Plans for the Month Ahead

Hey, all!

Hope you enjoyed the small taste of things to come in the poly route in the last update. With the next build, we'll be moving into Day 6 in earnest and giving you some content with the boys. There was a little salt from people here and there that neither Axel nor Dom appear in first few chapters of their own route, but with Russell playing an important part in the story ahead, it made the most sense to get the ball rolling on that front quickly so things can proceed at a good pace going forward. Nonetheless, my hope is that we'll be able to squeeze both of them into the next update. It may be a tall order as there'll be multiple different openings to Day 6 depending on the events of Day 5 which will need to be completed first, but all going well we'll pull it off.

With Day 5 wrapped up, it's now also time for us to plan out the finer details of the content ahead. At this stage, the overall plan for the route is maybe a thousand or so words in a big ugly block of text which concerns itself mostly with major events and outcomes but less so with the details in-between. Having done two routes now, I've learned that I get the best results by having a solid plan as to where things are going but allowing room for inspiration to flourish during the writing process. Being too rigid and precise with our plans will stifle in the moment creativity and make writing a total drag. But with that said, having detailed and comprehensive plans of the core events in the story is essential, otherwise you end up with a story with pacing issues that fails to properly set things up and execute on those ideas. It's all a balancing act. But with that said, we need more detail than we have right now, so one of my jobs for this month is to build out a more comprehensive plan, particularly for when certain things will be happening. I already have a pretty good approximation, but now is the time to properly lock those details down.

The second task I have for this month relates to something we haven't done in a little while, and that is the process of introducing a new character! We've specifically been avoiding adding more characters unless strictly necessary as we've got a whole menagerie already with a number of those sorely disused, but this is one of those cases where it's necessary for us to do so. I won't go into specifics just yet, but I'm sure some of you might be able to guess who it is. After all, you already know his name! It will be interesting to see how this one turns out as he's quite different to most of our existing cast both in appearance and personality, and those two things are intended to complement each other. He also represents a bodytype we don't already have in Sileo, so it ought to be really interesting to see the results. It will certainly be a test of CurryCatz's abilities to see if he can capture what I'm going for here, so let's see what he's got! This character is expected to first appear on approximately Day 8 of the Poly Route, though it could be a day earlier or later - we'll have a better idea of when once the route plan is fleshed out.

Finally, a small update on Lukas' route. The last time I posted about it, I was uncertain about what direction I wanted to take with it as the existing plan for it was something I felt was better left unexplored. I've since thought a lot on that topic and I'm now feeling much more confident in my plans. Specifically, I intend to build on that existing plan, using it as a foundation for a sort of meta-narrative that explores the idea of outsiders weighing in on topics and issues they themselves have no personal experience with and whether it is sometimes just better to know your place in that discussion and leave well enough alone, regardless of good intentions. With that said, that element of the plot was never the whole plot, just a piece of a larger overall story, and that won't be changing - that smaller piece will remain a smaller piece. As of right now, I want to dedicate some time to the Poly Route and at least make some solid progress on that before I distract myself with other things, but in the nearish future, after day 6 wraps at the very soonest, I'll begin setting things up so that the route can finally debut. And for those wondering, a few of the existing characters who will be major players (not all) in Lukas' Route will be: Eric, Tobias, Rusty and Kyrex. Yes, you heard right. Poor Kyrex will finally have his time to shine! It's only been years!

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll drop in again a little later on in the month to update you all on our progress!