It shocked me a bit when I went to look for when the last check-in post was and I saw that it was from mid-May.  It has been a bit of a tough time for a stretch here with writing.  There’s nothing really profound or overly interesting in explaining why that is.  It breaks down into two things: life has been a bit busier, for both good and bad reasons, and “Against the Riders” was a struggle to write.

Life being busy is no big change, but a combination of work requiring a bit more time (and a six hour adjustment on my time zone for a bit), a trip with my family, and my Dungeons and Dragon hobby taking up more time than usual were all contributors.  The breaking point there was that I started some higher education/certification work.  Suffice to say that my role as Dungeon Master in my DnD group has been turned over to someone else to free up some of my time.  It wasn’t an easy decision to admit I couldn’t do all those things, but I think it was a sign of personnel growth that I could recognize and make it.  With that trade-off, and a pair of trips behind me, I’m hoping to get my writing routine back into flow.

That said, it’s not like I haven’t been putting words together.  I actually have two completed stories in my backlog, and have developed several more ideas that will see me through the next couple of months.  However, while those stories were getting written it meant that to keep pace with Against the Riders I needed to find even more time to write and that wasn’t always possible.  In addition, those that have been with me in my past retrospectives for “End of War” and “The Halls of Falden”, know that I have struggled with being tied down to a story for an extended period of time.  I think the bigger struggles with those two had been having to write parts of stories that were less interesting and therefore tedious to get through.

I didn’t have that problem really with “Against the Riders”.  There were certainly moments that I wasn’t as interested in, but I guess a positive growth in my writing is getting through boring parts isn’t as much a challenge.  What was a challenge for me with “Against the Riders” was the complexity of the story.  “The Halls of Falden” was really just a story with Quartes and while it had pacing issues the story is pretty linear.  “End of War” was similarly linear, focused on Airka, and while it did introduce some cultural aspects on the world is was similar to “The Halls of Falden” in that it was really a personal story.

“Against the Riders” gave similar time to Keto, Brokel, and Quartes and had to do while doing a lot more worldbuilding than the two previous stories.  As I hadn’t worked through, or even realized I was going to come upon, a lot of the worldbuilding and character beats I realized that the further into the story I got the more I needed to have made changes to earlier parts.  For example, the addition in the finale that Brokel had not only worked with Sorna to find her Shard of Lehn but that she had been his clan-chief, would’ve been a more meaningful moment for Brokel if it had a better better setup.  More egregiously, is Quartes setting up how much of a threat Sorna is to him only to then reveal it was all a ploy.  My issue here was that I was telling a story with more complex character dynamics that the past two larger stories.  Of the three, “End of War” probably had the most advance planning and that’s bad because “Against the Riders” is the more complex tale.  So, the character’s relations and the plan in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really work.

I can think of three times in the story where what I had originally setup was abandoned for a different outcome.  In each of those cases, I think what I settled on was the better option, and in fact they were chosen when I realized that my original idea wasn’t going to work.  That need to change plans and rewrite scenes, slowed down the writing of the story and left me frustrated because I couldn’t make changes to earlier parts and so felt that it was loose and inconsistent.

So, what are the lessons for me?  I write most of my stories largely in what’s called a “panster” approach.  I jot down a few ideas and notes and then I run with it, adjusting the story as I go and usually following where my characters take me.  This works fine for the solo drop stories both because they’re simpler and because I’m editing in one go.  The limitation of this style and my use of it were revealed in “Against the Riders” where things got more complicated and I couldn’t go back and adjust past parts to make it all tie together.  Plus, my worldbuilding usually helps me compensate but I was worldbuilding, creating the rider’s culture, while I was writing the story which further complicated things.

There’s a couple of solutions to consider.  I could consider writing the whole story before releasing any part, which would let me ensure  consistency through my editing process.  That would also allow for a more thorough editing process as the other aspects of my life meant I often rushed editing to get a piece posted.  However, it also means I gotta keep up a stream of drop stories while writing the longer story which while doable is a greater load.  The other option is to develop a better method of outlining and working through my stories.  It’s this approach that I intend to pursue.  I’ve written long stories, some even novel length, before I started Fey & Bard, and when doing those I had more of an outline than I have recently been working with.  Those outlines were never as good as I’d like, and they would need improvements to avoid the problems I encountered here, but I think it’s a skill that I’ll need as my stories hopefully grow in both complexity and length.

So, I’ll be looking into some resources and perspectives on that.  If you, the reader, have any recommendations please post in the comments below.  The other big area where I found myself running up against my limitations was in describing the attire and masks of the various riders.  Quartes and Keto are characters that I know what they look like and how they move from longs years of writing or playing as them.  I’m realizing I need to look at some sort of quick way of sketching characters (and in the case of riders, their attire and taikeets) as I can’t visualize those details off the cuff.  I recall the author Michael A. Stackpole talking about that in one of the lessons of his I’ve read or watched, so something I can revisit.

Looking at the near term, I think we can expect some Quartes and Keto standalone stories.  As I noted above, over the course of writing “Against the Riders” I had lots of ideas for our Fey and Bard and I look forward to spending some simpler times with them.  Thanks for tagging along and if you have any thoughts of your own on the above please don’t hesitate to share them.

Go forth and do good things,

Sean