February Update

While the second revision of the first half of A Decaying World will still take some time, I've decided to slightly redesign the Published eBooks-Page. Whereas earlier, every cover would link you to a different page, they now serve as anchor-links as I've put every summary and link on the same page.

The summaries themselves will surely be changed, as some of them aren't that good, but that can wait. Might also change the way everything's displayed later on, as I'm never really satisfied.

I've also created a new twitter-account for my writing, as my main account is mostly written in German, which might not be that interesting for those of you who can't understand it.

And I've removed the link to my Patreon-campaign, as I'm not writing nearly enough to justify having it. Maybe I'll get back to it later on.

That's about it, for now. I'll try to get the revision done in less time than before, but I can't promise anything.

Plans for 2015

Guess it couldn't hurt to post something once in a while. It's only been 21 days since the beginning of the year! Anyway, there won't be any new chapters for a while, as I'm trying to focus on the second revision of the first half of A Decaying World. What will this revision entail?

• Everything written in first person will be changed to third person
• I might give Drake's sword an actual name. Constantly calling it the shadow sword doesn't sound all that interesting.
• The interlude between Chapter 4 and 5 has been removed
• Chapter 10: Calm Before the Storm will almost be entirely rewritten and tightened up, as there's too much stuff happening that isn't really necessary
• And I'm obviously trying to improve upon the writing wherever it seems necessary, like removing pointless adverbs and stuff.

I think that's about it. It could take me a month or two, if I don't keep slacking off. But I can't make any promises. Especially since I might start working on another project I've come up with some time ago. It's called Lifelines and might work well as a serial. But as with Loop, I'm not going to post it on my blog, at least not all of it. So don't expect too much new content in the coming weeks.

 

If everything goes well, I will release the first half of A Decaying World sometime this year. And maybe even the second, if I manage to finish it anytime soon. Which I'm not going to be able to do while working on the revision. 

 

I'm also trying to get Loop finished, as it's not that long of a story, which should make revising it a little bit easier. But that remains to be seen, as the Lifeline concept seems more intriguing at the moment.

So yeah, that's all for now. Till next time!

Don't release your first story!

...at least not until you've written a lot of other stories and have improved your skills, so that you can go back and revise your old works with a new perspective on all its flaws.

I myself made that mistake, and while I never wanted to go back to my first story, I'm still sitting at it again, still trying to improve upon what I wrote almost a year ago. But it will never be perfect, as I would have to revise almost everything from the third chapter on and excise an entire character. Sure, it could be worth it, but the story was just an experiment and even based on a character that I didn't create, so I lack the incentive to go through all the trouble.

But if you find yourself in a smiliar situation, it might be best to either let the story rest or simply write it from scratch, as the second version can only turn out to be better than the first. You can try to revise it of course, but you might spent more time on fixing a written story than if you were to simply start anew.


So don't make the same mistake I made, no matter how excited you are about having turned your thoughts into an actual story. Just write, and write, and write, until you think that've you reached a point where you can actually publish something worth reading.
Have I myself reached that point yet? Maybe, but there's still a lot to be improved upon.

But whatever the case, I'm going to start releasing my short stories on Amazon soon, followed by my horror collection. Since the latter contains the former, there's really no point in purchasing them one by one. I just want to increase my visibility.

I still have two stories lying around that won't be included, but while one of them might be publishable, the other is not, as I haven't even looked at it after writing it down.

Don't drown your readers in exposition!

Since I finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde earlier today (after starting it about half a year ago) I wanted to write a small article about exposition. It might not be one of my strongest suits, but I'm just getting started and have a lot to learn, whereas Neal Stephenson should know better. I've never read any of his other novels, though, therefore I cannot say if all of them are like Reamde or not.

Anyway, it's nice to have a certain amount of exposition in a story, since it gives readers a glimpse into how your world works, how it looks, how your characters became who they are and so on. My stories might be a little bit lacking in that regard, but that amount of exposition is still better than what Reamde threw at me.

Don't Plan Your Story From Start To Finish

I've learned this lesson years ago while working on my games and it still holds true today. Of course it doesn't mean that you should make everything up as you go along. That way you only end up with a nonsensical mess that you need to fix durig the editing phase, unless you're actually so good that everything connects flawlessly.

You need to know how the story begins and how it ends. And it can't hurt to know a few events that will happen down the road. Everything else can be nothing more than a general idea that you flesh out while writing it. Seeing as Mortaevum was a game first I had nearly everything laid out before me but it's just not fulfilling to keep to a strict plan. If you have an interesting idea that might make for a better story, then write it down! That's exactly what I did with the current chapter. I essentially skipped a few events that happened in the game because they simply aren't interesting nor essential. Of course I had to incorporate some of the events that happened during these scenes into the current chapter but if it leads to a better story it's certainly worth it.

Don't plan everything from the get-go! And even if you do, deviate from your plans if you get better ideas!

Don't try to be perfect!

Seriously, do not try to be perfect! You'll just waste countless hours of your life. You don't know how much time I spent working on my blogs even though most of the changes will never be seen by anyone. I'm also writing reviews on my other (german) blog and everytime I link to one of the reviews I can't help myself and have to look over it one more time, which often leads to at least a few changes.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm doing it again! Someone is drawing book covers for me and I thought it might be a good idea to go over Don't Play With Slenderman once more before I release it with a new cover...and now I've started rewriting entire passages as I simply didn't like the old ones anymore. I've added about 1000 new words in the process and drew half of the eight pages a second time to make them look somewhat better while keeping them amateurish.
Of course it can't hurt to have a more polished version at hand but I'm sure I would keep finding flaws every time I read it. But people aren't perfect. Most of them will never write a masterpiece, especially not while working on their first book. You can hire an editor if you can afford it but do you really want to work on the same story over and over again till it appears to be perfect enough to be published?
I certainly don't want to do that. So I'm just going to fix it up, add the new cover, publish it once more and that's it! Otherwise I'll never be able to finish Mortaevum and I care too much about the story to let it die a second time.

Don't try to be perfect! Learn from your mistakes and create something better the next time. You'll never be able to get anything done if you go back over and over again to fix everything you've ever made!

Don't be afraid of retcons

Sorry Julia, there's no new chapter here :D

Anyway, I remembered a situation from my first game tonight which really didn't make much sense and came out of nowhere. I retconned certain aspects of the world in the third game, not really thinking about how it would affect this specific situation as I had mostly forgotten about it, but strangely enough it makes total sense now.

Don't be afraid of retconning your story

Many people would assume that retcons are inherently bad and that an author should plan his story from start to finish to avoid using them, but it really depends on how the retcon fits into the overall picture. In my example it adds another layer to it without directly contradiction the events of the game. That's not to say that there aren't issues with it but that's to be expected for something that I made up as went along. I'm still surprised how well it all fit together in the end.

So let me use another example: Metal Gear Solid, one of my favorite game franchises.

The antagonist in the first games is Big Boss, leader of Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land, and he threatens the world with his nuclear equipped Metal Gears. So he's evil, right? Just look at him!

Many years later Hideo Kojima released Metal Gear Solid 3, starring Naked Snake aka Big Boss! That game's ending as well as the subsequent games in the Big Boss Saga shed light on why he "turned evil" without directly contradiction previous events. It doesn't excuse how he tried to accomplish his goals but it still made sense. That's what I'd call a good retcon.

Of course there are also bad retcons of varying degrees. One of the worst ones would be to bring a character back from the dead even though he quite obviously died. You need to come up with a really good explanation to turn this into a good retcon.


Let me use Metal Gear Solid 1 to demonstrate a bad one:

In this game Solid Snake claims that Big Boss told him that he was his father during their final encounter in Zanzibar Land, but I've played Metal Gear 2 and he says no such thing, nor does he ever imply anything like that. It's not too bad of a retcon but still contradicts established events and this wouldn't be the last time Hideo Kojima changed the series' history. I still like it though and look forward to the next game, which might finally show us the moment Big Boss "turns evil".

Don't be afraid to retcon your story, but make sure to add another layer to it instead of directly contradiction prior events. Of course you can have a few bad retcons here and there but be wary not to turn your story into a total mess that makes absolutely no sense!