This foreword is also included in the books, but I thought I’d include it here as well!

Afterword: Writing Jack of East (June 2019)

The brainstorming for Jack of East began in 2012, and I began writing Jack of East for my senior project in high school in the year 2013. Because Jack of East is my longest, most complete, and first story to publish, I would like to discuss some of the significant changes to the story’s plot and themes that I made over multiple edits, and I will also share some thoughts about my writing process. Bear in mind that the writing of Jack of East spanned most of the process of me learning to be a better writer, a process which continues today.

Jack of East started off as a fun story for me to combine all of the topics I was interested in into one thing. At the time, I was intrigued by a romanticized view of gangs, girls who were psychotic murderers, ruling over nations, and ominous, monstrous sewers. I wanted to write a story that combined all of these things.

The story has gone through many, many revisions. Since the whole seed for the story was just me writing about what I wanted to write, there were many things that I realized I would have to explain, and almost all of the changes I made to the plot were simply realistic balances, sealing up plot holes, and advancing character development.

I created the full plot for the story before I began. When I first started writing, I began the story in what is now Part IV, Chapter 2: The Blood on Her Shirt is Cute. In the first version of Jack of East that I wrote, the Moo Rotisserie was an active restaurant, and the Squad of Seven indulged in the actual dinner that they only fantasize about in the current version. In fact, I hadn’t given any thought to there being a wall around the city until I got very invested in the story and realized that I needed to give my characters a reason to kill each other. The wall, a crucial element in the story, was invented simply to explain the environment I wanted to write about.

In this early version with the wall, there were many plot holes in the story that I have changed in the final version. Initially, Jack was able to go back and forth over the wall several times with only minimal effort evading the guard. Also, food was brought in from outside the wall by paying someone who was a contact. I decided that Jack being able to cross the wall at his leisure completely invalidated all of the tension that was built by the wall’s existence, and I realized that having a single, limited food source would help explain why children were killing each other for food.

Then, in order to explain how the children would have such a large food supply that they could last several years in the city, I created the Underlords and what is basically a massive conspiracy that I will fully unravel if or when I write the sequel. The idea for the Under existed before the Underlords, because I thought it would be super cool to write about an underground lair.

Jack’s conflicted, changing philosophy, which is now one of the focal points of the story, had to be created in order to make Jack a sympathetic character. The initial Jack was ruthless, envious, traitorous, and misogynistic. Many of these traits remain in Jack to some degree, although I wrote Parts 1-3 after finishing the very first draft solely to show a younger Jack, where his philosophical journey began, and how he changes.

Writing an innocent, weak Jack was quite difficult. I did not like writing about weak characters when I wrote about him, but I felt that it was necessary to show a weak Jack in order to substantiate a strong Jack. As I developed this weak Jack, I also developed some of the major themes of the story, such as what is evil is all about perspective. I hope that Jack remained sympathetic to the reader as long as possible, but I hope it is also obvious that Jack became a changed person. If anyone still thinks that Jack is a good person by the end of Part VI, I must point to the fact that many of Jack’s actions were taken from Hitler. However, another huge theme of the story is that there is no obvious good or evil. Good people can do evil things, or, through inaction, allow evil to flourish. Similarly, evil people can intentionally or unintentionally cause good things to happen. I think it can be agreed upon, however, that revenge for revenge’s sake is silly.

Before I talk about how Katelyn’s character has changed, I need to talk about where I went wrong with Jack and Katelyn to begin with. Before I mention anything else, I need to commend a high-school friend whose influences helped my story out way more than I have admitted. She made me realize that I sucked at representing female characters in my story, and the initial, misogynist Jack was the result of my misunderstanding of what today’s feminist culture is all about. I’ll share my accumulated knowledge to anyone who was slow like me: the key to creating strong, female characters (if you have no idea how to) is to just create a boy character and change him to a girl. I learned to be aware of exactly how gender affects how I perceive a character. Any difference between how you perceive someone based on their gender, even if it’s arguably a positive difference, is sexist. The early Jack was misogynist because how much he “cared” about Katelyn really just manifested itself as seeking to control her. There are remnants of the controlling nature of Jack in the story that I kept. For example, Jack wanting to protect Katelyn all the time, Jack needing to see if Katelyn is at the cannibal party, and Jack being jealous and angry about Katelyn acting flirtatious towards boys. All of these have to do with Jack wanting to possess Katelyn. One reason why I kept these things was so that I could buff up Katelyn’s character by allowing her to retaliate towards the way Jack acted to her, but I did tone them down to make Jack less whiny and annoying – he is supposed to be the main character after all.

Now, I can talk about how Katelyn’s character changed. The initial Katelyn was just as poorly done of a character as Jack was. She was more excessive in everything she did. She was absurdly lustful, flirty, and violent. Jack of East isn’t a feminist novel, but even I eventually figured out that the way she acted was a misogynistic, stereotypical viewpoint of women, and she was too similar to Karen. Ultimately, I didn’t exactly transform Katelyn’s character. She still has those traits, but they’re not overly exaggerated. What is important is that I developed her character. She explains her thinking to Jack. She explains her reasoning and point of view. Suddenly, she’s a way better character because she has her own view of things that she’s trying to achieve. Katelyn’s character develops greatly towards the end of the story, especially in Part VI, The Skeleton in Adam’s Closet, where Katelyn reveals to the reader that she has lost hope in everyone, and that she feels there is no reason for anything to go on anymore. The reader should realize that Katelyn isn’t the antagonist anymore, it’s Jack.

Other characters received similar boosts to their depth, such as Adam (and I thank my wife, Sarah, tremendously for helping me flesh out his sister – pun intended), Matthew, Dragon, William, the Giant, and Karen. I learned that any flaw with a character design is a lack of that character’s development. Granted, side characters should remain side characters, but if they’re in the story then they should contribute to the story’s plot or theme in a meaningful way.

Finally, I want to talk about what I learned that I wish would become obvious to everyone.  Fight scenes that aren’t actual fight scenes are way better than fight scenes that are actual fight scenes. If I were forced into editing Jack of East for the rest of my life, I’d probably edit it so that there are only a couple actual fight scenes in the whole book. The single biggest change of a fight scene that had the biggest impact is the fight that existed between Katelyn and the Giant. Hopefully, reading that doesn’t make you wish that I had included the actual fight between Katelyn and the Giant (Katelyn won, by the way), because the amount of character depth that I got from Katelyn and the Giant from the scene that exists now is terrific. The Giant is shown to be a tragic character who was rejected and is severely lonely and disillusioned, and Katelyn shows the full prism of her character by showing genuine compassion and then turning to wrathful independence when that kindness is taken for granted.

So, a few core problems caused me to constantly go back and rewrite large swaths of the story. I needed to remove glaring plot holes from the story, I needed to correct the representation of the girls in the story, and I always needed to revise to add more character development and thematic depth. Ultimately, I’m very happy with what the story turned out to be. I hope that all of my readers have enjoyed reading my story as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Thank you.

Best Regards,

Stephen Knudsen