Stefan Gagne's Fiction Factory

25+ years of novels, games, and other creative fiascos.

Archives for February 2014

the character cutting department

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A blogpost, and it’s not Saturday? What is this madness?

Well, I’m designing out chapter 018.2, and I’m running headfirst into a problem. I felt I might be able to move past it if I write out my thoughts. And since the folks who visit the blog are the hardcore members of the audience, I figured they’d enjoy a peek into what’s ahead and how the writing process works. Mild spoilers ahead, so stop reading if you don’t even wanna know what that chapter will be about.

Right, then.

018.2 is a Milly/Lucas story. The readership poll I ran suggested they were quite unpopular, but I feel this is an important story to tell — it concerns how the Citadel raises its young to make them into soldiers. But the issue I’m running into is this… I have five possible characters in the mix, and that’s a bit of a glut. Who do I chop?

Milly’s in, period. She’s the primary viewpoint character, to the point where I’m considering first person perspective narration. The story concerns what happens when a group of Citadel education evaluators show up at her public high school and start testing the students. The question is whether I want to COMPLETELY bind the story to her perspective or not, but she’s definitely going to be in there.

Lucas is in, but he’s really only important in the second half of the story. I COULD insert some scenes in the first half showing how the Citadel approaches the online Maslow Academy he attends with Penelope, but I’m not sure these scenes are worth writing. They can be summarized neatly in a few sentences over the phone or by text message to Milly. But a reader pointed something interesting out to me… one of the reasons Milly/Lucas isn’t a popular pick is because Lucas isn’t very defined. This could be a chance to define him. But I COULD do that entirely in the back half of the story, so I might not need him in the first half. Not sure.

Next we have Milly’s friends. Jenna, the MOBA jock alpha female of the school, could be an interesting inclusion because of her perspective as one of the popular girls, and someone the Citadel might highlight for her tactical potential. She provides good contrast to normally meek and compassionate Milly, since Jenna is brash and direct. But…

…I think a better option is Isra, a new character I’m pondering. You may remember her as the cyberbully who was bugging Milly, but now they’re friends, even if it’s a tumultuous friendship. This could be a better contrast, someone negative and depressed, and illustrating the ongoing themes of City of Angles of reaching out to your enemies. But she wouldn’t make sense in scenes with Jenna, given Jenna’s an in-girl and Isra’s an outcast, and both are blunt speakers. Might be too distracting, so ideally I’d want one OR the other.

It’s all about focus. I could include all these characters all over the place, give Lucas a ton of scenes, have all three girls romping around, but… that’s unfocused and doesn’t serve the story well. At the same time, I WANT to write them, all of them have interesting things to say. I’m not sure what the ideal balance is. I welcome your input, even though admittedly I haven’t talked about the actual PLOT so it’s hard to figure this stuff out indirectly. Figured, hey, blog post might be interesting to read at least.

Tune in Saturday morning for 018.1 which is actually a completely different story and stars Cass and is quite awful for her.

MARCH 1st, ADDITIONAL: Okay, I figured out this puzzle. I can include every single character mentioned above… if I start the story from the perspective of Lucas Flynn, and have him along for the entire ride rather than coming in at the middle.

This lets me give Lucas some sorely needed character development and a legitimate character arc to follow, AND I have a relatively clever way to bring Isra and Jenna into the fold without having too much side conflict to deal with. Plus it’ll make folks who want more mixed media oddness and strange formatting happy. PLUS it’ll tie in perfectly with 018.3 and 018.4…

Yep. This will work. But for now, it’s all about 018.1. I’m working weeks in advance now so that you’ll have fresh content on a regular basis despite spring vacations.

the revolution will be televised

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Look at that, I finished writing chapter //017. Go figure. This one flowed quite well once I’d sorted out its issues in advance — and in the process I figured out where I’m going with the rest of this book, too. We’re on a roll, peoples.

To celebrate, I’m going to experiment with something… writing for an audience. As in, a LIVE studio audience.

Saturday February 22nd at 8:30pm Eastern, I’ll be livestreaming the writing of chapter //018.001. Follow me on Twitch.TV and tune in! If this is successful, if I get a couple people watching and chatting and enjoying it, I may do it again. Be nice to put this useless webcam to good use, at any rate.

(EDIT: It’s over! And… it was semi-disastrous as nobody actually watched. If you wanna see a replay, it’s over here. Probably won’t be trying that again, at least not without LOTS of forewarning and a better timeslot.)

“Wait,” you may say. “What do you mean, //018.001? That’s a weird chapter designation and WHOA did you just update the future chapter titles on the homepage when I wasn’t looking?”

“SOON,” I will reply. Likely with an image macro of a horse staring out a window.

More details to come during the livestream.

mayor for a day

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In the middle of writing this week’s City of Angles update, I found myself needing a name for the actual, factual mayor of the City. Because it’s worked well for me in the past (Dr. Kit Hearth being a tribute to Kit Flowerstorm and the Pop Culture Social Club) I turned to my readers to name the character.

Enter Mayor Jefferson Keys, a tribute to DarthWiggles. Long may he reign. Well. He probably won’t, but that’s not entirely his fault.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without my readers. Readers helped back the original vol//001 Kickstarter. Readers gave me the critical feedback I needed to steer this ship true. Readers supported me and encouraged me when I felt like this whole thing was a going-nowhere fiasco. Readers are the reason why art exists; the Mona Lisa is just random chemical paste on pressed fiber if nobody ever looks at it. You’ve got my thanks, and I hope to entertain you through this last volume of CoA… and beyond.

For now, enjoy the doom squad setting jackboots to pavement in City of Angles with this week’s story update. I THINK next week will be the finale of this particular chapter, but I’m not sure. We shall see. After that… we might be returning to the world of Milly and Lucas, despite them ‘winning’ the “go away” question in my recent survey. Trust me. You’ll want to see them again, when you find out what the Citadel is doing to generation zero.

the rule of three

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Normally City of Angles updates on Saturdays, but… I’ve got this particular week’s update ready to go, I’d like to get some more written tonight, so I may as well post what I have. Plus I’ve had you guys on the hook an extra week or two for new content, so why not give it to you ASAP? Right.

Here’s the first scenes of //017 – A Rival, the first part of vol//003 – Dreamcatcher. The third book in a series that was never meant to be a series.

Originally City of Angles wasn’t going to be a trilogy. It wasn’t going to have an “uberplot” or myth arc of any major stripe, and it wasn’t going to have repeating characters. After folks like Cass and Marcy and Gus Zero popped up I had no plans for what to do with them after; their original stories were meant to be one-shots. That’s also why there’s a repeating intro in front of each chapter. The thinking was that it’d be easier for folks to hop in to the series at ANY point if every story was a standalone.

And… yeah, that didn’t pan out. Halfway through book one I realized I was definitely telling a serial with main characters and everything. And look, now it’s a trilogy, with a second book being polished up for publication and a third on the way. Funny, where life can take you.

So, read, leave some comments, and enjoy. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, go ahead and take it. I’ve had more than double the responses that I had to the vol//002 survey, so my readership has indeed grown. I’ve got Reddit, HPMoR, and readers like you to thank for that. Word of mouth is how web novels spread, and your mouth can spread some truly amazing words. Open it up and let ’em out.

on the verge of…

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…something awesome. That’s the hope, at any rate. My tangled mess of notes surrounding the preproduction of vol//003 is getting considerably less tangled by the day; I have a clear outline for the very next chapter and a critical chapter in the middle. It’s all coming together. To quote Almost Famous, it’s all happening.

My worry right now is that the story will be a series of odd events involving a dozen plus characters, rather than one single tale that relates to this one thing like most CoA chapters actually are. But, this is the intro to a huge change in the City, so perhaps that’s appropriate? Showing how it touches down on so many lives. I haven’t put pen to paper yet, so maybe I will find a thread to sew it all together cohesively. We’ll see.

Specifically… we’ll see next week. I’m probably jinxing it but I feel like I can get some stuff for y’all to read next Saturday. I’m ready. Let’s do this.

Now then, other than hyping up vol//003, what do I have for you today? How about last week’s survey? 29 people and counting have taken it, so let’s look at the early results. There’s some curious stuff in here.

Character you most want to see in the spotlight is, much to my own surprise… Dave Smith. 16 votes, with his nearest competitors being Penny and Kelsey at 11 each, everybody else trailing behind. Dave? Really? He’s a good guy but is he interesting enough to hold a story? …hmm. Maybe. Actually, I CAN think of a good story to tell with him when it hits the fan in vol//003. We shall see.

Character you LEAST want to see. It’s hard to talk smack about people and it shows; 7 people skipped this outright and the rest of the responses are smattered across the board. The frontrunners are Gus Zero and Miranda Walker, who are newcomers and have some grey area morality, so I guess that’s no shock. They weren’t going to play a HUGE role in vol//003 anyway, so this won’t drastically change my plans or anything.

What do you want to see in a retail book? Well, bonus stories wins, obviously. But the easy second pick are the author’s notes for each individual story. And that DOES change my plans for the vol//002 book. Those notes add a lot of pages, which increases the price of the book… but if it’s a value-add, I should be adding that value. So, I’m going to scrap my plans to focus on missing scenes in vol//002, and instead work on my author’s notes. Missing scenes barely ranked in this poll. I will likely use them as blog fodder instead.

What other works folks have read… Sailor Nothing, Unreal Estate, and anachronauts all get a healthy showing. Less folks read my fanfic, fewer played my games, and I’m actually pleased to see that since I was worried THAT is the seed of my audience which I’ve been retaining for twenty years. I’m proud of the old stuff but I need to grow the audience with the new stuff… and the 7 of you who have ONLY read City of Angles shows I am indeed growing over time. Good. Good.

Preferred way to read stories… the VAST majority said “reading weekly updates” but keep in mind this is only one week of data, between two blog posts. The folks who DO read week-to-week are taking the survey right now. I’m curious to see how this one will evolve over time.

Social media check, actually most readers use bookmarks, or use them in conjunction with social media. The rest are scattered across the usual suspects of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the RSS feed. That’s fine, planning to keep supporting those, and will be using similar media in future projects.

Lastly… genres for the NEXT story after this one. The runaway pick is Science Fiction, which surprises me. It seems like such a plain idea at the core. But… if mixed with other things people are asking for here — steampunk, superheroes, surrealism — you could have some fun. I’m very curious though to see how the divide will fall between “adult/mature” and “young adult.” My stories have been very YA slanted simply because once you start NOT cursing a blue streak and putting boobs in everywhere, well, you don’t break that combo, do you? But maybe my audience is ready for something harder. Maybe not. We’ll see.

Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns? Post in the comments below, I’d love to hear. Haven’t taken the survey yet? There’s still plenty of time, so go ahead and do that.

Next week… the invasion begins.