How To Destroy Exiern in 20 Pages

Or, How I Learned That Changing My Writing Habits Is Hard

This isn't a long post or anything with a lot of deep insight. But I wanted to start sharing more with the Patreon supporters, and a flooded basement took the time I had scheduled to post DR and Neese so I wanted to get something up (those will come this week).

Someday in the future there may be a thorough look back on Exiern and what it took to get it created and ongoing. Drowemos' early work and the transition to the ongoing comic we now have. Chemiclord's outlines as he transitioned the story from the webcomic's original creator. My first terrible attempt to write in 20-page batches.

As I mentioned before, I hope that writing in 20 page batches will help not only in smoothing out some of the consistency and detail issues I felt cropped up in my Execution story line, but open up more options to share Exiern with other readers.

I still believe that, however, I have learned that switching from 8 page batches to 20 is quite the struggle!

When I am working on something I have a simple self-test - am I bored? This can either be a self-assessment of why I may be struggling to write a script (because I'm not engaged in it), or if I can't even get through rereading what I wrote. And if I feel that way about my own work then how could I expect a reader to enjoy it?

Regarding the first attempt at my new scripting process, I really enjoyed writing and reading the first 5 pages I wrote, and I'm very proud of  them - so proud I broke those off and already sent them to be illustrated.

But the last 15? Humorless. Devoid of character development post-Coriander. Interactions which should be complicated and nuanced are simplified to fit an artificially determined "do it in this many pages and move on" page count. Choices made not because of character decisions but because I had a cool set piece envisioned and wanted to get to it. And did I mention humorless?

Exiern's humor and character growth are, I believe, two of its best aspects. How I could even let myself write something without both of those is beyond me.

The good news is that the pages I wrote are, essentially, a really dense outline, and that is how I am going to treat them. I crammed all the events I wanted to see happen into an in-story single day. I've already started to spread things out over the course of at least two. Get some time between Urtica and Typh, Peonie and Phi, and a few other pairs I'm excited to spend more pages with.

There's a lot of upcoming things I'm excited about. Sucking everything fun out of Exiern because I can't understand how to let things breath in 20 pages? Not one of them. And I won't let it happen!

Back to things!

STH