Chitin: now in Early Access! (not really) · 8:11am Aug 9th, 2014
The short version: Chitin is going to take a while to be the best it can be, but I'll do my best to at least keep it from sucking.
I used to have a system, and it was a simple one. I'd write a story from start to finish, and when it was reasonably close to done, I'd start posting it. Often, I'd figure out something in chapter 10 that would have been really important to know in chapter 3, and I'd go back and do revisions before anything went up on the site. But I revised Chitin over and over, and it didn't seem like it was getting any better, so I decided to at least post the beginning and see what happened.
That might not have been wise.
Right now, for instance, there's some stuff in chapter 2 that I really want to edit. I won't know exactly what to change it to until I've written chapter 5. I didn't know it needed to be chapter 5 until after I saw how a few readers reacted to my original chapter 5. And for that matter, I still don't know exactly what I'll do in chapter 10!
That's why Chitin now has a note saying that some scenes may be changed once in a while. I'm going to try to keep from doing it all the time, and I'm going to do the best I can to find issues before I post a chapter, but I just don't think I'll be able to get everything perfect the first time if I'm going one chapter at a time.
If you don't want to keep the story faved while it still needs work, that's fine. If you're not interested in reading it until it's actually finished, that's fine, too. But I promise this isn't me slacking off. It's just me admitting that the story's not a "done deal"--my goal is ultimately to make it worthy of Equestria Daily, and I don't want to give up on any part of it while it falls short of their standards.
I'd also like to thank all of you for the criticism you've posted on this story. I haven't followed all of it, but I've at least considered it all, and you've helped me see the things I needed to fix most in this story. Simply put, Chitin wouldn't have a chance of becoming a great story without you, and I welcome any advice you have to give in the future.
(Up next: Fluttershy has a chat with Discord, and I try to finally, finally fix the Little Red issue.)
People complain about niggling things in the comments, but I think the upvotes speak more loudly. The story is great, and if EQD doesn't take it as it is then they're doing something very wrong.
Will you be posting notifications when you make changes? I'm willing to put up with having to reread bits when the new parts are better than the old, but I'd like to know when I need to reread.
2355743
Agreed. If it is a single line of import, a blog post could tell us what was changed and save us the time rereading the related chapter. If it was an entire scene, than a blog post could tell us where to jump to in the related chapter. Or maybe you'll think of some other way to let us know. I'm just tossing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
2355743
2355936 I'm thinking blog posts when I change what happened, but not when I change how it happened. (For instance, adding more detail to a sparse scene wouldn't get a blog post, but I'll do a blog post if I decide to edit out the mention of ponies dying.)
2356409
Could you at least batch mentions of trivial changes at the end of blog posts detailing non-trivial changes?
I maintain a private archive which I use to supply my eReader so, if you don't give me some way to know about all changes and I forget to re-download the entire fic once it's complete, I'll end up reading a half-stale version every time I decide to re-read the story.
2356581 Fair enough.
Edit: I guess I should mention my changes to Roseluck's dialogue in chapter 4. I think they're pretty small overall, but they do make the scene more serious.