This has been a wild 3.5 months as I have been writing Exodar Chronicles. When I started, I had no clue what I was doing. The longest piece of fiction I had ever written was 30 pages long. Approximately 10 posts. And everything else I had ever written could barely double that. That said, Exodar Chronicles performed beyond all expectations. I have loved writing and hearing your feedback. Especially Athalahelm, who commented far more than anyone else. I valued and appreciated your feedback. Even when I didn’t take your suggestions, it told me where my writing and the perceptions of my readers were not matching up.
I am sad to say that this ending was set in stone within the first month. Ever since then has been a compounding set of errors and mistakes. By this point I have lost the ability to keep the story on any sort of track, and my attempts to do so have made Ander seem like a complete idiot. I have learned so much from writing this story however. I hope to put all of my learning to good use in my next fiction.
If it makes some things make more sense, the transformation that turns commoners into nobles happens when they go head to head in a mental battle. In Chapter 44, when High Lord Torden commanded Ander to kneel, he was attempting to turn Ander into a noble. Thinking back, this was not the most logical way the transformation would take place, but that is what I came up with when all this started and I understood far less than I do now.
This may infuriate you a bit, but the quest Ander is on is a complete distraction. He was not meant to succeed, or if he did, Sir Mattheos didn’t care. It was an opportunity to allow the other contestants to get the use of their legendary skills back through some contrived trial. Sir Mattheos wanted Ander to lose the tournament so he could be drafted all the sooner. Ander would have had to fight most of the opponents without his legendary skills. The final fight with Cormal would have had him desperately trying to disable the suppression field keeping him from using his powers. It was a cool scene, and part of me wishes I had written it, but I am so bored with this trainwreck.
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The future would have had Ander flying about on his giant ship finding the final ancient enclaves of the elves and dwarves, saving the Oritols from the predations of Sir Mattheos’s master, fighting a resistance against The Creator, and eventually saving the Earth (yes, Earth) from being plundered by said creator. I had it all planned out, but my mistakes early on spoiled too much. I may return to these ideas in the future. I sincerely hope I get the opportunity to do that, but for now I have other stories to write.
I hope that you do not unfollow too quickly. While I will be taking a bit of a hiatus from posting, that time will be spent on preparing for my next story. I will post here when it comes out, and I hope to see all of you then.
One of the complaints about Ander was that he was flat, and in trying to fix that I turned him into a psychopath. In this new story I will have two main characters, and they already have depth Ander could only ever dream of. I am so effing excited.
It has been a blast, and I hope you accompany me to enjoy my future works. And I promise, no more eunuchs.
Sincerely,
Garrick Heartwood
p.s. I apologize for how abrupt this was. But I will admit that my writing issues were not entirely due to my new job. This has been coming for a while, and as soon as I realized it I cut it off so that I could remember it fondly, rather than become a millstone around my neck.
p.p.s. this is an Ad my brother made for this story. I found it endlessly embarrassing when he made it, but it is just funny now.
[https://i.ibb.co/YkFD5vn/Ad.png]