devlog #26, I finished the first draft of book one! What now?

As you may have seen on tumblr, I finished the first draft of what is now book 1 of OUROBOROS!! Yes, that also means that the book is again a duology; I don’t yet know if I will publish book 1 and 2 separately, but the division felt natural and necessary to me. Book one ends with us getting answers to all questions posed in the beginning of the story: what happened to the previous pathfinders and hunters ? What is the clergy after, really? And of course, what happens to our dear Leith and what implications that has. It starts a new chain of questions that will unravel as the pathfinder now has a mission that is very important to them and their RO, the whole of Riven, and worse, the entire world along with the old pantheon of gods, both born and crafted. The pathfinder really gets to widen their worldview and is further dragged from the comfort of their isolation and into a new existence as a person. Tentative title for book 2?

[OUROBOROS BEHEADED]

So what happens now? What does finishing the draft even mean? 

I finished the draft by writing every single chapter up until writing The End, or To Be Continued, in this case (although it does not end on a cliffhanger any more than here is your new quest, it is your choice what to do with it. It was important to me to have something that felt like it answered the questions posed in the beginning, that.. heh. closed the circle.. The romances, however, are all at different levels of familiarity by the end.)

Right now, I’m still writing, but it mostly involves fleshing out scenes or writing things out that I left in brackets: [enter scene where the pf patches wounds reluctantly] or [fill in the variation scenes], you get it.

I have no idea how long it will take, because I'm simultaneously working on getting an overhead look of the story, re-outlining to make sure I’m keeping track of all the different threads I introduced, and reworking others that didn't pan out. Some days I spend hours just writing, others I piddle around all day brainstorming about how some scenes can be tweaked, and how that really impacts the story. I feel myself drawn to writing some more calm moments now too, now that the plot is laid out. The gang needs to breathe a bit more on their journey!
Others I just spend finding beneficial code, looking at layouts and designing UI, both in python (Ren’py) and Twine. I still haven’t chosen between the two, but I have worked a lot in both. I’m having tonnes of fun! Some other days I'm really trying to get back into drawing, mostly on weekends. I haven't given up hope on that yet.
I think as a whole, it is all turning out to be something special, something that I will treasure forever, no matter how much I will “pay” for being absurd about making it and losing a big portion of the audience on being too secretive or too slow. I am so happy with my decision to actually go dark and tell myself it's alright. It has helped me beyond words.

I have a tentative plan to release the first look demo before the first leaves fall to the ground, for you guys. The only thing that’s really keeping me from releasing a first look is the grand overview, the new outline of the game— there are some later scenes that need to be tied in with the ones in the beginning which means that I am looking at a pretty substantial rewrite of the first 1/3rd of the story. I don’t want to rewrite ten times over, so I’m trying to be as thorough as I can with planning and making sure the later scenes are already written in the way I want to keep them; things in the second book should be foreshadowed in the right way. I'm sure I won't have a 100% success rate of doing that, but I want to at the very least be as thorough as I can instead of throwing myself straight into rewrites.
If you never saw it on discord, right now the rewrite involves having the pathfinder initiate the hunt after Leith rather than being conscripted, and along with that, a fair bit of tweaking to the Serpent clergy’s mission and their overall presence in the story.

 Oh! I also have a founder-perk brewing (you don’t have to do anything— if you have been subscribed for more than two months from when I first launched patreon up until it’s anniversary in june, you will get a permanent discord role and a copy of the game. Details are still being worked on. But, fun!! I want to give back in any way I am capable of.)

Sometime in the next two months (june/july) I will be whisked away on a vacation to do some hiking and lounging in bubbly hot tubs. We don’t know exactly where we are going, but when I have more details I will let you all know as well! Depending on if it will be just me and my partner, or if we round up some friends, I might still work during this period. It’s all up in the air right now, but worth noting! I do want to take some time off but I am terrified to do so, both because I feel like I could squeeze more juice out of myself, and because this self employment thing is very loud? To me it feels like a cardinal sin to take off time when I have already chosen to be so low-key about development. It always feels like I’m perceived as not doing enough work, so I have to work extra hard. Something I'm still working on, because it feels like I can never "level up" as a creator until I deal with these brainbugs.

Finally, more commissions are on the way! I have a surprise commission for you going up as soon as I receive the files from the artist, and portraits of Yor/Yana are being worked on too, by our very own Vin [commission them here, they are a lovely artist, and a great person in general!!<3]

That's it for today, but I will see you soon with some goodies. I hope you are thriving and smiling often! :> xx

COLLECTION OF SNEAKPEAKS POSTED ON DISC BELOW! They are always written in plaintext, and I use he/him pronouns for everyone but the pathfinder(they/them) (It is just a technicality, haha.) Have fun decoding these lol x)