Frequently Asked Questions - About The Story
Here’s the space where I’ll answer questions about the story from an “external” or “meta” perspective… questions about the writing and publishing, that is, rather than the characters.
How would you classify this story?
I wouldn’t.
One reason I’m doing everything myself is so that I don’t have to fit the entire story inside of some easily marketed category. It’s a fantasy world. It’s got some dramatic elements, and some goofy humor, and some sex… sometimes within the same paragraph. Because this is an ongoing project, much like a webcomic, it might go end up going anywhere. There’s not a lot of (combat) action in the first couple books, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more. There’s a lot of angsty drama in the beginning, but that doesn’t mean that’s all the story will ever be. Most of the early relationships are girl-girl, because the first few story arcs only involve female characters, but if that’s all I wanted to explore I would have made it an all girls’ school.
So, in short, I wouldn’t know what category to call this story, because any label I gave it would almost certainly be contradicted… except for the incredibly broad classification of “fantasy.”
Are you planning on publishing this?
Printed compilations are made available as each book is finished, time allowing. I’m not shopping the story around to publishing houses because regardless of any question of quality it isn’t written as a novel and would have to undergo several changes and compromises before it could be one. To put it simply, at this point in my life I choose to publish my own work in my own way. I have no doubt I could sell a novel, if I wrote one, but this isn’t it.
The links to buy the books are available in the sidebar at the edge of the screen.
Do you honestly expect somebody to spend $12+ for a printed copy of something they can read for free?
No, but a few dozen people so far have gone out of their way to prove me wrong. As my readership grows, I’m sure I’ll only become further disillusioned.
How far in advance do you write each chapter?
Often, as many as five or even ten minutes before it’s posted.
Seriously, I don’t write in advance. I write each chapter either the day before or the day of its publication. Some people have a hard time believing that, but since I rarely take more than a day off, even if I were writing in advance, I’d still have to be averaging five chapters a week.
I like the spontaneity this affords me, the immediacy and intimacy of getting immediate feedback from and even interaction with my audience.
Do you plan out what’s going to happen?
Sometimes, to some extent. I plan characters in much greater details than I do events. Just as some directors prefer to work with talented actors who can improvise within a scripted situation, I prefer to have fully realized characters who can respond and react for themselves to the events as they unfold.
As some “events” within the story consist of one character’s reactions, this means the story can take a surprising turn, even for me. For example: I knew there would come a time where Two would reach an emotional breaking point, and I knew how Mackenzie would respond to that. It happened earlier than I expected… and when Mackenzie was at a similar point, which I also didn’t expect… and the results were, in my opinion, very real and very powerful.
Why do you keep posting chapters that are irrelevant to the larger story?
Good question. My question in response would be what do you consider to be relevant? Every reader who looks at this story probably has a different idea what “the important parts” are, and what’s “the fluff.” One reader e-mailed me to say he didn’t appreciate me writing a chapter describing Amaranth and Mackenzie traveling to an appointment in order to pad out the chapter count. Other readers left comments that made it clear they loved that chapter, because of the insight into the city, the modes of transportation, history, etc.
What one person considers filler or fluff, another person considers world-building or character insight. I don’t include any scenes or chapters or even lines unless I feel they serve a purpose, but that purpose isn’t necessarily going to be propelling the protagonist along the path to the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
Wouldn’t it be better to have somebody proofread the chapters before you post them?
“Better” in what sense? It would be slower, and publication would become subject to fluctuations in two peoples’ schedules instead of one. The web is different than most media… it costs nothing to “reprint and redistribute” a “new edition”, and I take full advantage of that by using the reading public as my proofreader.
When the print edition of book one came out, there were less eyes reading the online story, and so the first few copies sold did contain some errors. At this point, I think I can be a little more confident in the finished product.
One year to tell a month’s worth of story? Do you maybe need an editor to help you with the pacing?
What does the length of real world time have to do with the passage of time in the story? Many novels are written over the course of a year. Some of those novels cover a single month’s worth of events, or a single week, or even a single day. They wouldn’t be as long as a year’s worth of Tales of MU stories, maybe, but on the other hand, they have to be edited down to something that fits comfortably between a pair of covers, as well as something that the marketing people feel is an approachable length.
Tales of MU is meant to be appreciated on a day-by-day basis, though, so my only goal with regards to length is to make each installment an easily digestible size.
Wouldn’t it be more realistic to spread events out over longer periods of story time, and then you could skip over the parts where nothing happened?
I’m not sure I agree that would be more realistic. It’s certainly more what we’re conditioned to expect as readers. If you have an annoying co-worker, though, do you find that he or she will annoy you once on Tuesday, then let you work in peace for a week and a half and bug you again the following Friday? Draco only laid into Harry Potter and his pals a few times over the course of the year because J.K. Rowling needed to fit two semesters of schooling into a single book, but the issues that confront us in our lives don’t arrange themselves into plot points strung out over the course of an academic year.
To me, realistically, a situation like the one that exists between Puddy and Mackenzie at the start of the school year is not one that can sustain itself over the course of months, so it comes out into the open within weeks.
Do you need ideas for future stories?
The muse Calliope, divine architect of long form storytelling, has made me her personal bitch ever since I misspelled her name in a spelling bee in fifth grade (she’s also a common noun; a steam-driven pipe organ.) Consequently, my problem is never lacking for ideas… it’s not having enough time to do anything with most of the ideas I have.
Also, there could be legal issues if I started looking at outside submissions for story pitches. So… please don’t.
