Basically the title. I'm currently working on the second part of Hamatsa's story. It's completely planned out and all I need to do is just ... write it. Which is more difficult than one would think.
Anyways, I've just finished writing the first chapter, and I thought it would be nice to give an update for those readers who care. I expect the story to be approximately twice the length of "The Boy Downbelow" and its title will be "The Prince of Terror."
Oh, and if anyone would like access to each chapter as I finish it, I can arrange that in exchange for detailed feedback on his/her part. My last story wasn't shown to anyone until it was almost finished, and as a result I had to redo a lot of it after getting feedback.
Cheers,
IV
P.S Without googling it or looking it up in a dictionary, what's the meaning of 'Tetchy?'
Far more people than I expected responded to my previous blog post, every single one providing constructive feedback and kind words. There were even a few people who read the story JUST to give me their comments to it. You guys all have my thanks.
I'm just going to give an update on what I learned from the deluge of comments, and what's happened as a result of it. (WARNING: I didn't want it to get this long when I started writing it, but it did. Sorry)
1. I learned that a lot of people found the first few chapters slow going. Further conversation with those who had this opinion led to the realization that I'd left too many things unsaid and focused on the wrong details. I'm not going to change the first few chapters, but I'll try to reduce the number of mysteries in future chapters and I'll keep this in my mind in future stories.
2. Almost half the comments I received mentioned that they'd like to understand more about Catherine's character and why she acts the way she does. I reread the chapters I've already published and realized they were right.
I added twelve hundred words to chapter six as a result of issues one and two (the entire dialogue with Cathy about why Qoura is scary). The point was fleshing out Cat's backstory and answering a few questions about the world.
3. There were some comments mentioning that the world building was well done, and a few saying I should focus on descriptions more.
Regarding 3, I'd love to add more and more recollections by Atsa of things he has read in history/theological/etc books and connecting them to the events happening in the story, as well as more internal arguments with him (because I imagine the character as someone who could argue with himself for hours ... from experience, loneliness is very boooring). But I'm not sure whether people will be interested in the added detail when it'll somewhat slow down the story's flow. There is also the option of doing traditional infodumps (the narrator explaining stuff to the readers), but I dislike that.
4. A lot of the comments mentioned the numerous grammar/spelling errors they'd noticed in the story. One kind reader went through the trouble of bringing a few to my attention. There were a lot of suggestions that I request the assistance of a volunteer editor.
Unfortunately, I don't think I can do much about 4. My writing process is spontaneous; some days I can write and write for hours and then the next day I can't put down two words on paper (or keyboard? how does that expression transfer to electronics?). What happens if I don't post something as soon as I'm finished with it is "rewrites". A kind volunteer editor from storiesonline edited the entire story for me before I started posting, catching far more errors than I'd like to admit. Then, in one period of unproductivity (word?), I decided the entire story was crap and started rewriting each chapter from scratch. What you guys are now reading is a rewrite of the first rewrite (so draft number 3.
What I mean is that I almost always waste the volunteer editor's effort by rewriting over the original draft. The only way I've found to stop the horrible cycle is posting the chapter as soon as I'm happy with it. Which means a bunch of errors get through (something I hate, but errors in an existing story is better than no story, right?).
Anyways, I hope readers who notice grammatical errors that bothers them would bring them to my attention. It'll help a lot.
Finally, if anyone says feedback is useless, they lie. After publishing chapter 6, the story's score jumped from a 7.05 to a 7.35, a very significant change considering the website's scaling system for scores as well as the low number of new votes compared to the overall number of votes (20 of the 150 votes were cast for c6). Since the only thing that changed between chapter 5 and 6 was my blog post, I can't think of any other reason for the jump.
Thank you everyone and please give me feedback when you think it's required.
Or to be less 'clever' and more straightforward, I'm an amateur writer who has no idea what he's doing. I've been posting chapters of my story 'The Boy Downbelow' for the past couple of weeks, and sadly, I've had almost no feedback on what I'm doing write or wrong.
I write because I've enjoyed many books throughout the years, and well done stories have always made me feel more alive than real life ever could. I'd love it if my writing could someday evoke the same feelings in me (and other people, but mostly me).
So here's the thing: I know there are many issues with my writing. The problem is, I don't know exactly what those issues are and how to improve. I'd love it if my readers were kind enough to tell me one part of each chapter they did NOT like and the reason why once they're finished reading each chapter. It would help me get better and give me motivation to write more, which is another positive.
And finally, thanks to everyone who has bothered to read this rambling, late-night blog post and/or my stories.
IV