Hey people!
Welcome to my first Author's Note where I rant about stuff!
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Some stats because I'm a stat nerd:
- Average expected chapter readership seems to be at around 50-60 as of posting this, though actual average of just summing up all views and dividing by chapter count leaves it at 85 due to few high-performing chapters.
- The biggest spike in expected views per chapter is the appearance on the Writathon winners list. Yay! Before, the average expected readership was at 30-40.
- The readership numbers are steadily climbing, so I know that people are still finding the story, and it's not just rotting in complete obscurity! \o/
- The most viewed chapter - as expected - is chapter 1. Makes sense!
- The least viewed chapter is 37 - Ashes to Ashes 1. Huh?
- The most viewed chapter that isn't one of the first few is Ch.12 at 148 views - surrounded by Ch.11 at 72 views and Ch.13 at 78 views. Huh?
- This means that there's a surprisingly high number of people who just pick a random chapter to start the story at, or at least skip chapters when reading.
- In turn, it also means that if you read the whole story start to end, you're a very dedicated person and quite special in terms of statistics! Thank you! \o/
I would include some stats about followers and favorites, but as one might expect those are basically just line-goes-up and not particularly interesting.
Review stats are non-existant as of writing this, because there's no reviews. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Total of 5 people decided to leave a comment:
Writing without any feedback writing feels very much like screaming into the void and all of you helped keep me sane during the Writathon which I greatly appreciate.
As such, I'd really like to shoutout all of you as MVP's during this experience!
- Ninivianne for being the first person to comment ever and leaving very uplifting messages
- Daijena for letting me know that the early chapters were hitting those emotional highs I aimed at
- Elvasolembum for encouraging me to write more
- SanctifiedSeraph for always encouraging me to also take care of myself so I have the strength to finish the story
- Sheep-dodger for being a grammar-correcting legend and offering fixes for my screw ups
I really appreciate your comments and can't even begin to explain what they do for a small author's mental health. Thank you, sincerely.
If for whatever reason you are not comfortable being on this list, please let me know. There doesn't need to be a reason, I just wanted to show my gratitude. <3
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The Writathon experience:
Last year I realized that Writathon on Royal Road is a thing. I knew that some of my friends in the past wrote the very short stories I wrote - they never got an ending, but whenever I brought them up I got positive reactions. So I figured that since I know I won't finish the story without some external encouragement, I'd sign up for the next Writathon when it rolls around again.
[Sample of one of the never-finished stories I sent to my friends in spoiler]
Ev-3 Chapter one,
“The day when my memories broke.”
It’s 7 am, I know it without needing to look at the clock. I must wake up now and start preparing the breakfast. My husband likes fried eggs with bacon on mondays, I should prepare those for him, they would make him happy. Maybe he would like some tea too, black tea, as black tea is good in the morning. It’s kinda like coffee, except without being coffee. I open my eyes and sit up on my side of the bed. He’s lying down under our shared blanket, on the other side of a large bed. He’s smiling, that means he’s dreaming of something nice, right? I reach my hand out and place it on his cheek. It’s so warm, but, the sensation startles me and my hand flinches backwards as the feeling of guilt overwhelms me. “Why?” A thought swirls inside my mind. “I don’t understand.. What have I done wrong?” It changes its shape and speaks of new things. I cut the thought short, and move it into the bin of my mind, deciding to pay no more attention to it.
Next moment I am already on my feet, browsing through my clothing cabinet and dressing up. The house is rather cold, even though there are no windows anywhere except my husband’s work room. Sometimes he lets me look out of it. It makes me happy to know that he would allow me to do something like that. I slide a shirt over my head and nod approvingly. “All ready”. My lips turn into a smile and I head out of our bedroom.
The hallway is cold as well as dark, as no one’s turned the lights on yet. Albeit, I don’t mind, because I see in the dark much better than my husband does. He always makes me turn the lights on. But, I don’t need to do that yet. He’ll wake up in no less than 17 minutes, at 7:22. Four minutes before his usual time. I can tell by the way he was breathing as I was leaving the bedroom. I’ll have to make haste with my hygiene so I can start preparing his meal in time. One.. two.. three steps, and I’m standing before doors to our bathroom.
My fingers wrap around the handle and I push on it with just enough pressure to open it as silently as possible. The doors creak as I slip inside and quickly close them behind myself. I walk over to the sink and look over the tools arranged there. Two toothbrushes, one noticeably rougher than the other, two different toothpastes and a soap. My husband is a bit peculiar with certain things. He doesn’t like it when I use his toothpaste or his brush, I must always use mine, so I do. It takes me well over a minute to complete even just my default morning needs. Four minutes is all it takes for me to be done with brushing my teeth and only a minute more to be done with cleaning up the place. I quickly leave the bathroom and close the door behind myself.
I missed out on the first few days of the Writathon due to not realizing it started, but eh, no big loss. Honestly, 55 555 words in 5 weeks felt like an impossible goal, but I mostly focused on 'putting one foot in front of the other' so to say. Write one chapter, don't worry about the rest. I think this mentality helped me soldier through the first half of the writathon and reach the halfway milestone in chapter 21.
With the momentum of finishing the first milestone, I managed to carry on through all the way to chapter 26, which released whooping 3 days after the milestone was reached - that's when the mental tax on forcing it through caught up with me and my mental health imploded.
This has lead to a massive 10 days break with basically no communications from my side. While it's fair to say that the Writathon wasn't the cause of the depression, the pace I forced myself to go at certainly did not help it either.
This meant that I had 8 days left to write 24 000 words - so basically meet half the Writathon goal in a week. However, unlike last time where I was purely focused on writing the story with nary an idea where to take it, the extra 10 days bought me time to think. I had at least a few ideas how to make the world more interesting, what I wanted the characters to be like and so on. I think anyone reading the story can notice the shift that happened between chapter 26 [before the break] and chapter 27 [after the break].
The two chapters before the last chapter [39 and 39.5] were crunched out dead of the night, with me quite literally blacking out on my keyboard during the process. I haven't read them back properly yet, but I'm convinced they're going to be some of the most atrocious stuff I've ever written due to my physical state when writing them. In my very brief check I saw there were entire missing sentences and the paragraphs were written in nonsensical looping language. Frankly, I dread looking back at them, but I'm gonna have to rewrite at least parts of those two.
Speaking of rewrites - that's a rule I've set for myself. No rewrites. I'm the type of person who tries to draw something, and then erases the very first line over and over and over until I think it's perfect, at which point I've forgotten the thing I was trying to draw in the first place and give up. The point of this rule is to NOT get stuck on trying to make something perfect, though I'll have to check on the state of those two chapters. However, I do not plan to change this rule - I've seen enough fictions on Royal Road enter permanent hiatus because the author thought that the story needed a rewrite and then never started again. I don't want to do that to you or myself, so I'll generally stick with this rule with exceptions for special circumstances [Like 39 and 39.5].
Chapter 40 was written the next day after, with only about 500 words remaining and finally met the Writathon goal 4 hours before it was due. Yay for actually achieving something! \o/
Overall the Writathon was something that allowed me to do something I wanted to do for a very long time but never managed to - Write a story and stick with it. I am very thankful for the pressure it put on me to deliver because without it I'd never have achieved this. On the other hand, it's definitely a stressful experience that does tax the person writing. There's a reason why most novelists take months to release this much content - even when they have everything pre-planned and mapped properly.
Would I do it again?
Yes
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The Story so Far & What I've learned:
I believe it's fair to divide the story into three distinct parts based on the experience they offer.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
1) Morana & the Intro
I've been thinking about how there's almost no stories where the protagonist actually dies. They always have plot armor and you as the reader know that no matter what, they will somehow survive because there's more pages in the book. I wanted to subvert this expectation, but in order to make it work it was important that the actual protagonist of the story [Malinka] is developed throughout the introduction. After all, would anyone actually read on if this story was instead about Dave? Or Stein? They're decent side characters I think, but they're not protagonist material due to the limited time in the spotlight.
This has both helped and extremely compromised the intro chapters. For one, outside of the idea above I had very little idea of what I was actually writing about. If you read those chapters, you'll quite quickly notice that there's almost nothing outside of the character development.
I think I nailed some of the very emotional scenes and I believe the characters were developed pretty well, but what do you actually know about Ravensbrook? Basically nothing. What do you know about the storm in which Malinka was found? Basically nothing.
Even the Torment terminology got softly retconned later - originally the term referred purely to people like Malinka and Morana. You can see this in chapter 1 in discussion between Morana and her companion. There it was a reference specifically to Malinka, and the storm was merely a side effect - whilst in later iteration of the story both of them would be called Torments due to the world's slang.
2) Malinka's early adventure
This section of the writing starts with chapter 11 and ends with chapter 26 [and thus the 10 day break mentioned before].
My main focus when writing this part of the story was to really get inside Malinka's head and show her growing up. However, this has caused a big problem. On a fundamental level, every writer writes what they know, and I'm a bit of a doomer all things considered. This has lead to a situation where Malinka was repeatedly beaten down and battered without ever properly getting back up.
Furthermore, it hasn't addressed the lack of worldbuilding and kept the tight focus on characters. While I still think I'll focus on character writing moving forward since I like it, I think it hurt those chapters quite a bit. Around the end of this writing period I couldn't help but be extremely bothered by the realization that this was essentially going to be a big 'go to place, tackle problem, arc over, repeat' formula over and over - and I believed this would immensely harm the story.
I had my plot twist with a surprise protagonist, I had decently developed characters, and even few named places. But I had nothing connecting them - they were all isolated islands that sometimes bumped into each other. And this needed fixing.
3) The current story
With the character motivation of Malinka going off to becoming a Hunter [What even are hunters? There was nothing properly explaining that until Rybrus showed up in this arc of the story.] I couldn't justify making those connections in the already existing places and fleshing the world out that way.
As such, I just slapped a nice little trauma ribbon on it and decided to let future me worry about it. For now, I had to get basically half of the Writathon goal out of the way, and I had thoughts how to make the world more interesting.
One, Spell Tools. The most prominent example being the Firemaker tool used during the Ashes to Ashes combat. These, alongside the individual's power, will be the most prominent source of tactics in battles. Anyone can use spell tools. They're somewhat of a supernatural item - think of them as a Vancian-spell-in-a-box type deal. Each spell tool does exactly one single thing, and it's up to the character to come up with ways to use them to solve their problems.
Two, until this 'arc' I had a vague idea of what I wanted Malinka's power to be, but the break allowed me to hone in on it and truly crystallize the idea into something solid with strict rules it will obey. I think that supernatural powers having rules and being limited is inherently more interesting than vague notions that maybe it's limited somehow, but it's always good enough for the situation at hand.
THE FOLLOWING SPOILER TELLS YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT MALINKA'S POWER. REVEAL AT YOUR OWN RISK. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Memory's Hierarch is probably the most broken power in the setting RIGHT NOW but it still obeys strict rules that must be met.
1) A power is stored with Malinka if a person wishes for her to succeed in the future with absolutely no ulterior motives.
THE FOLLOWING IS AN ULTRA-LEVEL SPOILER. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW ANY MORE THAN BROAD STROKES, DO NOT CLICK
Specifically, their dying wish must be for Malinka to succeed in the future. The 'Hierarch' [high priestess so to say] part of her power's title matters here.
2) The powers are mutually exclusive. She cannot invoke more than one power at a time.
3) The powers act as if she had them naturally while active. While this means that she is much more versatile when it comes to powers, she is less skilled at using each individual power than the people who originally had them.
4) Each power comes with side effects that the person growing up with them learns to compensate for. She lacks this.
5) The statues are representations of the powers she has at her disposal.
THE FOLLOWING IS AN ULTRA-LEVEL SPOILER. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW ANY MORE THAN BROAD STROKES, DO NOT CLICK
As hinted at in one of the chapters, powers can be forced to work beyond their natural limits by their users. This however carries severe backlash. In her case, there are two ways it's natural limits can be broken.
First, more than one power can theoretically be active. Due to the fact that each power essentially supplants her entire mind with another one that is capable of using that power this leads to intense mental strife as both powers fight for dominance to solve the situation in whatever way they believe is proper. This leads to severe mental strain and likely outright damaged psyche, depending on the situation. However, it is theoretically possible to survive this limit break without repercussions.
Second, a power can theoretically be woken before it's ready again. Due to the fact that the powers are analogies for dissociation, this means that her brain has not recovered enough to be able to go near the trauma that's dissociated there without 'stepping on a landmine' so to say. She will be forced to deal with the trauma the power represents, or dissociate completely. In case she handles the trauma, then the main source of the power - the trauma - is gone and dealt with. Alternatively, her mind will completely break that part off and delete it from her memory - bury it deep enough to where it can never be found again - in order to protect itself. Either way, the power will be gone at the end of this process. All of this while she's doing whatever she's doing on the outside which necessitated calling upon the power before it was ready.
Three, I never want to reach the point with combat where it feels silly that people who have 'basic' powers like Survivor are even alive. That's something I notice with a lot of fantasy stories and especially lit-rpg's. I want to write a world where 'guy with a dagger' is still a lethal danger if you just ignore him even to a fully trained elite like a Hunter.
All three of these things combined [Strict, limited but individualized powers // Vancian-magic esque tools with exactly one supernatural function that anyone can use // 'dude with a shank' being an actual threat to high-power elites] have lead to the first combat properly written with all three of those elements. Ashes to Ashes 1 & 2. Adhering to all three of those design principles means that every character must fight cleverly in order to survive. While you might point at the Goliath power and Rybrus's complaint, please note that that's in a sparring environment where neither truly wants to hurt one another. In an actual clash, Rybrus would not fight a Goliath head on, as that would leave him at a significant disadvantage.
One final thing I've managed to plan out during the 10 day break was the nature of the Hunter's organization and how they fit into the broader political spectrum of the Lands Inside. As of writing this, I don't have a super clear idea on the Lands Inside themselves, but I'm tinkering with a few solutions that hopefully will be interesting when they've crystallized :)
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The Author, The Future & Other Stuff:
I'd like to use this final part of the Author's note to speak about myself a little bit, and my personal reasons for sticking with the story.
As you might have figured out from previous pre/post-chapter notes and my profile on Royal Road, I've got a lot of mental baggage to work through. At one level or another, each writer writes what they know. You cannot write about a concept that you've never heard of, and if you never thought about it in depth, your writing on the topic will necessarily be shallow. As such, I'm channeling a lot of my own experiences into this story - so much so that I unironically refer to writing this as 'Cope Writing'. That does not mean Malinka is a self insert - in fact the closest I came to writing a self-insert is Rybrus, who is decidedly stuck in a supporting character role. You may get an occasional chapter from his perspective, but by no means is he a Mary Sue level 'perfect ideal self'.
I have a lot of mental hang ups, and writing this story has genuinely helped me cope with some of them - and seeing how I actually have a story instead of a 3-paragraphs long scrap, I intend to stick with this. I don't want to promise that this story will go on forever - I don't think that's healthy. Ultimately, I want to write a story about how someone who's gone through a lot of stuff can heal and recover, and wrap it in a nice interesting fantasy setting.
Because of this, the story is being written on two levels - one being the literal interpretation of the story itself, where you can take everything that's written for granted and have a decent adventure running through a developing fantasy world with some mental health aspects sneaking in. The second layer is a bit more of a meta-narrative running as an undercurrent. An obvious example of this I can point at is Malinka's difficult relationship with parental figures. Her biological parents are distant and incomprehensible, her adoptive mom disappeared when she was a child and her adoptive dad struggled to understand her, but did his best. The final set of parental figures in the story so far were twisted versions of her childhood, abusing each other and the people around them while being impossible to communicate with [Mental baggage, remember?].
Generally speaking I will focus on the literal reality of the world moving forward as I believe that a good meta narrative does not excuse bad writing. However, if you like me enjoy searching for the extra meaning in things, I will keep on weaving that extra little thread into everything. Mostly because that's where the aforementioned cope-writing for the sake of my own sanity comes in.
Final note about writing the story is that I think that each story should have an ending. I think being able to close a book and be satisfied with what you've read is an amazing feeling - I'm not a fan of things stretching on and on forevermore. This means that when I believe Malinka's reached the natural conclusion of her story, this selfsame story will end. That is, when she has found her own reasons to live and sorted her life out.
I think that I won't want to waste the setting's potential - I really like the combat system I've settled on and I think there's a lot more to the Lands Inside that can be explored after Malinka's story concludes. When that happens it will be explored in separate, sequel-like stories set in the same world.
The very final note I'd like to write down is about the grammar. I'm not a native english speaker, but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like my English is bad. It's not, in fact I'm better at English than at my native language [Czech]. Grammar mistakes happen because I find it difficult to pay attention when re-reading my chapters multiple times to find mistakes to fix plus the fact that I write directly inside Royal Road's 'add chapter' page instead of using a professional writing tool. If anyone here knows a good free tool that I could use to improve the story, please leave a comment and I'll definitely give it a go.
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Phew, that was a lot. Almost 4 000 words in this author's note alone.
If you've read through all of that - thank you for sticking with me this entire time and I hope my thoughts helped shine some light on stuff in the story!