Throughout doing this project, many things have changed from the original idea I initially envisioned. It is very common to change things about your project – I actually encourage that you change certain aspects of your project to fit in, be it for a technical problem, or for an artistic difference. You normally never keep the same project you envisioned at the start, always finding ways in which you can improve and make your idea that was mundane, to something that holds much more power.
The biggest change from my original idea was the big leap from the book being strictly from the Jarl’s POV and instead from a captured slave, being someone looking into his life. Beth was the one who originally gave me this idea, of making it from someones else’s perspective and I thought of the TV show Vikings and how they had the priest Athelstan, kidnapped from the island of Lindisfarne. Athelstan was also a slave to Ragnar Lodbrok (in the show, only) and then they became great friends – Athelstan soon losing his slave title to be a freeman. That is exactly how I want my friendship between my priest and my main character; both from completely different worlds: Gunnar’s father’s false imprisonment and Elmer’s priesthood. It will be largely influenced by propaganda – as most documents during thew Anglo-Saxon era and Old Norse era was – wanting to shine bad light on the English, making them seem like the bad guy in this tale.
The next change was something minor, just changing the last name of my character because I didn’t want Gunnar to have a last name that sounded so similar to his first name, though that was the cause in Viking culture, saying Gunvaldsson would mean the son of Gunnar, but I wanted the name to roll off the tongue. So, that’s how I came across Baardsen, which then led me to add a minor character Bard, meaning the last name Baardsen makes Gunnar the son of Bard – step-son of Bard. Baardsen was actually the name I was going to originally use when I thought about the project a month before we were assigned this; The Fall Of Jarl Baardsen has been in development a long time.
Now the last one is quite a big one – even a theoretical and practical problem. I didn’t know which medium to use to present my book:e-book or printed book. I decided to do some research, asking people on my Facebook and also searching for polls that asked this question. Majority answered printed book, so it led me to change the original idea to make an e-book – a much simpler process – to printed books, which I have very limited knowledge of. I am someone who caters to my audience, listening to everything they say and make changes within my project for their enjoyment; the audience is the most important communication for any project.
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