Words: 3,000
Chapters: 2
+100 Writing XP
You now have sufficient experience to level up one writing skill! Please select from the options below:
- Writing Quality
- Writing Speed
The notification had come up just as I’d finished chapter two, confirming that I only received writing XP at the completion of each chapter. Naturally, I put the experience points into Writing Speed — the quicker I wrote, the more chapters I’d complete, and the more chapter I completed, the more experience points I’d get. That was how I justified it to myself.
Writing Speed increased to level 3!
+100 Class XP
Class leveled up!
You are now Class: Level 11 LitRPG Author
The progress was coming through hard and fast, now. Only two chapters in and I was already level 11; I didn’t have any way of benchmarking myself, but this definitely felt like the fastest anyone had ever progressed. I was the hero of my own story, naturally gifted and able to thrive in any situation without much trouble. Maybe if I really was a character, readers would call me a Mary Sue — a term they seemed to like so much, based on what I’d seen on Splendid Street — simply because I was so innately talented.
I cast these imaginary readers out of my mind; there was no point worrying about what they thought of me. All that mattered was what I thought of me. And I thought a great deal of me, in fact.
It was at this moment that I received another notification, this one completely unlike the rest.
Story approved!
I hurried back to the website, quickly searching for the name of my fiction, The Stabby Sorcerer, and watching it pop up in a list of search results alongside another fiction called The Stabbing Sorcerer. Oops. Maybe next time around I’d actually give my proposed story name a search before committing to it, and save my story from getting mixed up with other, less well-written, stories.
+100 Market Research XP
Market Research increased to level 7!
+100 Class XP
But that was a problem for a later date. Right now, I was fully committed to The Stabby Sorcerer as a title, mostly because I couldn’t imagine there being a better combination of words to resonate with my target audience.
I scrolled down the page, admiring my new listing with its pretty and semi-detailed cover, its dense blurb, its long string of genre and trope tags, and I felt a warmth in my heart. It took me a moment to identify the source of this feeling — one that I hadn’t had since that day I won that hotdog-eating contest, a few days before my first child was born — as being one of pride.
As I scrolled down the story listing, I saw a button. Post first chapter? it read.
Now, I’d done some research on this. The stories with the most success had gotten there by posting a chapter every single day, if not more often, at least for the first while. If I was going to replicate that, I would need to be writing a chapter a day — not something that I’d been managing, even with my now level 3 Writing Speed skill and even when I’d been using my Speedy Fingers title. The other alternative, I’d realised, was to write a good load of my story before even starting to post it.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
This was very realistically the right approach for me, at least until I built up my Writing Speed skill further. I could spend the next few weeks or months writing the story, at least getting to the end of the first main arc — or “book”, if we want to get technical — and only then start posting. This would allow me to post on a regular basis, at a regular time, and ensure I get plenty of eyeballs on my fiction to rise in the site’s ranking, and feature on the various pages that worked as discovery mechanics. It was definitely the right approach for me, and—
Chapter 1 posted!
+100 Class XP
Oops. I didn’t realise I’d been copying and pasting my chapter contents in, filling in the title, and clicking the ‘post’ button while I’d been thinking about not doing precisely that. Oh well! It was done now. I guess I’d have to sit back, relax, and watch all the followers start pouring in. After all, with a story as good as mine, it was only a matter of time, right?
Pop.
“Oh, hi Daemon.”
“Hey, buddy.”
“Just checking in?” I asked.
“Just checking in,” the creature confirmed. “I saw you posted your first chapter. Going for the ‘no backlog’ route, are we? Think you’re up to it?”
“I didn’t think that far ahead, to be honest.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say. And then… well, you’ll find that bit out for yourself.” Before I could interrogate him on what exactly he meant, Daemon continued, “So? Can I take a look at what you’ve written?”
I rolled backwards on my office chair and gestured for the mouse to get involved. In lieu of an actual computer mouse, he scrolled up and down with the arrow buttons on the keyboard.
“Yes, good, good,” Daemon murmured. “Good start. Very dense. Love the protagonist so far…”
“Thank you! I spend a good while—”
“Woah, woah woah woah, what’s this?” Daemon suddenly asked.
“What do you mean? The unexpectedly straightforward characterisation or the indiscriminate killing?”
Daemon waved me down. “No, I haven’t got a problem with either of those bits. I’m talking about these!” He pointed at the screen.
“Oh, they’re guillemets.”
“Guillemets? Are you not US American?”
I shook my head. “No, why would you assume that?”
“Well, that’s the default isn’t it? Everyone is US American unless explicitly stated otherwise. It’s the same way that I know you’re a straight white man without you having to say it.”
“I grew up in France. So the guillemets are—”
“Yeah,” Daemon interrupted, “you’re going to have to change those. US punctuation only. [BLEEP], I didn’t think I was gonna have to clue you in to such basic stuff. [BLEEP]ing heck. [BLEEP].”
“I thought you said the audience didn’t like profanity.”
“Well, I’m not asking them to fill in the [BLEEP]ing blanks, am I?”
I held my hands up in the air in surrender. «Alright, alright! I’ll change them. Looks, I didn’t think it was a big deal, I thought readers could deal with the punctuation being slightly—»
„Well, they can’t, alright?“
‘Alright!’ I said again. ‘I’ll change it.’
I rolled back over to the computer and went about changing the guillemets to double quotation marks with a find and replace, and Daemon seemed to calm down a bit, his shoulders no long so tense. “I thought you were a guide, not an editor, anyway?”
“Guide, editor — what’s the difference? All you gotta know is that if you don’t progress well, it’s my head that the bosses will have, alright?”
“I’ll progress well,” I said. “In fact, I’m already progressing well, aren’t I? I’m level 11 already — that must be far faster than any other LitRPG Author class people have managed!”
Daemon shrugged. “You’re doing alright. But keep at it, alright? And no more—”
“Guillemets, got it.”
“Good.” Daemon nodded. “Alright, I best be going.”
“Coming up on your lunch break or is there another emergency to see to?”
“Yes,” Daemon replied, and then popped away from my tiny apartment once more.
I was left feeling slightly less reassured by Daemon than I had previously. It felt almost as though the mask had slipped some, as though he was revealing his true self. Though perhaps I was just feeling defensive; after all, I’d put my heart and soul into this one chapter, and for someone to rip it to shreds like that was very likely to get under my skin. I shook my head, trying to forget about the harsher parts of this encounter, and rested fingertips on keyboard, ready to get started with chapter 3.
Words: 3,422
Progress was slow. Not because I couldn’t think of what came next, and not because my fingers were moving too slowly — even without the Speedy Fingers title that was not currently the case — but because I was distracted.
I had another chapter saved up.
I could post it.
Maybe it’d help my chances.
Or maybe it was better to save it for tomorrow.
But I really, really wanted to post it straight away - every fibre of my being wanted to share it with the world. So I… did.
Chapter 2 posted!
+100 Class XP
Class leveled up!
You are now Class: Level 12 LitRPG Author
At level 12, you unlock:
[ACCESS] Counters: Rating (Story), Rating (World), Rating (Grammar), Rating (Overall), Followers
OK, that was interesting, and useful to have. I could only hope that these new stats wouldn’t distract me…