12/11/2022 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hellloooo! How are we almost mid-November already? Where did this year go? Why don't I remember any of it? 

Watching time tick by with these weekly updates is giving me an existential crisis. 😱😱

This Week's Summary:

• Completed Ch 14 of Reuben
• Started Revising Reuben (up to Ch 3)

The Ramble:

Another relatively short update this week since I'm still writing (just editing now) and that means there's not always a lot to ramble about.

So this week I finished up Reuben's chapter 14 (yay!) and started revising (yay!)

I will admit that I'm slowly starting to feel burn out creep up on me for writing Gilded Shadows. It's not surprising considering this is the 8th story I'm telling about this one MC in this same setting. Nothing to worry about because I'm not burned out in the sense of physiological burn out - more like...just getting bored of Morgan's story. But I can definitely continue with this project. I can tell that by the end of Yuu's route I'll be done with Morgan as an MC though.

Actually, starting to feel this "burn out" creep on me made me realise that I don't usually get tired of the setting and LIs. I get tired of the *MC* - because with the way these games are structured, I'm trying to come up with multiple stories for Morgan specifically. I could probably continue writing stories in this world if I had a new MC to work with.

It was kind of interesting revelation to think about.

In other news...REVISING!

That's right. I am now revising Reuben's route. I don't know how many "rounds" of revising it will need. (Some require two, others only need one major revision). We'll see how it goes.

I have a couple of goals during revisions (I always make a list of the major fixes I'll need to focus on).

1. Expand the branching. Reuben's route is coming up short on branching compared to the other routes so I really need to focus on trimming down some of the common scenes and fleshing out the branching scenarios.
2. Add humour (this is nearly always a focus during revisions. I don't put a big emphasis on cute/funny moments when drafting and a lot of them get added during revisions).
3. Expand and enhance the romance development (also nearly always a focus during revisions because, again, my drafting is more focused on the main plot since it's the more complicated one).
4. Smooth out the main plot and make the flow of the 'assignment' they're on make more sense.

So far my word count for Reuben's route (around 111,000 words) hasn't shifted that much. I'm doing a lot of trimming and fleshing out simultaneously so it balances out a bit. However,I do expect his route to end up longer than it was when it started. They nearly always do.

Sneak Peeks:

None...Y E T.

Upcoming Week:

More revising.

It can be very difficult to estimate how quickly revising will go. It just depends a lot on how many changes I'm making and how significant they are.

This week I hope to get up to Chapter 5 (even if I can't finish it by the end of the week). Chapter three is a long chapter where a lot happens (versus Ch 1 and 2 which are mostly just conversations).

I suspect it's the latter half of the route that will need the most revising so I expect to get through the first half fairly fast. We'll see how it goes.

During revisions is also where I tend to find myself more tempted to pause and work on whatever sprite additions are coming to mind while writing. I'm not feeling that urge YET (just making note of additional outfits that are needed for various characters). But it's hard to predict when that will happen. LoL

So yeah. The plan is just revising but we'll see what happens.

That's all for now. See you next week.