Friday Update #11 2018-06-29 (big news)

Time for another update!

I know I said just a week ago that I'd probably have to do these every two weeks rather than weekly. But that was before a whole ton of stuff happened! The story has just been hit with a shot of adrenaline to the heart. Allow me to explain.

First, if you're not already following BernardDK on DeviantArt, I recommend you do. He has been kicking out quality art for my story at an amazing pace. Even EquestriaDaily has featured page one of the comic just the other day. They will be continuing to carry these through the series.

Next, page two of the comic is also out! And it is stunning. Let's just pause and take a moment to marvel at this.

His interpretation of the dream realm is even better than what I have in the story. I may just have to update the text.

Next up, we've got a new chapter of Black Feather posted and ready for your reading. Here is the full chapter index. I'll continue to update this as more chapters come out. The latest was just finished last night and has had a nice facelift from the old text. It is Chapter 5 - Life in the Battlefield. But 'wait', you say, 'didn't you just publish chapter 3?'

Yep. This brings me to the next point, which is the new layout the story has with its chapters.

For a long time now, I have published huge unwieldy chapters that are frankly a burden to read in one sitting. They also take forever to draft and edit. Thus, I made the decision to target 3000-5000 as the standard word count for all chapters, give or take a few exceptions. As such, I went through all of my act one material and broke it out into brand new chapter titles. There are now forty-five of them. Here is the list.

There are a few things to note here. First, you can see that a lot of these chapters have word counts. For anything after chapter five (which has gone live today), these are estimate counts because that is how big my draft is at the moment. The further we get into the story, the more significant the rewrite is going to be when I get there. Anything beyond chapter 21 is likely to be entirely rewritten. Some of the chapters are already complete and just waiting for me to catch up to them. Everything from chapters 14 to 21 is finished, for example. Some chapters need more help than others is what I'm saying. This means my chapter release schedule will be a bit random.

Lastly, and this is a big one: Black Feather will be a trilogy.

Since day one, this story has been a monolithic and frankly intimidating project. And it has pained me often to realize that the best publishing plan may involve writing for years before I can actually publish it officially.

But all of that changed this week when I had a talk with my team and decided that it would be better to simply take act one of the story and just end "book one" there. Act one's chapters and structure have been very well known for a long time, but act two has been this nebulous thing I've been putting off really getting nailed down because there's just so much to do between now and then. Granted, I have it mostly figured out, especially the third act. But it's best to split these acts into stories because then, I get to publish much sooner!! And that means everybody wins.

Book One will likely be finished sometime early next year. My most optimistic estimate is to have it all written by the end of this year, however being that we are entering July, that's more than a chapter per week, and I doubt I can really do that unless I do nothing else at all. So we may be looking at February or March for a completion of the story. We'll see.

To be clear, the story itself is not changing due to this. I'm just splitting the story into three pieces and publishing them separately like a Lord of the Rings style trilogy.

Comments

[stag the story teller]

so you did get something out of the something sweet series that can be applied on your story, the shortness of chapters and the serialization, speaking of serialization tough, LOTR kinda includes the hobbit and a second book that talks about sauron and how he became what he is in LOTR

[Nestee88]

I'm down with shorter chapters. I don't like spending a half hour or so reading a single chapter, no offense. Still, I'm looking forward to future chapters!

[onlyanorthernsong]

a + idea!

I can only think of this , a paragraph that has come to me again and again and again in the years that i have been involved in this story

FOREWORD

This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun soon afterThe Hobbitwas written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues.
When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected “little hope” to “no hope,” I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told. The process had begun in the writing ofThe Hobbit, in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.

Professor Tolkien knew. The tale grew in the telling. The tale grew in the telling. The tale grew in the telling

Lord of the rings was always one story. One novel. But it could not be published in one tome. Putting it all out in one was too much to ask of the reader. Trimming it to fit what you could ask the reader was a disservice to the story.

So the acts became volumes

The tale grew in the telling.

farm2.staticflickr.com/1548/23534548253_547c6f0d7c_z.jpg ( super blurry image is the only image I could find of Tolkien raising an alcohoolic beverage)

Hip
hip
hooray,

I approve. And Tolkien does as well Im sure.

[Recon777]

4891946
I have not even looked at the 'something sweet' series. It's just not something I'm interested in or have the time to look into right now.

The decision to split the chapters into shorter segments was because of how well it worked in my friend's recent (and first) story, The Devil You Know as well as my prequel for it, Ashes, which I wrote in one sitting. We split it into small chunks to make editing easier but then decided to keep them that way for publishing. It worked out pretty good, though those chapters are considerably smaller than mine will be.

Black Feather will be a trilogy in the sense that LOTR is a trilogy not including the Hobbit.

4891998
A half hour?? You read pretty quick if a half hour of reading is a long chapter. I'm terribly slow at reading, and it can take me several hours to read a 10k word chapter. I think having 3-5k bites is going to work quite well. It's just enough time to get deep into things without being too short so as to disrupt the pacing.

4892133
Ohhh. OOooohhhh. OOooooo!! That is so appropriate! This is exactly what has happened here. And in more ways than you are yet aware.

For you see, my original attempt, Nightmare Nyx, was like The Hobbit. A deep and brisk adventure. But the tale grew in the telling, as you say. And you are aware of its depth, through our many conversations. The acts have now become volumes, and here we are.

And yet... this is not the full story! Tolkein's expanded work, The Silmarillion, is that "extra special" set of lore which is not in the best format to be read for entertainment's sake. Similar to this, I've got my own expanded lore, which goes far beyond the thirteen weeks of Black Feather, and even beyond the backstory of Black Feather, which goes back some six thousand years. No, the full backstory actually goes back closer to 150,000 years and involves ancient and incredibly powerful races which originated far across the galaxy. And this same timeline goes forward another 50,000 years from Black Feather as well, to the end of time.

The entire timeline comprises a singular epic tale of ponykind from its inception to its conclusion. The climax of this story takes place in the year 1745 of the Age of Harmony (the age when Luna was restored). And it's not just empty stretches of time either. We've got a technology revolution, space colonization, factions, interstellar wars, and a grand climax of the entire thing which completes the conflict which stretches all the way back nearly to the beginning of time. We're talking full-on sci fi stuff with starships and powerful magical technology and epic battles destroying entire worlds, etc. The big picture is way, way bigger than merely Black Feather. But it must be told over many stories. And the lore itself, I am hoping to communicate via graphic novel, possibly.

[Nestee88]

4892235
I meant a half hour as a minimum.

[Recon777]

4892813
Oh-ho! Well, that's different.

Yeah, I can understand this. So how big does a chapter have to be to sit at the half-hour mark for you?

[Nestee88]

4892815
Probably around 10k or so.

[Recon777]

4892849
Oh... hmm well 10k has proven problematic for me in terms of chapter length when it comes to development and editing and all that. So I'm shooting for 4k or so on average. But the converse of this is that chapter development goes much much quicker. I've got chapters 6 and 7 finished and in the editing queue right now. They should both be posted this week.