Weekly Update #5
Added 2024-12-31 23:49:26 +0000 UTCHey everyone! Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season. Happy New Year's Eve!
First off, if you have plans tonight, have fun and stay safe!
Next, I’ve got a few cool updates I want to share with you:
Update on Valtherion
Discord Emoji Vote
Bonus Content for Patrons
Update on Valtherion
This is just a quick heads-up, but I thought you’d like to know it’s happening soon! I had a blast writing yesterday’s chapter for where I’m at, which is just a few weeks ahead of what you’re reading now. Wondering what was in the chapter?
It’s Valtherion’s advancement! Writing about his transformation and what he becomes was amazing. I can’t wait to hear everyone’s guesses in the comments, a chapter or two before it happens, about what you think he’ll advance into.
Discord Emoji Vote
I’m going to make a poll post right after this one to throw out some ideas for emojis for our Discord channel. I’ll commission someone on Fiverr to create three emotes, and we’ll see how they turn out. If they’re a hit, I’ll share them here and in the Discord. If people like them, I’ll probably get more made. Let’s choose some fun ones for the first batch!
Bonus Content for Patrons
One of the members in our Discord suggested I share some extra content here just for Patrons. I’m thinking of creating a collection called "Bonus Content" or something similar.
The suggestion was to provide more details about my plans for the global situation, like how the US and Europe are handling the integration. This could be really interesting, and there are a few ways I could approach it:
Share my notes and outlines. I’ve already written bullet points in Notion about how the world situation will evolve. I could post these here. Be warned—there might be spoilers! But it could also be a great way to get feedback from people outside the US about how they think things might realistically play out.
Write short novellas. These could be mini-stories, maybe 10-15 chapters, from the perspective of a specific character. For example, I could explore a different class or a non-combat class in a completely different country to show how they’re dealing with things. The downside is that this takes more time to write and do research on. I’d also need to make sure it doesn’t confuse readers of Spell Weaver who aren’t Patrons. Meaning any world-building in these novellas would need to either stay isolated or be reintroduced later in the main story.
What do you guys think about all of this!? I would love to see some good engagement in the comments on this post to hear feedback and thoughts.
Keep an eye out for the poll post here in a few minutes for the Discord emote.
As always, thanks so much for being here. Your support means the world to me!
-- OverXelous
PS - Sorry I haven't done an update in a few weeks, things have been busy with the holidays and I'm just doing what I can to keep posting consistently and keep up with my backlog. I'm still chugging along with the story and all is good!
Comments
As the person who suggested the idea of having international stuff as potential bonus chapters for Patreon, I actually meant 1 chapter per thing and more so show various smaller things. Whether you go with 1 chapter, 1-3, 1-5, 1-10 chapter stories is up to you OverXelous, but a tip from me would be to figure out first how often you are able to post them as like 1 a month would mean 10 months if a 10 parter, which might be at the point some people might struggle memory wise what happened at the start in detail. And just to say, you could even go back in time too with this and portray the first Rift discovery news wise in an international chapter. So yeah, a lot of potential fun and looking forward to reading the International related notes later when you post them OverXelous :-).
Kira
2025-01-01 01:29:19 +0000 UTCI think Interlude Chapters could cover both "world building" and "patron exclusive" as long as removing the chapter doesn't hurt the story line (which you can use to test if they fall under that criteria). Lots of stories use side characters to bolster world building but, to be honest, if you were to read a story that has other character POV chapters you could remove some without hurting the story line. Like when you get the MC POV struggling and then get the POV of how their savior came upon saving the MC. Know what I mean?
small_brain_boy
2025-01-01 00:30:03 +0000 UTCI think it would help me with the world building. And it would be helpful that it was all in the same world. Several RR authors that I know write multiple stories all at once, so I feel like this could be manageable, at least if there is no "expectation" from readers on getting this content. It will just come as I can get it done. It will be the first thing to be put on pause if I'm catching up on main story stuff.
OverXelous
2025-01-01 00:02:52 +0000 UTCLike one per class, exploring the highpoints of that class. Maybe they can be compiled together into a larger compendium.
Ron
2025-01-01 00:02:48 +0000 UTCMaybe even one on how Elana's brother gets his information and include a hierarchy of classes and description of each. This could be an ongoing thing which turns into a compendium of the world building. Especially now that you have a contract and will certainly be putting out your 10 novels. This could be 11. Kind of like an AD&D Players Handbook.
Ron
2025-01-01 00:00:22 +0000 UTCI don't know about patreon exclusive content. I mean, I don't mind, but most authors I've followed moved away from that because it means time not writing the main story. In the end, I think you should do it if you want to or you think it will help your process. If you do that, I think I'd prefer if it were shown as interludes that eventually connect to the main story (even if much later).
Seiryus
2024-12-31 23:58:30 +0000 UTCI love the idea of the novellas! Even if it was just small 5-10 chapters (hell, I would be happy with 2 chapters) novellas every month or 2!
PWeygandt
2024-12-31 23:53:31 +0000 UTC
