I need your Feedback. · 12:36am Jun 11th, 2018
Alright, here's the situation.
Beacuse Nica's time in Equestira made a shift into an adventure with big stakes, and since the main story was already very long, I wrote a sequel "Raichu, Defender of Equestira."
Considering 45 upvotes/3 downvotes ratio, low feedback and the fact that prologue in the sequel I added in hope it will explain the situation to new readers is also epilogue of the main story, (and may not be the best way to start a story), I feel a bit conflicted.
Here's the feedback I received that made me reconsider my aproach:
It... really doesn't start this one off that well, if I'm going to be bluntly honest. It gives a little background, sure, but any reader can see it's clearly meant as a turning point, to cap off the first story. Honestly, if you're going to assume that new readers are going to use this as a jumping off point, it's a horrible recap for the events of the original and barely explains anything of whats happened up to that point. You'd be better off putting an A/N at the start of chapter 1 saying reading the original was mandatory to know what was going on, or making a small concise recap at the start of it to explain things. Sure, the prologue as it is sets up this story, but it will still leave new readers confused as to what the heck is going on. It's not good as a prologue in that sense- new readers may be interested, but will be nearly immediately lost and confused when that first dream sequence pops up and wonder what the hell is going on, even with you saying in there Nica regains memories while dreaming. Honestly, with how your stories are set up, it's almost better to group them into one big story, and put in the A/N and/or description what tags go to what arcs, IMO it was already kind of dumb to split up the merc work into its own story considering how much of the plot of the story was advanced by that.
Either way, it's good as a prologue for the purposes of setting up the conflict, but any new readers will still get lost from it, so there's no point in having it. Older readers will have already read it, and new ones will need either a real recap or to read the rest anyways. All that doing things this way does it pad the word count.
At the moment I have two options:
1) I can remove the prologue from the sequel and turn chapter 1 into prologue (or simply remove prologue and start the story from ch.1)
2) I will take down the sequel and simply continue the story in "Little Lost Raichu" (while leaving information in author notes that the story is shifting from slice of life into an adventure).
Which is why I want to ask you all for feedback because making this big decision.
Do in your opinion it's better to remove the prologue in the sequel as it confuses new readers more than set up the story, or is it better to continue "Little Lost Raichu" despite it already being quite long. (The sequel Defender of Equestria was meant to be 10 chapters long and have epilogue at the end, so in case of merging, story will have 35 chapters and an epilogue).
Your opinion and voting would be very helpful.
I mean, if people really aren't paying attention, it might be better to keep it all on one story. I mean, what's the estimate in terms of words if you added this story to the original. Are we talking adding 100,000+ words? That would probably still be fine if its just around 100,000 otherwise it might be better to keep it separate.
i have not yet read either story so this is from experience reading other series(i do not write). but maybe just put on the sequel that reading the first story is required to understand it.
Considering LLR has 639 people tracking it, and R,DoE has only gathered 150 (less than 25%) it might be better, from a raw statistics standpoint, to merge.
I've seen authors put in their descriptions that reading a previous story is a must to better understand the current events of the sequel for a few stories and it most likely encourages them to do so but I don't have much idea on its effectiveness.
I'm of two minds whether to say merge or leave it separate.
I think that you should merge the two.
4880504
I checked. That sequel will be 80k words long.
Considering that Little Lost Raichu is 168k words long, merging will increase leight of that story by 50%.
4880774
4880533
I checked. That sequel will be 80k words long.
Considering that Little Lost Raichu is 168k words long, merging will increase leight of that story by 50%.
4880777
I'm fine with a doubled story, and new readers won't have to read a prequel to fully understand everything that's going on.
4880777
Unless you're planning more stories in this particular AU than the two big ones + the side story, merging might be for the best, as it can be assumed that everyone tracking LLR has caught up (or intends to) and then it won't be like "you have to read that 136k story to be able to understand what's going on in this 80k one."
4880791
Well, about that.
Spoiler alert:
Considering that quite many readers seems interested in how would interaction between Nica and Ash (and his Pikachu) go, I am currently working on a story called "Little Lost Pikachu," which is the sequel to "Raichu, Defender of Equestria" where Ash's pokemon ( from SM series ) end up in Equestria, and Nica will volountier to play the role of tutor/guardian for Ash's Pikachu.
As the result, either we will have a series: "Little Lost Raichu" (slice of life) 163k words -> "Raichu, Defender of Equestira" 80k words -> "Little Lost Pikachu" ??? words (though I do give it 60k-100k words, it won't be all that long)
or
"Little Lost Raichu 243k words" -> "Little Lost Pikachu" (60-100k words long)
4880795
In that case, a "continuing series" notice at the top of the description would probably work. (Also, adding it to the three Pokemon-related groups that the first one is in might help, too.)