Recently found a vid that has the several parts of the "Foolish King" story compiled into a single audio. Makes for a superb bedtime story! And I'd like to ask - how was the whole "divergence arc" put together? How much of it was planned when you were writing Scherzo and did you have any idea of what would the key episodes be about? Or was the story of the foolish king incorporated later?
Iāll be honest - I didnāt have a clue where the divergent universe was going! I just assumed the eighth Doctor was going to be in it for a long while - and since I was writing the first story in there, I should go as weird as I could with it, just to establish it *was* different, and then other writers could pull back later.
(Zagreus wasnāt written either - not even at the time Scherzo was *recorded* - so I was pretty much just dancing in a void! But I like dancing in voids. Itās what writing is about!)
The tale of the foolish king was written in segments, right between the episodes of Scherzo - just as you hear them. They were rewards for me to write after the increasingly hard and bitter dialogue! I really wanted there to be something stylistically that gave a strange fairy tale vibe to Scherzo - it makes the āothernessā of the universe feel all the more acute. And to play with the idea of sentient sound on another level to the one the main story could offer. (And, letās face it, just to break up the Doctor and Charleyās story a bit, and give us all some relief!) I like that tale - itās one of the things that inspired me to go into short story writing proper, which is what I do mostly with my days now, writing very weird books. But Iām not entirely sure itās a fairy tale that works on its own without the Doctor Who bit to contrast with it. (I donāt know! I just get that feeling.)
Thank you for liking it, though. You have a weird taste in bedtime stories, and one that I greatly approve of!
