Readers, assemble! · 1:02am Jun 29th, 2014
Transcribed from my tumblr:
So it’s been like, what—four, five months since I put up the last chapter of Outlaw?
I’ve been working on the rewrite—admittedly at a much slower pace than I originally intended (read: glacially slow), but I’ve finally finished overhauling the first chapter. Which is now three separate chapters, because as I have discovered, people like smaller chapters. I’ll be doing the same thing to the other chapters.
Now, I’d really love to update the story on FiMFiction, but I can’t do that, because too many things have changed for the rewrite. If I upload it, a lot of things will cease to make sense. However, after such a long period of silence, I really, really want to share this bad boy with the readers, which I could easily do with google docs. Also, 3rd party input would be pretty helpful.
What do?
My pal Bobulator has suggested doing what he's doing with Memories—namely, taking all chapters down and putting them back up once they've been completely finished (only I would un-publish instead of deleting them and bombing all of my comments like a silly poni).
Now, I've weighed the pros and cons of this, but I feel like the cons far outweigh the pros.
Pros:
• Shiniest, best work on display, roping in readers that can't get past the rocky start.
• Smaller chapters for people just starting out.
• Renewed interest in the story due to updates (debatable).
Cons:
• The wait (keep in mind how long it took me to rewrite chapter 1).
• People partway through will be forced to start over (major concern).
• The story regresses from complete back to incomplete.
• The wait.
• Anyone who wants to re-read (admittedly, probably few) or recommend the story to anyone because it's complete will have to wait for updates.
• The wait.
• The final 12 chapters aren't changing all that much, so it makes very little sense to un-publish those.
So the question becomes: un-publish the story and put up the revised chapters as they're completed, or hold off and update all at once like I initially planned?
People who read blogposts but don't usually comment, I could really use your input. People that do sometimes comment, please don't skim over this without letting me know what you think.
Why not just do like MLP: Off the Record is doing and upload the rewrite as another story? That way anyone whom wants to read the complete version still can. ~answer-liker
(At this point the ending tag is full autocorrect....)
Do the thing that I'm doing!
2241833
It's an option, but just the thought of starting over at zero gives me a panic attack.
2241848
Then perhaps it'd be better to just wait until you're already finished with the rewrite. ~answer-liker
I think that no matter what you choose you will have people who disagree with it... You are the author so it should be based upon how you feel about it. If the thought of starting from zero gives you a panic attack, then the answer seems to be to just wait until you finished with the rewrite. Honestly, as someone who just finished the story for the first time, I didn't think the start was that bad. I've lost count of the number of fics I've read (both FOE related and non-FOE), but your story as it is now is still better than I daresay most of the fics I've read.
I prefer not to have to reread whole stories, but I think that most of the time it's silly to have two versions of a story (and it causes a lot of confusion among readers). So, I'd recommend you avoid the 'upload revised version as separate story' thing.
You may as well complete and un-publish/re-publish several at a time as one chapter at a time seems kind of tedious for the author and the reader. All of it would be a fair bit of work to catch up on re-reading of all at once.
Really either is fine, and it's definitely up to you, but I'd be in favor of the middle road between the two options.
2242416
That idea doesn't sound half bad. I might even be able to build up a buffer like that, if I pick a set interval to release the revised chapters at.
2242097
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, which was why I asked all of you for your thoughts. I figured some suggestions could help push me towards a decision.
As far as quality of the story goes, as a reader, you don't really have your ear to the ground I do, listening for any hint of comment or criticism in all corners of the internet. I've taken all of that into account and turned this chapter into something that can stand alongside my best work, like chapters 26-30.
To give you an example, before I split the revised chapter it sat at ~20,000 words (current first chapter is at ~13,000), and that is after I cut out unnecessary exposition and events that no longer happen. Trust me, this story needs the improvements early on.
My suggestion is to transfer the original to some form if archive for those who want to keep reading it (like g-docs) and place the link in the story's description. Then unpublish them from fimfiction and upload the new ones one by one.
make it as another story on Fimfiction, but name it as Version 2 of outlaw
There was a story recently that's going through a rewrite and it put all it's original chapters into one, single long chapter. After that it started to publish the rewritten chapters individually.
After a bit of digging around I found it was The Empty Room. This method may or may not work due to the sheer length of Outlaw, but it's an option. Though I think the compilation would be better as the last chapter rather than the leading chapter.
2244140
It's a logical option, but as you say, Outlaw is pretty big. I'd rather not throw off the word count with a 500k word chapter, either.
I think out of all of the suggested options, uploading as chapters are finished, archiving Outlaw on GDocs and putting a link in the description is the best way to go. This way I get to keep teasing people both new and old with some new cliffhangers, and I also put my best foot forward for new readers.
Thanks for the suggestion, though! I'm glad to see you're still around!