Shapes of Stories to Come

Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is one of my first series to find any sort of fame.

Covering the Stories

I have discussed my lifelong literary project Story Chronicles before.

The book gathers together many of the first stories I created. They are told by a central character named Ulysses. He is a young writer whose life shapes and inspires the stories.

Over the years, the book has become a way for me to remember the joys of writing. The happiness that comes simply from telling tales and sharing them with friends.

I want to share the fun of storytelling with readers.

Now, while I have talked plenty about Ulysses, I realize that I haven’t said much about the stories he tells.

I want to change that.

So, for my next two posts, I’ll be delving into my inspiration for two of Ulysses’ four story series. (You can find the second of these two posts here.)

To start, let’s explore the series which already has a story in this site’s portfolio. Let’s see my inspiration for the Cubey and Liney stories.

Doodling Shapes

I was never really the type to talk in class growing up. No, if I ever grew bored during school, I was the type to doodle in my notebooks and folders.

My artistic focus typically changed on a whim.

Sometimes I’d draw stick figures trapped in boxes. Other times I’d draw my weird renditions of videogame and cartoon characters.

One day, I started doodling cubes. I don’t know why. Maybe I was paging through my math book and stumbled on the geometry chapter. Maybe my parents had just bought me a puzzle cube.

Either way, I started drawing a lot of cubes. Eventually I started adding little details to make them into proper drawings of boxes or presents.

On a whim, I gave one cube a pair of eyes and a mouth. Then I gave him some arms and legs. I made a character.

Journaling Every Day

Now, how did a doodle lead to a story?

Well, that would have to do with my third-grade teacher.

She has us do creative writing every day. No matter what, we grabbed our writing notebooks right after recess. We would write and share stories for all to hear.

My cube doodles were still on my mind. So, I decided to give a story to my character cube, now named Cubey.

I didn’t think much about what to write. The story just flowed from me. There was no stopping it.

I wrote a full tale across that whole first week of writing.

Cubey moved into a new city and came across various ups and downs. These moments increased and decreased a “Happiness Percentage” attached to the story.

Some positives included eating a favorite food or having a good moment with the principal. Negatives featured students ignoring him or even making fun of him.

Throughout the week, I made sure to share each day’s chapter. My classmates seemed to enjoy it. They always wanted to see how things continued. Everyone was guessing how Cubey’s happiness would reach 100%.

They all figured I’d be giving Cubey some kind of friend in the end. Still, I wanted to surprise them.

So, I made a twist ending. Cubey would meet a lonely ghost named Liney. Things suddenly switched into the supernatural.

Somehow, the twist went well despite coming right out of left field. I guess everyone just thought a ghost of a line would be the most natural choice for a cube kid’s best friend.

The Story Must Go On

I had good thing going with Cubey and Liney. My classmates loved the pair. I wasn’t going to let their adventures end.

I started making all kinds of Cubey and Liney stories.

Villains began to appear. They started simple with an evil circle. He was a construction worker who hunted ghosts using a high-tech crane arm coated in ectoplasm.

Soon enough, Cubey and Liney were facing down monstrous pumpkins, evil clones, and beetle scientists.

I guess bringing in Liney just opened the paranormal floodgates for me. Characters grew upon characters, and plotlines stacked upon plotlines.

Soon I introduced a third hero. He was a bird made of pure energy named Sceptro. He was meant to be a guide through Cubey and Liney’s increasingly weird world.

Characters raced after both transformation masks and elemental gems. The items kept flipping back and forth between heroes and villains across countless conflicts.

When things seemed to reach a logical end, I did the only thing I could.

I made a sequel series starring Cubey’s son Cubey Jr. He became possessed by the spawn of his father’s evil clone.

Eventually Cubey Jr. befriended the clone’s spawn. The two became a single supernatural force fighting the kids of Cubey and Liney’s old foes.

When that story finished, I made the most shameless Cubey and Liney series. I made a series with caveman versions of everyone.

This saga proved to be the shortest. It was pretty much a shallow retread of everything I had done before.

So, I decided to finish things with a crazy time travel story. That way, I could involve the classic Cubey and Liney in their world’s final battle.

Also, for some reason I turned Cubey into a dog for half of this arc.

I got a bit out of control near the end there.

Thankfully, we stopped sharing our writing about halfway through the school year. I wonder what my classmates would’ve though of me going that far with Cubey and Liney.

I knew they still remembered the first few stories fondly. We talked about them often, and I gave a few vague hints of the series’ recent events.

One of the last days of school, we were actually all hanging around the school blacktop for an outdoor gym class. Everyone started talking about what they imagined Cubey and Liney to look like.

Strangely, Cubey had all sorts of different looks in their minds. Most people just thought Liney was a simple line.

Welcome to Story Chronicles

Cubey and Liney really did have a big first year.

I wrote a crazy comic book-style canon for their world spanning multiple generations.

These crazy tales were a big part of my life. They were my first major canon as a writer. I did everything I could to maintain and push it to the limit.

The original stories make little sense now. They were meant for a small classroom community. They were meant to surprise and excite a small group of friends and peers.

Still, the joy which I felt writing those stories is the same joy I want to capture in Story Chronicles. The happiness that comes simply from telling tales and sharing them with friends.

I suppose this is why I had to lend Cubey and Liney to Ulysses for Story Chronicles. These characters and their history embody the heart of my book.

Some changes will be made.

Things are more tightly connected now, and plotlines probably won’t get as crazy as before. I can’t imagine including anything from the later generations of Cubey and Liney’s world.

Still, I feel these changes help the story become a better version of itself. I feel now that I am truly making the story I wanted to make as a kid.

Kotcher’s Call to Action

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 and “Cubey and Liney” 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.

Finally, be sure to like my Facebook page and share it with your friends. I post a link there whenever a new blog post goes live each Friday at 5:00 PM EST.