What if…?
A look at the Story Team's process for planning The Broken Code
BY THE STORY TEAM
A series as long-running and involved as Warriors poses all kinds of questions for the creative team, and the writers:
“Are characters evolving in interesting (and plausible) ways?”
“Is the conflict between this Clan and that Clan (or this warrior and that warrior) compelling?”
“Are the themes of this particular story coming across as clearly as we hoped and intended?”
“Has this idea already been done before?”
…and many more. Some of these questions can only be answered once the books are out into the world, and in the hands of the readers (always a scary-but-exciting moment), but in seeking new and captivating story line ideas, the creative team is always asking questions—of ourselves, and of the characters.
And some of the most interesting ideas are developed in response to questions that begin with the words:
“What if…?”
A great many “What if…?” questions drove the creation of The Broken Code arc: “What if we follow Rootspring, the son of Tree and Violetshine?” “What if we explore the development of Shadowsight, whom we’d already met in Tigerheart’s Shadow?” “What if we explore the pain and heartbreak of Bristlefrost’s first experience of love, but ultimately glory in how she learns and grows—moves on—from the experience?”
The question that had the biggest impact on our early creative discussions was, “What if the cats’ connection to StarClan is severed?”
The Clan cats live by the Warrior Code, and the majority try to follow it always, but—as has been seen numerous times over the course of the series—the characters are occasionally left with little choice but to break the code in ways big and small. Rare is the Warrior who would do so for purely thoughtless or selfless reasons, but in reviewing the recent books’ events, the creative team started to wonder if, at some point, the Clan cats would be expected to answer for these indiscretions…and whether this would prompt them to examine their relationship to the code, and their sense of honor.
When the creative team proposed a time-jump between the end of A Vision of Shadows and the beginning of The Broken Code, we realized that this would be taking us into leaf-bare, which led us to another “What if…?”
“What if the Moonpool completely freezes over?”
Suddenly, the idea we’d been kicking around—“StarClan is angry”—became much more layered. “Maybe it isn’t that StarClan is angry—maybe the cats think they’re angry because, with the Moonpool frozen, the medicine cats cannot commune with their ancestors.”
We had now arrived at just the kind of Serious Problem that was going to challenge not only our three lead cats, Bristlefrost, Shadowsight, and Rootspring, but also some of the well-loved Clan cats still reeling and adjusting from their lifetimes of drama. As parents, Ivypool and Fernsong, Tigerstar and Dovewing, and Tree and Violetshine, were going to have to deal with watching their kits grow up and face tremendous challenges without being able to help, no matter how much they want to.
The next question to occur to the team laid the groundwork for the arc’s main plot.
“What if somebody exploited the severed connection between the Clans and StarClan? What would happen then?” This led us to the realization that, when a leader lost a life, there would potentially be a small window of opportunity for a wicked spirit to steal their physical body—and so, poor Bramblestar had to endure one of his nine deaths.
By now, the identity of this nefarious cat has been revealed, and over the course of the final two books in The Broken Code, we will see their dreadful plans play out in grim detail, in stories that we hope that fans enjoy reading as much as we’ve enjoyed developing. And as we got closer to the climax of the series, another important question emerged: “Could we send living cats to the Dark Forest?”
We were aware that the series had not revisited the dreadful realm so feared by the Clans since the Omen of the Stars arc, and that references and allusions in recent titles had hinted that it may now be empty, or overgrown. This prompted a great many involved discussions about how The Place of No Stars might have changed since the Great Battle, and how it might change and warp further as a result of The Impostor’s machinations. How it might seem to our three young protagonists, who only knew of the Great Battle by reputation and mythology, who had not yet lived long enough to see anything that could truly prepare them for what a barren, desolate place it truly is. What levels of courage would each one have to discover in order to face down the threats to themselves and their Clans?
The answers to these questions—we hope—provide all the thrilling and emotional drama readers have comes to expect from the Warriors books. As our seventh arc draws to a close, the creative team are immensely proud—and not a little emotional!—to be reaching the end of a journey that began with a question.
“What if…?”
