Damien and I were having a laugh at how many characters never made it to the current stage of our series, Unegen: The Burning Tree. Over the course of our journey, characters have risen and then been cast aside at the creation of a new idea, plot line or realisation of a plot hole. Imagine the giant pile of characters that the worlds most prolific writers have built up over the years. In some cases, outcasts rise from the ashes into new worlds, hoping that this will be their resurrection.

In an early version of the series, Unegen is hiding with his new friend, Annukah, in a cave system. Overnight, he journeys deeper into the cave, falls through a hole and plunges into a mysterious pool. There he awakens a giant dragonfly who instantly attacks and attempts to drown Unegen. With the help of his spirit fox guide (another character we have removed), he overcomes the dragonfly by communicating with it using telepathy. The dragonfly realises he is no threat and turns out to be friendly.

At one point we toyed with this character being a reincarnation of Unegen's mother, she gives him key information about his quest and also part of her wings for him to use as a skin for a magical drum. At this early point in the development of the film, the story most definitely felt more like a Disney adventure film than where it is currently at. We also realised later that 'Kubo and the Two Strings' had similarities to our storyline particularly relating to Unegen's parents and their animal avatars.

We haven't resurrected this dragonfly just yet, she lays dormant in the cave.

In another early version of the series, a character named 'Yabash', hell-bent on dominating our three realms (now two), was written as our main antagonist. At one point he existed as a terrorist type character in an alternative steampunk underground universe (or something to that effect). We changed large sections of the concept during this phase resulting in many transformations for Yabash. We worked on his back story for weeks, integrating it with another key character named Shyngay. The two characters had a 'star-crossed lovers' back story that transcended realms and realities - a story that the audience would never actually see. This became increasingly complex as we attempted to build currency for the characters once they entered Unegen's story.

More brainstorming and plot analysis resulted in cutting hefty chunks of this backstory again. I won't go too much further into how Yabash now exists in our story, but just know that the only similarity to the original Yabash is in the name. This process revealed the challenges and traps in over conceptualising reasons for a character to exist. We were overlooking the value in developing and revealing characters through their decisions and actions on screen.

Lost characters are remnants of writers lost in their own story, still tinkering and discovering paths, traps and prizes along the way.