My identity as a writer: Strengths and weaknesses.

This post is going to be a little different than what I usually blog about. It's been a while since I've done one of these (WAY too long, actually), but I think you guys will find it to be a very interesting read!

I am not a perfect writer. I have a lot of flaws, some of which are easily explainable, while others are a little more abstract. At the same time, I know for a fact that I'm not a terrible writer either, and I have some very pronounced strengths. The thing is, it took 950,000 words of Cryopod for me to figure out what they are. If you, the person reading this, also aspire to be a writer, then I think you will need to write a ton as well to discover your flaws and strengths.

Some of my flaws were discovered by me, but others were discovered by Soni, the secret backbone of Cryopod who has dramatically improved a lot of my old flaws to the point I don't see them anymore. Other things are... not coming along so well. Some aspects of my personality are simply too nailed-down, I think, to ever be eliminated. Of course, I've only taken my writing seriously for a little over a year now, so in time these things may change.

Strengths:

I know how to manage several threads of information and call back to past information in my writing rather seamlessly, weaving what reads like an effortless series of twists and turns that improve the reader's experience on subsequent re-reads.

I'm good at merging plot points together.

I'm good at keeping secrets from my readers. Nothing irritates me more than when there's no mystery in something. If you can't add a little mystery to your writing, game, movie, or anything else, it's boring to watch.

On several occasions, I've waited as much as 100 parts before circling back to something people forgot about. I do this deliberately, sometimes for huge reveals (The destruction of Earth in Route A, for example, was foreshadowed over a hundred parts before), but other times just for subtle reveals. Did you notice that Rebecca, the girl mentioned at the beginning of Part 1, reappears in Marie's lab in Route C as her assistant? 

I like to think of myself as a fantastic on-the-fly worldbuilder. Worldbuilding is very hard for a lot of people, and the biggest problem I see is that good worldbuilders are rarely good writers. They fantasize about their worlds, craft them carefully, but rarely get around to putting pen to paper and writing something satisfying.

I didn't used to consider myself as 'good at dialogue,' but I do now. Most flaws in my dialogue that still exist come from below, stuff like being terrible at describing things.

As I'll mention below, I don't consider myself good at writing interesting battles, but I do think I'm great at the 'flow' of a battle. That is, describing how characters move, and explaining where they are in relation to one-another.

Going into the first flaw below, while I'm terrible at creating new ideas and things, I am good at taking existing ideas and reworking them to be more interesting. Believe it or not, I credit Yugioh for this. (The card game, not the anime). As one example, when Jason says "Invincible" it removes his ability to feel anything. When he says "Speed" it makes him move too fast for his mind to keep up. A lot of abilities I build up are like that. I think it would take away from his powers if they had no downsides, and it makes the abilities more interesting when he has to work around their downsides to improve their upsides.

My writing was very repetitive in the beginning. "I did this, then I did that," as an example. I worked strenuously to improve my vocabulary as I wrote, in order to improve my choice of words, how I start paragraphs, mixing up the order of [Descriptor]["speaking"][action], and other such things, and I'm a lot better than I was before.

A small thing, yet very important; I have an excellent grasp on spelling and grammar. This is one reason why I can write so quickly. I don't need to hire a proof-reader or spend hours checking for typos when I'm done. Usually 99% of my writing is error free.

Flaws:

I am not very imaginative. I am not good at coming up with new ideas. For example, most of Wordsmithing's badass ideas were brought up by fans in the comments at various points, such as the idea of Jason "rewinding" to go back in time. What I instead do, is take an existing idea, or combine multiple ideas, and twist them into something fresh.

Following up with the above point, I am TERRIBLE at naming things. One of the reasons I've stuck to Earth and deities from Earth and demonic names from Christian religions is that I am awful at creating unique, interesting, and memorable names.

Speaking of names, I'm not only terrible at inventing names, I'm awful at remembering names, both in real life, and when reading books or watching movies. Star Wars is one thing, but beyond saying "The Starks" or "The Lannisters" I can't remember many Game of Thrones character names.

This may sound completely wrong, but I'm terrible at writing battle scenes, and fight scenes. Some may be under the impression I'm actually great, but this is not true.

I'm horrific at describing rooms, buildings, objects, and anything of the sort, including character details. 

Going with the above, another aspect is that I'm horrible at using flowery language. My writing is blunt and to the point, most of the time. This can be nice for when you want to self insert a character or imagine them however you like, but when that's nearly every character... it's a problem. Most descriptions of clothes end up being two words, like "white robes" or "blue sundress". 

I'm awful at romance. Now, when I say romance, I mean the reaaaaally intimate stuff. Kissing, groping, sex, stuff like that. To cover up for this flaw, I just cut away from most romance and leave it implied. I often worry this damages people's views of the characters, as if they're sterile beings who never fornicate.

I'm awful at creating initial characters. I always start with a base character archetype, like "sexy seductress," or "guy who wants revenge" and flesh them out from there as I write. This has worked out fairly well for me, but it's also led to a lot of missed opportunities. For example, most of the Demon Dukes and Lords are relatively boring. Bael is just a strong guy who smashes stuff with a flail. I initially created 7 demon leaders, thinking I'd make them interesting and flesh them out later, but instead they fell to the wayside and I forgot about them during chapter 2. If I can focus on each character one-by-one, I can usually make them much more interesting and well-rounded.

Oh yes, one last thing. I'm terrible at asking the community for help. I've done it a few things, but I'm thinking of having a brainstorming Q&A at the end of Cryopod to come up with cool abilities, powers, things like that. I want to fine-tune the universe a bit before I even touch the rewrite, so that it's the best it can possibly be.

...............................................

I'm not a perfect writer, and I'll almost certainly find many more flaws and strengths as I write, but I just thought I'd expand on what it is I want to work on for future projects, for the rewrite of Cryopod, and other such things.

My current goal is to finish Cryopod, then choose between whether I start a rewrite immediately, or jump to a new story. On one hand, a new story sounds fun, and a break from Cryopod is ideal. On the other hand, my generous patrons have given me a lot of money and I feel like I've given very little back. I'm thinking I should do a Patreon-exclusive rewrite.

As an example, I might publish twice-a-week updates to a PDF file, rewriting Cryopod from scratch, then bump certain milestone updates from the $5 tier to the $1 tier. The final product would, hopefully, be put on Amazon. At the least, anyone donating $5 or more would have access to it.

There are issues with this model. As one example, suppose I publish Update 14 to $5 patrons. Then if I push an older update, like Update 10 to $1 donators, that feels slimy, since they're losing out on the newest content, and worse, that older update might have flaws I fixed in newer ones. On the other hand, if I push the 14th Update to all my patrons at once, it kinda kills the uniqueness for $5+ patrons.

...

Things really aren't simple when money is involved, I'm afraid. I'm not someone who really cares about money, I just want to live in relative comfort, and have fun writing and creating things. Call this a character weakness, but the only thing I end up caring about is my legacy, making sure I leave something special behind when I leave this world someday.

Oh no, I'm rambling again. My point is that I have strengths and weaknesses, and right now, aside from coming up with ways to give something back to all my patrons, I need to work on rooting the weaknesses out of my writing and iterating on my strengths.

I'm glad you're all here for this journey :)