I've shared a bit of my tale before on here. Mostly NTN began because I was in writer's block and decided to (more or less) drop all of my current works and try working on something that would be entirely self-indulgent. I like really big stories where the world always feels alive past a certain point. [I'll link to the ones that are on Tapas right now.] That random maid you saw in the hall? She has a little story and some of it is interesting, and some of it's not. At first, I did have the idea to start the story as a comic but after 3 or 4 pages I realized a few things:
- It was going far too slow for my imagination.
- My brain worked somewhat in the way of comics, but I didn't have the art skill to draw it how I could imagine it. Words would be better.
- Drawing takes eons. Writing takes 2hrs. Saves time in the long run.
I had basically just finished Misty Defect (or rather, demanded it end), and had finished Gone We Go (one of my few complete stories I have; another self-indulgent story). I had a few other projects somewhat in the works at the time: A strange story about a young man who's born human but has a demon soul so his skin shows white and black patches; A story about a tribe of wolves and their war with humans; A short story of randomness called Random Pieces (fitting, I know). I also attempted to do a sequel for Kaitei Niou, tried writing a story about a young god, and had done some one-shots.
A lot of my ideas would hit the 20k or 50k point and just fizzle out. Not because I lacked imagination, but because I saw a better story that needed telling "over there". Here's a list of my incompletes from around that time period before NTN started:
It just.. nothing was getting better. The top 3 all had interesting ideas, I can't even recall what Tada and Waiting were about, and honestly forget what Young God was going to be. Ha... Haha.
But I had had so much fun with a totally unplanned self-indulgent story (being "Gone We Go") that I decided to try something else like it. So I started jotting down notes in one of my notebooks. What is a story I want to tell? What do I want it to be about? I made notes for Will and Crow (this story would focus on Will, but would allow time for Crow to be the main character just as equally in a way that's different from my other stories up til now), notes for the King, Will's dad, and Will's younger half-brother and that child's mother, as well as what happened to Will's mother.
In short, the idea from the very beginning was that Adell (Will's father) would forget his wife and son mysteriously and it'd be caused willingly from the god of amnesia from the (not quite) Other Side.
So then I had to write out ideas for how life and death would exist.
The cast has continued to grow and some characters have been more or less written out, or were never meant to be super important (like Adell's assistant Vladimir, or the 13 knights that serve the King as a personal guard).
Art from this early time period is kind of odd too.
Summary
https://www.deviantart.com/watashiveracasan/art/First-269603906
https://www.deviantart.com/watashiveracasan/art/sad-hug-313751696
https://www.deviantart.com/watashiveracasan/art/Glittering-Dragon-347828172
https://www.deviantart.com/watashiveracasan/art/Prisoner-374376366
https://www.deviantart.com/watashiveracasan/art/copic-doodles-460663100
Then, remember how I said I liked big worlds, well I decided to do the whole planet. Figure out where deserts would be and that would align to the weather systems currently affecting NTN. That was a lot of fun. Part of my thought was that "if they ever need to explore the world, they can". I think I did that back in late 2012. I also started to really hammer out the "pre story timeline" and put in events for the direct story (like Crow's mom being mad at him for almost getting Will killed when they were kids, and when she vanished, and when did he disappear). Stuff that's mentioned in the story has a firm spot in the timeline so it makes sense. (I'm always looking forward to readers doing the math to figure out just when Rhys became king cause lolz he was an ambitious child.)
As time's progressed I've been able to build on my initial foundation. Like the "god of amnesia" isn't really a god, and it turns out there was a genocide a long time ago, and is it possible for humans to chose to age or not age in the world between life and death? Stuff like that. Some stuff just isn't mentioned or can't be mentioned blatantly to the characters. It's kind of a puzzle for readers to figure out if they want to. How is Akiio over 100 years old, and Crow isn't when they both spent time in the Threshold? Humans have a mysterious form of their own kind of magic that they themselves aren't aware of.
I can't say this story is like "any other you've ever read" because it's not. For it being such a big adventure story, they don't travel on foot or teleport north then south, then to a desert. They do get flung around a bit by the magic of the doors from the Threshold, but largely they've ended up staying in the main city where they both grew up. Another thing is that just because it's a Boy's Love, it's not centered around them getting hot and heavy. I'm very careful to keep track of when they kiss and how much time's passed. They have a slow burning love for several reasons:
- Drama is happening around them.
- No real time to themselves where they can flirt til they're at their wit's end.
- Will's raised as a noble (Crow too to some degree) and nobles are not properly educated about flirting, dating, or love. [They also don't kiss whoever they want. A kiss is, for nobles, a promise to marry that person.]
- They get injured. (This sounds odd. Everyone gets injured in a story. But not like Will and Crow. They both deal with psychological injuries from before the story began and as it's taken shape. Will's gotten bonked on the head a few times and has suffered a concussion for example.)
- Personalities. (Again, Will's shy and was raised as a noble so he's a bit more conservative/clueless, and Crow is patient. He's entirely willing to wait for Will to be comfortable.)
It's been a lot of fun to sprinkle in these details and such. I'm ... never.... sure if the readers get it. Sometimes I feel like I should have a cliffnotes or little author's guide notes for the chapters like "remember it's just been 1 day" or "they last slept forever ago" or "Will's out of touch with all of his emotions because it was the only way he could cope with his father forgetting him". I'd like to think that the reader's don't need that kind of hand-holding, but I do also try to make it evident that the more Will hangs around with Crow, the more he opens up to his own emotions.
Another fun thing that I've done is their speech patterns. Crow will often truncate words or use a casual way of talking - to anyone. Will by contrast speaks formally and uses entire words (until he hangs around Crow too much hahaha). (Will says Yes, Crow says Yeah.) Crow will also now and then slip into a formal way of speaking just because he's around Will. They rub off on each other 
OH OH and before I forget - a good thing that came from making the world so big and vague was great! I was able to flesh out a continent to unneeded degrees (what do they farm! export! import!) for a NaNo story. And just very recently (ch94ish of NTN) I've been able to tie in the characters from that NaNo story. They don't get the limelight, but they are part of the world, so I thought it'd be fun to show that post the end of their story, they still don't have things entirely resolved.
