns. All ending with a final battle against a being of pure destruction.
As these stories kept going, I wanted to make my own Digimon story.
So, I looked to my LEGO bricks. For some reason, I settled on a kit meant to make a LEGO house.
I took a red window piece and a yellow door piece with a blue frame. I matched them with other blocks to create the first of my characters I can remember.
Their names, Windowmon and Doormon, followed Digimon’s standard naming convention. Attach the suffix “-mon” to the end of each word.
Those Early Days of Play
Windowmon and Doormon became my signature characters. They were part of most storylines for my toys.
One of my clearest early memories is one day when my mom was cutting the grass. She had just hung up some clothes on the clothesline.
I took Windowmon and Doormon outside for their latest mission and did the standard kid things. Flying them through the air, having them ride down the clothesline like a zip line, freeing them from imprisonment in a clothespin basket.
Of course, any good heroes need good adversaries.
Windowmon and Doormon started with the standard Digimon villains. Devimon, Etemon, Myotismon, the Dark Masters.
Eventually the second Digimon series came along. I got a toy for one of the new heroic Digimon, Flamedramon. This toy would become Windowmon and Doormon’s greatest foe. He would be a corrupted Flamedramon named Dragone.
I actually had a running gag where Dragone destroyed anyone who dared mispronounce his name as “Dragon.” It was both funny and a display of power.
Dragone was also a master manipulator. He would trick others into fighting his foes so he could test them and cause some chaos.
Anytime Dragone stepped into a battle, you knew things were going to get serious. Often, Windowmon and Doormon could only win these fights by learning new powers or calling on allies.
The Story Grows: A World for the Window and Door
I started reaching an age where I felt had to grow beyond Windowmon and Doormon. They were weird, crazy toys. Friends tended to laugh whenever they saw the pair.
Thing is, Windowmon and Doormon refused to leave me.
My dad was the pair’s biggest defender. When I started writing other characters, he always went back to talking about Windowmon and Doormon.
He even said he wanted to glue together the figures’ bricks. He wanted my two earliest characters to always be there for him to see.
There was one glaring issue though.
I had created these characters in a world which was not mine. Their adventures were essentially Digimon fan-fiction.
There was only so far I could go with Windowmon and Doormon. If I wanted the story to grow into something greater, I needed to make a whole new world for them.
I looked at what Windowmon and Doormon were all about.
They were a heroic team. Any conflict should best be solved by them working together, either with themselves or with an ally.
They worked best against manipulative villains who could also pack a punch. Stories were focused around a healthy variety of fights leading to some sort of evil ringleader.
They needed a few good villains who were similar to them. There needed to be both tension and some sort of feeling of equal footing.
They needed to be able to lose fights and stand up again. This was how they could really get motivated to learn and improve.
Digimon had its characters revert to eggs whenever they were defeated. They would have to go through their life cycles again and relearn everything from a whole new perspective. I wanted Windowmon and Doormon to keep that ability.
Also, I wanted to keep some form of transformation on the table. Digimon could digivolve into stronger forms. Some system like that could be a good sign of Windowmon and Doormon growing stronger.
I thought long and hard about how to mix together these various elements. Then it hit me.
Robots.
As robots, Windowmon and Doormon could transform. Their bodies could be repaired or rebuilt after any defeat. They could fight against other robots led by a master manipulator in the same style as Dragone.
I went through several possible names for these machines and settled on Zenites. They would be named for the program which made them, Project Zenith.
The last change left was my characters’ names.
Following Digimon naming conventions made little sense in a world of Zenites. I would rename Windowmon and Doormon to Winzow and Dooz. They would each have a “Z” for Zenite.
Welcome to Story Chronicles
Winzow and Dooz have come a long way since their early days as Windowmon and Doormon.
I took a while to start putting their story into writing, but it felt so right when I finally did. These are my first characters, and I wouldn’t feel right leaving them behind.
Just like with Cubey and Liney, the joy these characters brought me is the same joy I want to capture in Story Chronicles. You could say Winzow and Dooz show the joy in creating great characters and making a world for them.
My storyteller Ulysses won’t have my same history with the pair. Still, I work to have him gradually develop a world for these characters.
Winzow and Dooz are the natural choices for showing how a story can grow as it’s written.
Kotcher’s Call to Action
I have added a preview of the first Winzow and Dooz story on this site’s portfolio.
Also, If you like my content and wish to see more, then you have a few options.
You could find more material related to Story Chronicles on the Books page of this site’s portfolio.
You could check out my books Five Strange Stories and Good Stuff: 50 Poems from Youth on Amazon. They are enrolled in the Kindle Matchbook program, so anyone who buys the paperbacks can also get the eBooks for free.
You can also check my Essential Posts page for links to some of my greatest posts to the cKotch.Com blog.
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