The state of history · 12:12pm Jul 20th, 2012
Hello there, people hopefully interested in my story! As you might have noticed, the last couple of chapter came out outrageously slow. I'll be going over why that was, and what I will change to prevent that from happening again. If this doesn't interest you and you'll just wait to see when I post the next set of trouble our heroes will get into, feel free to leave now. For those still here, here goes!
Gee, Gaiascope, why did it take you, like, a month to get a chapter out? No author I know is that slow!
I know, and I'm not happy with the way things went either. But here is the deal: I went through at least 3 complete versions of chapter 5 before it was half-decent. When I say complete I mean completely written. The first couple of versions had the chapter very different, and actually longer. But it didn't work, not at all. So after a long talk with my editor and bouncing some ideas back-and-forth, I forgot everything I knew and started over.
So to get things straight, it doesn't take me a month to write a chapter. Chapters of this length (10k words) take me roughly a week to write, and then another couple of days depending on how many scenes end up not working.
Well, Gaiascope, that's all very interesting, but what does that mean for the rest of the story?
Good news, hopefully. In the rough month between chapter 4 and 5, I wrote nearly 40k words. So in the future, I'm hoping to be able to actually have those 40k words stand on their own and not as multiple (bad) versions of the same chapter.
And what will guarantee you won't end up writing yourself into a corner again?
That's what I'm getting to now. I'm not going to post the next chapter as soon as it's finished. I'm going to write the entirety of the next story arc, which I estimate to be around as long as the story as a whole is now, and only then will I post it. For those of you familiar with "The End of Ponies", that's the model I'm hoping to adopt. Except without the several months in between arcs.
Vhat?! Nyet nyet nyet! I want more story!
While I say I won't post anything, the next arc can be broken down in 3 pieces. Depending on how I end up doing it, I might be able to post something before the entire arc is complete. But what I'm hoping to do with this is guarantee that the story overall is of a higher quality, that I don't end up rewriting outrageously long parts, and that I won't write myself into a corner. So, there you have it. The future of Writing History.
It's too long! I didn't read!
- Next chapter won't be posted until next story arc is complete
- Next story arc could theoretically not take much longer than the time between chapter 4 and 5
- Please tell me your thoughts on this, as they are very important to me.
I like the idea.
To be true - such scheme (posting whole story arc, not chapter by chapter) is much more comfortable for me personally.
Even though the update will take just as long, we still get moar words/month, and I always like that!
Personally, I prefer this method. This will allow you to have semiconsistent updates here on out. You finish an arc and post as you work on the new one. With chapters this large, you could even update once every 2.5/3 weeks and easily keep your readership.
But seriously, why is Stratos so amazing?
Sorry this is pretty late, but what are your current goals/plans with this story? Do you plan on coming back to it? I really enjoyed it, and I would absolutely love to see it finished.
819871
As you can imagine, taking 6 months to bring out a new chapter is... unacceptable. At best. I'm still writing, albeit at a very slow pace due to school and conflicting interests. I have decided to release future chapters on an arc-by-arc basis, so I can give my readers some sort of consistency. I'm not going to post new chapters until I have finished writing the entirety of the next arc, which in all fairness, shouldn't that me that long anymore.
My thought process was that it was better for people to forget this story exists until I can surprise them with enough chapters to double the current length. If you have no expectations you can only be pleasantly surprised, right? Or something along those lines.
Thank you for caring enough to comment, it's things like that that really motivate me to finish this, even if it's taking me an atrociously long time.