An experiment at Nightmare Night. · 12:38am Oct 30th, 2023
give me your opinion of how this story should continue forward.
weekly(s) release - Keep the current the same. consistency of each chapter release schedule and length over everything else.
batch release - Release multiple chapters at the same time. Inconsistent and longer updates.
longer chapter - less amount of chapter but more word counts, and plot her chapter. But inconsistent word counts. Possibly long hiatus between chapter.
The story felt like it was stalled, isn't it? I felt like that was the case too. The way I write this story. I treated it as something akin to factory line rather than a creative work.
Time limits was set(currently a chapter per 2 weeks), and I must churned out something with minimum and maximum word counts requirement before I reach the dead line(buffer unreleased chapters ran out), forcefully punched thought that writer’s block if needed be.
A new chapter must come out no matter what. No matter how burn out or lacking I am, at least 1k word counts chapter must come out.
As it turned out, it didn't work that well for me if it made you and me felt that way. Butttttt….
The conclusion after I did a test on myself is it was just a perspective.
Combining many 1-2k chapters into a single 6-7k chapter and read it all at once. Doing that made it didn't felt like the story was stalling.
It’s not stalled… for a story with longer chapter. If smaller chapters were to combined into a single big chapter, this might solve the feeling of staleness problem.
But how much do you value consistency of chapter’s length and artworks in the author’s note? less chapters mean less artworks... or I could just put in multiple artworks per chapter.
Anyway, there is another way. A compromise between those two choices is keep size of chapters the same… but release multiple chapters at once.
But if switch to one of the choices above, I will no longer able to make consistent updates. Minimum 2 chapters per month is no longer viable and months of hiatus will definitely happened.
Habit made perfect. Consistency help with many things in my life. From health to learning. A little everyday is better than a lot at once. Even with that in place, I still failed to keep up a chapter per week and have to switch to a chapter per two weeks.
Without the deadlines and obligation to make weekly update, there might even be a year long hiatus between chapters with how indecisive and lazy I was.
And story might be less polished in general. I did come back and rework unreleased chapters often. Change things around or outright retcon stuffs.
So here we are, doing an experiment. a long chapter with nearly a month of downtime.
This Nightmare Night special is a test drive. A 6k long chapter after an absent more three weeks. The real length of absent will be much longer if I switch to this format, but you get the idea, right? More wait time, bigger content per release and feel less stall.
What do you preferred? Are you willing to accept downtime between chapter longer than 1-2 months with each one have bigger word counts? Or the a chapter per two weeks is already perfect for you.
Give me your opinion. I wanted to know your opinion for now. I won't make any change right away, but if a decision needed to be made. It's best to get opinion from you guy.
Oh... If nothing change, it will took about 7 chapters to finished this 'arc'. I decided to do a few characterization and play around with Nightmare Moon's battle scenes. I set her power level pretty high and crippled her this much is my only chance to have down to earth gritty fight.
Hopefully the next arc will be much quicker.
I think it's best to try to post one chapter a month is the best for most authors. This is the best to make a chapter around 4 to 5k. This is the easiest to manage for most. Try to do a chapter on e a month and shoot for a word count between 3 to 5k.
5752839
The problem is it wouldn’t be a chapter per month but maybe two or three… I want to know how acceptable that kind of long hiatus was.
And there’s someone like me, who skipped out stories with long chapters entirely if it didn’t have huge amount of likes.
But again, we already got 20+ chapters of small word counts for they to try out. Maybe it wouldn’t be as discourage to them as what I’ve experienced.
5752843
If it makes a better chapter or helps you to have more time to write more to your liking then updating once every two to three months is understandable. I have some on my favorites list that updates only once a year, and it is only around 10k words.
The length or time doesn't matter a ton to me as the story itself. The parts where twilight tried to help nightmare because she believes somehow that she can grant Celestia wish of having her sister back were great but the other stuff was awful especially the latest chapter. Even the parts where rainbow was with nightmare getting a lesson in being a hot head and learning maybe nightmare might not be quite the monster she thought she was as she fix her in the hospital.
5752845
I see. Thank for your opinion piece. Take whatever needed for the maximization of the quality seem.
5752856
You like the story before it took a more serious approach? I am sorry that was the case.
My story did reflect my mental state of the time. Without that uppity beat mindset, I stuck and didn't know how to continue forward. Jokes and puchlines I'd try to implement no longer feel funny.
I’m not in the correct mental state for comedy to come out decent.
I just hope you will stick around till the end of this arc. It's going to be mainly Nightmare Moon and Twilight do stuffs(hopefully).
A lighthearted slice of life before moving on to next thing. A story about characters living their lives without constantly pushing the overaching plot is kinda new for me. Finger crossed.
5752869
Truthfully some of those other chapters made the story more confusing to me and the last chapter took the cake on confusing. My suggestion for the future try to get the element bearers together because last I saw rainbow had just started to make a move towards friendship with twilight and since you never wrote what happened next we have no way of knowing if she pulled it off. Plus they all got to get together before discord gets loose.
5752871
Can you tell me which part is confusing?
About the mane6....
People complaint already that this story is too slow. So much screentime already taken with only Rainbow and Twilight. Could you imagine what 6 of them would take?
Other mane6 ponies likely shown their face in the story but not all of them. Some got to stay in a story arc while other is just a support cast.
Besides, I planned this story to not have a functional elements of harmony in the first place. Pretty much all HiE stories had functional elements. I want to try something difference.
I’m more of the opinion that an author should approach his muse as the muse desires. It is good to be disciplined and set a schedule of some kind as well, but if it inhibits the creative process then it’s a detriment. As long as you’re satisfied with the product, then it’ll come out through it to the audience.
But I do need some more discipline in my writing, so I can’t and won’t argue purely for one or the other. I’ve been trying to write one, and I keep bouncing around in the plot -especially when I get stuck. And instead of powering through the block, it gets all the harder to get back and solve it. Okay, I might need a lot of discipline…
After work and daily chores, 1k words typed isn’t an unreasonable goal. Not sure what your average is. I also usually write first drafts on paper before transposing to digital. It is a slower process but helps reduce editing. Maybe you’re better with the creative flow into typing without that extra step I self impose?
5752872
I can't seem to find the confusing chapters anymore so expect for the last one I think it pretty good.
5752875
Really depend on what's I am writing. Hits or miss
From 1k words per hour to 50 words in a session. With a day or two downtime in-between.
Sometime writing on paper help, but I mostly type it in notepad++.
It seems, just from what I've seen on here, that going for longer chapters and longer breaks in between is how many stories get permanently stuck.
But do whatever works for you.
5753530
That's also my fear too.