Now, normally most authors wouldn’t do this sort of thing. The reasons are obvious: it ruins immersion, (I couldn’t think of something else to put here), etc. But I want to do this because it makes my writing clear to you guys. This is going to have just about nothing to do with the story of Boneclock, so it’s fine to skip over it if you don’t find the behind the curtain stuff interesting.

Now, let’s start at the beginning. I don’t start planning my stories by imagining the plot; I plan my stories around the feel I want to convey. I wrote one novel before this (a work that I could not recommend to anyone) and I was going for the feel of walking the ruins of an ancient civilization, one where contact with people is little. It was an attempt at environmental storytelling that was driven by the characters. It was an utter failure. It was boring, a chore to write and read, and only still is available to read because I want to be as transparent as possible. Despite that, from it I figured out what I am good at: character interactions. At least I tell myself that.

About half-way through writing Worlds Adrift, I realized something, had an epiphany even: no one wants to read a story where the characters are flat and boring, no matter what kind of amazing world you put them in. Of course, I have a sample size of about two people who I’ve asked so I may be way off the mark, but if the author is just using their characters as a vehicle to explore the world without making the characters interesting, then people will lose interest. Again, it’s my own theory, but that’s how I think of writing a story. It was with that in mind that I wrote the first chapter of Boneclock: Tear’s Bounty.

I was nervous writing the first chapter, to be honest. I knew of so many ways to f*ck up writing the introduction from just reading other web novels, and I made a lot of them in my first story, so it’s little wonder why I was nervous. I typed my first letter, and before I knew it, I was finished.

To be honest, I had a bad habit of not actually reading what I write before posting it, one that I broke, because of some sort of misguided belief that my ‘raw writing’ would be better than actually putting in the effort to edit my work. Just thinking about it makes me angry with myself, honestly.

Anyway, getting back on track, I wrote it, then wrote a few more chapters to be able to have at the ready in case life happened. In fact, I still do. I don’t sell them on patreon or something like that, but I keep them anyway, just in case. Okay, no more tangents. I promise. I posted the first chapter and dutifully kept writing.

Now, some of the attentive ones in the audience may have noticed the fact that I haven’t really planned anything out at this point. That is by design. George R.R. Martin said something roughly stating that there are two types of writers, those who grow their story and those who build it. I am a grower (Minds out of the gutter, people). I started with a few basic things that I wanted as a part of my story: the mc is a lich who lost their memories, Clockworks, and the system. That was it. There is one other element that I don’t want to share because it’s a bit of an easter egg, but my point still stands.

Let’s go in order: mc. I got inspired to write the mc as a lich because of, mostly, Liches Get Stitches. It’s a really good novel, but something about the style of it rubbed me the wrong way. The thing that captured my attention the most was how the mc of that, Maude, has to grapple with her old and new personalities and reconcile the differences between them. I decided to flip that. Instead of the character having to bring two distinct personalities together, I wondered what it would be like if the mc had to rebuild theirs from the ground up. It got me thinking of all the ways that could be played and the ways characters could play off of it. At that point, it was there to stay.

Second aspect: Clockworks. This one was a part of that secret fourth basic building blocks from two paragraphs ago, but it also serves another purpose: a great foe. The hero and the demon king is such a classic idea that I’m 99.99% sure that all of you reading just had a whole host of tropes spring to mind as soon as you read it, but what I focus on is how the demon king represents an endless battle until the hero comes to stop him. In a world where there is a constant, far-off but nonetheless real battle going on, it gives the world a reason to be very militaristic and very combat-oriented. Otherwise, you would wonder why so many people have martial jobs when they could be doing other things. In general, a grand-level threat is the sort of thing that lets me have a lot of fight scenes where I don’t always have to address the moral questionability of the characters, enemy or otherwise.

Finally: System. I’ll be honest, system stories are some of the most prolific stories on RR or any other site. Out of the top seven rising stars at the time of writing, four of them are litrpg. Now, that is disregarding the fact that of the numerous best series on RR, only a few of the twenty are litrpg, but my point stands. Litrpg is everywhere. Of the ones I’ve read, it’s always the same song and dance; skills, stats, species, abilities, numbers. I will admit that there are some litrpg’s that should be given a different designation. Stray Cat Strut is one that I would debate the validity of the litrpg label, due to it just being a catalogue of alien tech that Cat can buy, but there are others. One of the ones I counted earlier, Game Maker’s System, is just like that. Now, with that in mind, I would be remiss to not mention the advantages of litrpg. Mainly, clear progression. It gives both the author and the reader a clear indication of how powerful a character is in relation to other characters. Of course this can be subverted (Salvos, Chrysalis, Blue Core, just of the ones off the top of my head), with the mc having some sort of quality that transcends levels. The point is, litrpgs have been done to death and there is probably little room to mess with that hasn’t already been done before. That’s why I decided to go with something else.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

How many of you have played Caves of Qud? None? Yeah, that’s expected. It’s a really, really obscure game that looks like a microsoft spreadsheet. The point I’m bringing up here is the mutation system in the game. At the start of your run, you can choose from a list of mutations and you can get more as you level up. That was my goal for Boneclock. It was also inspired by Chrysalis, funnily enough, as well as any other evolution litrpg. I wondered to myself ‘why do monsters get all the fun evolution stuff while humans are stuck with boring classes?’ You get the picture. In the end, I was trying to combine a standard litrpg’s leveling system, the mutation system from Chrysalis, and the evolution system from every evolution litrpg. Yeah, that’s where the Sa’rk system came from.

I just realized that I wrote 1312 words in one sitting. That is very above average for me; usually I write about 1000-1200 words per 1.5 hour sitting. I’ve been writing for 1 hour now. You know what? Let’s keep going. So, what’s next? Where is the story going? Well, there’s going to be a big explosion of new characters soon, there’s going to be the first real goal, and I’m going to keep up with character development.

Hmm… I’ve already ruined any magic there was in the story, so I may as well do it more. Fara was barely planned from the beginning, to be honest. I only knew I wanted to have her half way through writing chapter 2. Let’s see… that first hunt? That was spontaneous as well. I realized that just leaving Hard Sand was boring, so I added the mesa dog fight to keep the pacing up. The occupier there? That was actually meant to be part of a different stretch of the story, but the poor guy fit there. Sorry little bud.

From there, the Sand Scales were actually planned from the beginning. Yeah, the stupid lizard people were more planned out than Fara. Writing it like that makes me feel bad for the poor lady, but eh. What’ll you do? Similarly, Admiral Yutrad was a spontaneous addition as well. His relationship with his assistant? Planned. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it was planned.

A big problem I had with writing the structure of the cities in Boneclock was this: how the hell do docks work if the boats are sliding across the ground? I mean, imagine if every ship in existence literally floated on the water without displacing it? It would look hilariously stupid and I had to come up with a solution to that very question. You see the results.

Okay, now, Mokan and his sister? Half-spontaneous and half-planned. I wanted Fara to get into trouble with a bunch of thugs, but didn’t have the narrative time to write a full-blown war between the protagonist gang and the bad guy gang. In the end, it turned into an explosive fight on board the Kharon. I’m kind of satisfied with it, kind of not. I liked how the fight played out, but wanted it to have a larger scale. Writing a duel? Easy. You have your guy and your opponent. Nothing else. Writing a scrappy brawl where gunfire is lancing across the battlefield and there are dozens of factors to contend with? Nightmare. For me, anyway.

I should reiterate, by the way, that everything said here is from the perspective of an amtuer author without any real experience writing beyond the god-awful Worlds Adrift. So… take everything with a grain of salt.

I’m running out of topics, but I have a couple more, Mori’s character being the first. When I began, I had the image of the lich being an extremely fatherly figure who took care of his friends. Then I was writing chapter 3. I was in my flow, then I stopped and stared at the screen. ‘Could the lich… be a woman…?’ I thought. I kid you not. I shrugged to myself and added gender bender to the list of things I am doing in Boneclock that I’ve never done before. It was as spontaneous as it could have been and I think I made the right choice.

Alright, final thing: you. Yeah, you. I’m not just talking about the kind people who gave reviews to my story. I’m not just talking about my first commenter of the story, Loke, who I still remember. I’m not even talking about Nautilus and ShotoGun, who got me off my *ss and got me to really rethink how the Traits worked in the world. I’m talking about you. You, who read this far into my story and haven't dropped it yet. You, who read this far into this rambling introspection that I seriously don’t know why I decided to write. You, who let me know that someone out there is finding enjoyment from what I write. You are the reason why I write. And for that reason, thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.

P.S.: I actually posted the first chapter of this story on the day of the writathon and had no clue what the whole event was until I got the message about it. So uh… wh