Pulling Back from Questers Valley
Added 2024-09-22 18:47:25 +0000 UTCHey everyone,
I originally started QV to take a break from my other series, Web of Secrets. I’d meant to finish a whole book during that time, but it might be better if I pull back early and focus on WoS again.
I enjoyed working on this series, and it felt good to have a break. But for whatever reason, this story never took off in the way WoS did. I’m almost 40k words in now, and I only managed to scrape together ~100 followers on Royal Road. (For comparison, WoS had roughly 3k followers when it was only 20k words in.)
I’m also a relatively slow writer, so it’s hard to justify spending another five months to finish this book if it means not working on a more popular series. I wish were more like Brandon Sanderson, knocking out whole books on the side, but we can’t all be that fast. :P
Anyway, thanks to those of you who gave the new series a chance! I could have made this a poll, but I’m 99% sure most people would vote to see more of Akari’s story. I still plan to finish the first QV book, but WoS will take priority for now!
Comments
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, that’s a good point about the tension/conflict. A reviewer on RR also mentioned a lack of plot hook, which I think is related. Some of that was intentional on my part. As a writer, I wanted to teach myself to stop relying on constant danger, because it started to feel like a crutch. Almost like I was artificially making my stories more interesting by inserting constant threats of death. But in hindsight, I probably took it way too far. I think a bigger problem is the lack of progress. Zack has this goal of joining the military, but we see him working toward things that are basically unrelated. If I could do the beginning over, I’d drop the military thing and have him focused on improving the inn from the start. Maybe move some things around so his dad got lost in the mines rather than dying in battle. Overall, I think I got overconfident during the planning process. This would have been Book #9 for me, and I overlooked some basics, like plot promises and payoffs. (The promise in the summary was saving the town from a company takeover, but the setup for that plot is almost nonexistent in the first 16 chapters.) I spent most of the planning work on character arcs that wouldn’t pay off until way later, and forgot to consider how the early parts of those arcs would look on the page. Oh, and I wasn’t actually burnt out on writing, just on WoS specifically, and all the dark plot points piling on top of each other (Akari being abused, Elise dying, Relia getting kidnapped, half the city being destroyed, etc. But I actually feel anxious if I take time off writing completely, and working on QV did actually help me feel refreshed in regards to WoS. But yeah, there’s some truth to that idea that I can’t take a proper break and escape the grind, and I think it’s most visible in how I rush through the planning phase to reach the actual chapters. I’m slowly realizing that my best books are the ones where I take my time planning, and vice versa. I’d argue that my worst book ever was Web of Dreams (Book 2 in the series) and I spent less than five days planning that entire book. :X It’s kind of ironic, because I’m a slow writer who takes a week to finish a chapter, but I rush through the planning phase itself. :P But I plan to fix that for WoS Book 5 by deliberately spending much more time on planning, looking at the big plot and trying to spot issues before they pop up in the actual writing!
David
2024-09-23 15:28:55 +0000 UTCI feel for you. There are reasons why QV didn't take off as quickly as WoS.... First, we all knew WoS had a tie in to your Aeonica series and Aeonica was a superb story and we were all thrilled to see how the new story was. And second, it is the tension. Both WoS and Aeonica started off with oodles of tension (I remember Aeonica had this huge fight scene with the main character bleeding out on the verge of death very early on - not - but hey, we the readers were not supposed to know that she had supernaturally high healing abilities). QV sort of lacked that, even after so many chapters in. And finally, like the earlier commenter said, the LitRPG genre is literally saturated, so there is that. Now for the second thing. For me, it felt odd that you were taking a break (presumably from writing) by doing more writing, albeit a different series, but still writing.... It would be better for you if you, I don't know, maybe volunteered at a soup kitchen to clear your head. I mean writers can have burn out, and the last thing he/she needs is more writing. So yeah, I feel you, that you felt the need to keep writing when taking a break would be so much better for you. It kinda defeats the purpose of you not taking the traditional route of publishing, what with all the deadlines and all....and here you are in the same old grind. I would suggest, that you take a break, go on vacation. We, your loyal readers, would still be here when you come back. And finally, I would suggest that in future you stick to trilogies ;-) to avoid burnout; I feel that trilogies are your limit, else there would inevitably need to be a large break between the third and fourth books of your series (etc, etc.). And that's my two cents.
Mohammed Mahedi Hasan
2024-09-23 07:08:23 +0000 UTC
