IMPORTANT - Story Decision · 2:06pm Nov 21st, 2017
Due to the results of yesterday's poll and the feedback I have been given, along with my own personal sense of how to tell a story, I have decided to split Voidwalkers into two volumes so I can experiment with some small tweaks to my pony story formula. Details below.
I want to preface this by saying that nothing I ever do will change the elements I put into my stories. Swords, sorcery, ray guns, mechs, vampire knights, friendly werewolves, creatures from beyond the stars and adventures taking place in worlds beyond the furthers stars; these are all things I very much dearly love and very few stories have ever quite hit the spot deep within my heart where those things sit around a table and play games together.
This is why I like writing pony fanfiction. I can have a talking unicorn levitating a beehive to throw it into the face of a giant monster, while the unicorn is standing on the shoulder of a damaged battlemech her friend is desperately trying to repair and that is no less silly than the concept of "All characters are magic ponies."
SO fear not. While I am making a change for both myself, my patrons, and my general fans, nothing about the core Meep experience will change except for more depth in characters, plot, and villeins. This is simply a quality upgrade, and trust me I would see writing stories where I couldn't have things be silly as self-harm.
/me takes off her silly fanfic hat.
/me puts on her serious novelist hat.
Right now Voidwalkers sits at 86,073 words. This is a good length for a novel (albit a shorter one) and with the way the last chapter ended, that's actually a fairly good way to end a specific kind of book. What kind of book? The second book in a trilogy.
Currently the story is at a place where a large mystery set up. Where will our heroes go? How will they win? Can they win? There's a lot at risk, characters could die, a world is in danger of something terrible and the only thing currently preventing the destruction of the world is a piece of paper and a yet-to-be-played ultra LARP.
I had planned to include that game in Voidwalkers, this would push the book to around 150,000 words. The reason I write longer stories is for practice at it. 100K+ fics are tiring to write, and the 95k - 115k range is what publishers want from first time authors. I am writing an original novel soon. It's time to get ready for that bureaucratic mess.
On top of the word count issue, there's the aforementioned "This is actually a good ending for a Book 2." element. The end of Book Two being the darkest point in a trilogy. The badguy normally wins, or the situation becomes the most grim there.
There isn't a point where this story becomes more grim than "This one deal with Hastur is all that sits between the world and annihilation." I wasn't sticking to that rule of trilogies despite writing Bat's Academy, Voidwalkers, and <Redacted> as a loose trilogy.
Bat's Acadamy set up the slightly more technological world ponies live in 40 years after Luna's Return. It introduced the concept of the Voidborn, the Void, and sets up the major villein. It also was practice at me trying to write a slower more slice-of-life like story.
Voidwalkers introduces Chem, showing that not all Voidborn are evil, nor are they all incredibly powerful. It expands on the Void, showing that Nightmares are corrupted void entities, gives some more development to Lyra and Vinyl, and our villein makes his move putting the heroes in a very bad situation. It also shows that despite Chem, Voidborn are VERY dangerous. It was also intended to see if I could pull off story concepts I had failed at before to see if I had leaned from my mistakes. Thus far, I can say that I have!
If I had planned Voidborn to be ~95k long, this is where I would have ended it from the start. Instead, I intended the game to be played out in this story, and while I came to the conclusion of "this is a good place to end a story" I wouldn't have changed anything and kept writing except...
Some recent feedback and requests from fans for more depth in my characters has my attention. I can see their points, and it would seem like my core concept for my current MLP fanfics could use some tweaking. I write these stories in the spirit of 80's boys cartoons, and seek to emulate them with a few small tweaks such as better pacing and no censorship of swearing. Most people seem to love this but those who have offered their criticism do have a point.
I could add "fleshed out characters rather than developed archetypes" to my list of 'tweaks'. In fact, I should. You guys deserve better than my minimum standard for characters, and I can provide better. Consider that part of my basic formula modified.
The following things will also be modified:
- Voidwalkers is to be marked as completed.
- Book 3's original concept is now scrapped. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.
- Book 3 will now be entirely our heros seeking to beat Hastur and save Equestria.
- Book 3 will feature more fleshed out characters.
If people dislike Book 3 due to the changes made to characterization, following stories will revert to my current method. The third book in this series is now an experiment. I hope you like the results of my modified FiMFic Formula.
I will give you a while to catch up on Voidwalkers and finish it as I know several of my regulars are a bit behind. Besides, I have a 60k word half of a story to re-outline for a proper full story. It wont take more than two weeks, probably just one.
Lets see how this goes
How did I miss the poll? Well regardless I look forward to what you have instore.
Interesting, really interesting. Curious on how it will turn out, but I'm certain it will be awesome
4731324 What would you have voted?
4731333 I think you'll like it :3
Okay.
I eagerly await the new book. I know you're a great author, Meep. Give us a new story that immerses!
This is why I like reading your stories. They're all loosely connected, yet they still work together. I started reading Lyra7% before it was even half way done. Hadn't read any other story that you have written before hand, but still understood what was going on, because you give quick single sentences that explains everything. Didn't realize theses stories are all connected until a month or two ago. Glad I read it all. Just can't wait for the continuation of Lyra7%, if you do that.
4732518
No worries, I'm planning on it :3
meep why didn't the discord alert me to two updates of my favorite story, I was relying on trixie bot i'm panicking now
4736393 You're right. She didn't! I have no clue why she's not working. I'll do manual update notices from now on.