The Future of 'Live by the Creed' · 11:55pm Jul 10th, 2013
So, after bashing my head against a brick wall for the past three or so months, I finally break through it and manage to post a new chapter of LbtC. Woot, woot, woot, and so forth. But as I work on next chapter and think about the next few down the road, it suddenly hits me. This is gonna be a f*cking long story. At times, I forget that the word count is already above 100k, yet with everything that I have planned, combined with the proper build-up and context I'll need to make it all work, it doesn't even feel like I'm a third, or maybe even a fifth of the way through yet. For example, once all of the nonsense in Hoofington is settled and everyone settles back down, I intend to start another session with the cuddly and lovable Shadow Streak. After all, this is an Assassin's Creed crossover, and without the stab-happy ancestors, well, it's just a story about a mare's breakneck spiral into insanity after getting into too much of the bad stuff, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing (storywise, at least), I started this story for the stabby-stabby.
Here's the thing, though. I plan this next session to be looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng! As in, 'could be its own story' long, which is probably the entire Assassin's Creed series in a nutshell. That got me thinking. This story is already of decent length as it is, and I'm coming to a logical conclusion soon, and most importantly, shit will finally be established (I think/hope). So, for the past few days, I've been weighing too options. I could just say 'to hell with length' and cram it all in to one, huge story ala FO: E or The End of Ponies, which is actually what I've been veering towards. On the other end, I could just split up this potential giant into multiple stories, some more focused on Rainbow, and others more focused on Shadow. Granted, this sort of thing is kinda inconsequential in the end, since the story arc as a whole is bound to have the same length regardless. I'm just kinda voicing my concerns. Some people just seem to steer away from long stories, and splitting up said long story into a series only seems like a logical solution to that issue. I guess it all comes down to what I, as the writer, want to do, but I wouldn't be writing this blog if I knew what I wanted to do.
Bah. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I like to think that I make better decisions when it's spontaneous, anyway.
Well, I've got some experiance into this: I've been writing my own Assassin fic for a few years (alright alright, I was/am in a huge writing hiatus which made me lose some time on updating it) and so far it's 180 thousand words for 50 chapters.
So not bad, though i have to severely edit the older chapters since writing improves over time the more and more a person writes.
So I look at this and I think: 'Wow, that is a pretty damn big fic, I think that most readers put this on their read it laters more often than their favourites.' And so I have to say, YARHARHAR! to our conundrums because I'm not even CLOSE to being 1/3rd of the way done. Not when there are such things as international Templar stereotypes to be explored and hunted down!
My fic didn't take off like a rocket blast when I published it so long ago and because of it's poor start (not to mention my terribad writing prowess) things went rather... slow. But with 50 chapters in that, there was NO WAY I'm going to abandon something like this based on silly things like views, reviews, and likes. NO! Rather... I had a lot of work to do this year and couldn't make time for it so I suck
I considered the whole 'should I continue on this mega-fic or break it into parts?' and for me in my case, after a lot of months of thinking and planning roughly 20 chapters ahead every time, I decided it was worth for my fic to continue adding chapters to it.
Because even though now I think it might hit the 200+ chapter range quite easily should I actually get off my lazy ass and work my word document like a ninja, I put my faith and trust into people who enjoy the fic from the beginning wanting to read more from it.
Otherwise, then I will have to put my faith and trust into people who enjoyed reading the 1st story would want to get into the other stories.
That was my 25cent banana of information but really if anyone looked at what I said closely, all of this was from a lot of time thinking as well as a spontaneous desision.
I seriously hope some of this may help for you, and always remember that whatever you do i'll support it and track the cazzo out of it! Good luck on your "staby-staby-runaway from the guard!" story!
(And just for a referance point of wtf I was talking about that fic here it is: you can see that the later chapters are more sophisticated and have less 'Fus Ro Dah' referances than the early ones. Plus you know this shit is old when the 1st comment talks about the STAR RATING SYSTEM. Yep, prepare to walk into the past.)
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/7007/a-shadows-creed
Oh, and sorry for the large wall of text
If you want the short and sweet conclusion from what writing my own fic has taught me: Go with your flow but be mindful of what you're doing, you don't know what the future may hold and you're the driver, fortunately you're only at 15 chapters so don't overthink things too much now. Just write, read, and enjoy
Look, if you have the same luck as the games this is what will happen:
+You will hook me with a first story that I love to absolute death despite it's glaring, and sometimes downright annoying, problems.
+The second story will fix all the popular problems of the first and introduce truly lovable characters that will stick around for a while, all while at the same time continuing to craft a story that I love.
+The third story will be my favorite, as you limit the area the story covers, and instead focus on depth of story. Also the main bad guy is a total douche.
+The fourth story will suck balls.
+The fifth story will be awesome, until about 3/4 of the way through, where I wish there were more pirate sub-plots and become bored with the main plot line. Also the main character will suck.
People like books like Harry Potter and the Inheritance Cycle for a reason. For this kind of story, breaking it into a series would ruin my immersion IMO and I'd prefer to be able to sit there and read long chunks of it or just one chapter and take breaks where I want, especially because the plot tends to get diluted if you split it into a series (one long story goes exposition--->rising action--------->climax--------->falling action--->resolution, whereas a series reads exposition->ra->climax->fa->resolution->exposition->ra... So on and so forth), which can ruin cohesiveness if you're telling a single story.