17/07/2020 - Horrorama · 12:53pm Jul 17th, 2020
Good greif it's been almost a year.
I'm still here. Still alive. No worries.
So... the story. I've been working hard these past few months on draft 3. If the original version, which is currently the one up on this site, was a stream-of-consciousness sequence of drivel, draft 2 was a much more structured take on the whole story. While writing draft 2 I realised a few more things I wanted to have in the story as well as some more efficient ways of getting where the characters needed to go. There was also still the major issue of the lack of solid character arcs. Twilight developed a bit throughout, but Moondancer's was still pretty abrupt, while Spike was left to the wayside. He fared a little better than his near-irrelevance in the original, but I wasn't happy with it.
This story only has three main characters, after all. I should be able to handle that many, right?
I think I can, at least. With draft 3 I started to put some proper thought into things like character development and synergy - Twi and Moon are meant to be long-time friends, so it would make sense if they weren't constantly at each others throats with absolutely no wiggle room in their opinions - foreshadowing and set-ups both for later chapters and later stories, making sure all those components still belong in this story and aren't just extra added fluff with no immediate value or impact, and some more focus on tone in general.
Moondust is a story about normal people surrounded by forces they can't control. In other words, it's a horror disguised as a drama, and I want to bring that across amidst all the internal stresses and tense conversations. I kind of want the same to be true of the Triad Verse in general. No one wanders into a dark forest and matches themselves up against a demi-god expecting to actually win, after all.
But anyway, to get to the meat of this pie, I'm currently just about to wrap up chapter 9 of draft 3, which I intend to be the final version of Moondust. I predict that there will be about fifteen chapters in total, give or take. I want to get a few more done and dusted before I finally start releasing them, however, just so that I'm absolutely sure everything is as it should be. Just as a point of reference, with the story being more than double the size of the original draft, while chapter 9 is sort of its own thing, chapter 10 will be comparable to chapter 4 in the original.
As for a release date, I'm gonna say maybe September, assuming I work at a slow but constant pace. Late-August if I'm quicker. Might make a new cover image to go with it as well.
Thanks to everyone for being patient with me. I really want this to be as good as I can make it.
Also, I bought Campfire for the sake of organising everything. It's pretty useful, but very clunky. Buy the Steam version when it's on sale if you're interested.
Thanks very much for the explanation. I have no problem with you taking so long. It's more important to get it done RIGHT than to get it done QUICKLY, after all. Quality over speed.