Divine Entertainment's Future · 4:27pm Nov 7th, 2016
I'm rapidly approaching the crossroads of this story, or the point of no return, so to speak.
When I started out with this story, I roughly estimated all three parts to be over in about 120k words. As it has been made abundantly clear to me, that will NOT be the case. The story has gone through a lot of the major plot points of the first part, and there are only a handful left. I'm talking of the eleven milestones, we've passed eight.
Which also means we're approaching the point where the time skips are going to be more in number, and longer in time skipped. (Which was the intention all along).
Now here approaches the problem. You(the audience), have just now started to kinda bond with the characters, while one just got introduced, and the last shade will be revealed REALLY soon. The problem being here that the last two chars probably won't get too much screentime, and a lot of information will be missing in terms of character development.
Which throws me headfirst into a conundrum. Should I continue on with my originally intended course for this story? Or should I swerve into a new direction?
The solution I have for this is to add an entire arc where the friends go do stuff(adventure stuff ofc), but doing so would blow this story even more out of proportion. I never thought this story would become this long, and the new estimate hangs out at around 250k atm. Adding more would easily get me to 300-350k.
So I'm currently torn between those two options and the time to decide is approaching fast. Faster than I'd like to be honest.
Could you even deal with the big timeskips ahead? Is what I'm currently asking myself. I'm talking skips spanning years here. On one side, I can tell you want to see more of Atlas and his friends... on the other... this story was never about them. It's about Atlas.
What to do, what to do...
I'm good with time skips. Don't need 100k words of slice of life. I think you do a good job of hitting th important points I'll read either way. Really enjoy the story
I normally plan everything in advance, and try to to stick with it, but I always just throw the whole thing away and let the story write itself from he characters for some reason. So, I would say go with want you really want, if you want Atlas to to have some fun with his friends before he become a grumpy sleeper then go ahead, it you're going to start going into the Atlas' plan to beat the Olympian gods then a little time skip is in order.
Personally, I am not really attached to Atlas' companions, as they don't seem to have much in the way of a sense of ambitions for what i can see or have a clear objective at the moment sense they already reached it. the slice of life I don't mind as long as it has to do with the world building, which is what keeps me interested in in this story, not his companions personal lives.
Do the time skips, but you could put in important events in the middle. Think it like a newspaper, they don't tell you every detail that happened that day, just what is deemed important enough to know.
Well I personally would enjoy more character development between Atlas and co or just more chapters in general, the longer the story the longer it takes to end. I don't like endings.
But seriously if you want extend I believe you should do so, it will make the character more memorable before their unavoidable leave making more of an impact at the end. I can see if you stretch it too long you may end up never getting to the main plot points of the story, so it's more of your opinion how much you would want to extend. You've done a great job with the story so far so I can trust any decision you make.
That being said you can always revisit Atlas's slice of life aspect with a different story later on down the line(I would read it). This story is suppose to be more adventure then slice of life; fully fleshed out characters are important in both groups though.
About adding another adventure Arc; I would definitely enjoy reading one. The problem of having to come up with a whole new story line isn't lost on me... Would it be centered around a villain we know or newly created one, maybe short story adventures(side quests). A lot more work in the end.
I'd suggest following the intended course and then doubling back and expanding on it later.
Then again, I've never really gotten past the setup, summary, and introduction stage for most of my stories. I look forward to the day I actually reach what I consider a climax and have a dynamic conclusion.
Writing takes a lot of patience, and while it is faster in some cases than other arts (like the staging involved in some forms of illustration) in my opinion you get what you pay for. People grow from strength and sharing frozen energy in service of active energy.
If you as the artist are bored becasue you cannot get to a character you've been wanting to show off as a developer, and provided the only payoff is maybe you'll get an extra compliment or positive feedback for the structure of final product, then by all means delay setting up the other tent poles in favor of shrouding the treasure underneath. But, know that you can never go back and follow through on what you originally planned, there will be no sense of completion and you'll be stuck with those hidden gems long enough for the whether, if not some other force natural or otherwise to shred the flaccid part of your tent to shreds.
You could keep the story the way you intended, and maybe insert side stories as interludes if too many people complain? Or, if you have the time, you could spin-off story with little adventures, alongside the original.
In my opinion large time skips without explanation are never a good idea.
Butt that's just my opinion.
4288876 Thank you very much. My main issue with time skips currently comes from the fact that readers seemed adverse to the romance between Belle and Atlas, since it didn't have enough build-up for them. Which is of course a problem when time skips are a regular thing. So I was worrying how they would take further or even more extreme developments without proper word-mileage.
4288901 Well yeah, the companions are mostly slice of life-y, since the one experiencing the actual "adventure" is Atlas. To them, it's just regular life.
4288955 That's actually the planned format.
4288965 And once again the problem of writing about an immortal shows itself. You can flesh out the characters all you want but at the end they're all just dead and the immortal is still alive. :P
4289032 Sane, coherent words from Everglue Horace... looks like Hell froze over.
Honestly I'm not looking forward to introducing characters or the rune system. All of this (at least for me) is just a huge, intricate setup for the climax of the story. In my head, the end of this story is majestic as fuck! I just hope I'll be able to do it justice once I get there.
4289035 Good Idea, but I'm not that big a fan of spin-offs. Also, after Divine entertainment is finished, I want to tackle one of two projects I currently have in my head. Mor about them when it's appropriate, but just know that both are equally as long as DE.
4289091 Does having to cover several thousand years of story content due to immortality count?
And lastly to ALL OF YOU:
Thank you very much for your input, I'll give it some more thought and explore what is possible for an added arc, but I'm currently leaning more towards my planned course of action.
True but the characters who do die still leave an impression on said immortal and since he never dies they are still in a sense there. 'Gurren Lagann' is a good example of despite being dead a character doesn't have to be truly dead.
Unfortunately as you said those changes can change again overtime making the first change diminish somewhat in value. Common example for an immortal would be to fall in love and then potentially swearing off future romance only to eventually fall in love again.
Personally I would like to see some episodic kinds of stuff, provided you have plot ideas for the episodes. That's not a strong preference though; if you don't have episode ideas, just do the time skips. It's not really that big a deal either way.
Incidentally, this blog post kinda reminds me of another fic I'm following that also has large time skips, Starscribe's Last Pony on Earth series. If you're having trouble figuring out how to handle time skips well, you might want to consider looking at it for writing tips. The sequels especially skip around a lot (sometimes with centuries between chapters), and it works out nicely.
to be honest while I do enjoy the characters now I am interested in seeing these time skips and at how atlas develops both mentally and in terms of his magic there are so many things I look forward to in this story and I say when it comes down to it you'll make the right choice and people will like it either way. keep up the good work ill always look forward to more great chapters until next time - MoonMan
IMHO I would love to see the story stretched out to a million, which could be done with the plot you have... (but I think thats just me
)
Regardless though, I think people would love more chapters with the characters bonding and as you said, going on adventures, getting to know each other better ect ect. Then after all those shananigans, you continue on to the end or whatever course you had in mind at the start.
Idk if you've decided already, but what I've seen some stories do is go through the normal plot, and have slice of life stuff as an intermission. That way you could get through the story, and if you get writers block or something you can just post a funny story from "back in the day"
I'm with the really long story group of peeps here
i enjoy escapism
the more of it i have the better
4290240
As much as the time skips would be interesting, I would very much like a longer story so I agree with this.
But you're the author and whatever you choose is your decision.
4386603 I'm afraid the decision has already been made and the time skips are already happening. I did add a few chapter to the original plan though.
4386637
Okay. Again it will be just as good of a story with this direction
I started reading this the other week and I been impressed with what I have see so far.
In terms of the time skips as long as there is continuity and sudden breaks in the story flow it would work either way.
Particularly with the last chapter ending with the finding of the future alicorn sisters could tie in well with the prologue when the mane 6 questioning/interrogating Atlas about his relationship with the princesses. Would Discord pop in as well?
It leaves me wondering what effect he had on the mane 6 lives and any differents from canon.
Regardless of where you go I look forward to the journey.
4684934
my dude, this post is almost a year old, everything already happened :P Thanks for taking the time to formulate an answer though ^^