#chiral wip fantasy project

[risingshards]

I did some reflection on my writing processes outside of my webnovel one and thought about how like. My earlier college drafts for attempted manuscripts (I say tradpub a lot for this when I basically mean a nice 80-100k manuscript) actually got finished a lot more consistently. Then in later college I had a lot of ideas and a lot of "this WILL be a movie" thoughts but the manuscripts got finished less I feel. Rising Shards drafts started moving towards web novel style, and I steadily have figured out how to be productive in that format since then.

But I still feel like I haven't cracked the manuscript style for a long time and I want to tackle that to grow my creative muscles. Some of my big goals for Project ZERO were to write something with different creative muscles than I use for RS and to make something for tradpub that isn't as precious so I don't get as discouraged when I submit to agents, but for all of 2022 I got very little done on it and I was not happy working on it. I have been thinking about my formats, trying to figure out my processes and what worked and what didn't. For example, my early college drafts went from coming up with characters to just kind of pantser writing through it. Then later college I really just tried to do cinematic and match movie outlines, but that didn't lead to many finished drafts of anything. For ZERO, I've been trying the Blake Snyder beat sheet like I learned in college, but the sparks of ideas have not lasted long enough to come up with much for that story.

Part of those goals are for the challenge of tackling that impossible tradpub mountain, part of it is because I want to grow my skills, and part is probably cynically wanting that big book contract, but when I'm cynical I don't think I write well, and I think that's what slowed ZERO down a great deal.

So a 2023 goal for my writing is to try and get that like manuscript finishing ability in a new way, to figure out a new process for writing that isn't such a drain. If I trudge for another year on ZERO and this fantasy idea and get nowhere on them and am miserable working on them, I'll probably bench the big manuscript ideas for a while. My main focus is still on Rising Shards (I probably don't have to keep saying this but it's kind of a rallying cry since RS is so like me and I'm so happy with it and writing it) but that doesn't mean I can't tinker around with other ideas and forms and processes. That sounds so dorky but I love me some writing processes. 🥰

—Chiral

[risingshards]

It's writing workshop time again and I'm behind on my WOHAS project (new series that's a fantasy one that's kinda catered to my workshop group's tastes), presumably not my usual deal with the workshop projects where I start hating it a chapter in and scrap it all for another experiment. So I had the idea to try a Rising Shards scene, but since RS is a bajillion chapters in, my thought was to try writing a fun little 5 page scene that showcases the vibe of the series and shows off the characters.

I've talked a ton about my workshop group on here and my aversion to bringing more RS as my feedback kinda became all "it's cute and fun." And I got a bit hurt nobody would actually read the series past my samples, and I was a bit spooked/cowardly about bringing my queerer writing to a group that leans more cishet. I'm trying to get over that last one (and should really get over that second one, it's a long series I can't expect people to take time out of their day to read all of it) so I started on the sampler idea.

And...I didn't like it. I wanted this big fun action scene, and I was bored. I wanted to showcase the characters and their personalities and dynamics, and I couldn't picture them. Their voices weren't coming out right. And when the Rising Shards' crew's voices aren't coming out right, I know something's up and I gotta stop. So I tried rewriting it as a WOHAS scene, and they didn't feel right either. It didn't feel like my writing, it felt like...Diet Chiral. Store brand Chiral. I didn't like it so I just picked a recent RS chapter and threw that in. IDK how workshop will go (I'll probably post about it after) and if it'll be the usual experience I get with Rising Shards and workshop, but we'll see. I don't wanna stop on WOHAS, but it is like a distant fourth in WIP importance at the moment so it's fine if I take my time on the building blocks before I really tear into it.

I'm sure there's a lesson in here somewhere about my writing voice that will hopefully help me strengthen my writing.

[risingshards]

Progress update on my big writing fall season extravaganza!

Rising Shards (includes Evy & Stella):

Chapters: 37 / 51 - 72.5%

Reborn in a Fantasy Game with My Rival:

Chapters: 20 / 30 - 66%

Word count goal: 34,578 / 45,000 - 76%

(RS word count not included because the Tapas contest has a specific word count in mind and my current RS document has a bunch of episodes in it so word count calculation is a bit tough)

I got a comment from one of my dear readers that expressed concern about me taking on a ton of writing and possibly burning out and that did make me pause and realize I can't push too hard even with the tight goal of Reborn/the Tapas contest. I have a big push over the next few weeks as the climax of this extra writing for the fall, and have two vacations from writing planned at the end of this month and the end of the year so that will hopefully help with any potential burnout.

It's kind of exciting to be in the home stretch of this; it was very recent I didn't think I'd be having any kind of new series out there, and now I'm about 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the way through depending on the metric. I was thinking I'd rewrite some fanfics but I've ended up mostly writing something totally new (some chapters were from prototypes of the project, it ended up taking more from my troubled Project ZERO than anything in a fanfics). Also shoutouts to my beloved bestie for letting me bounce ideas off of them and letting me know the fanfic idea was boring, it helped this project out greatly!!

I was worried RS would be difficult to keep up with, what with a sudden extra 45k words to deal with, but having a more work-y project makes RS feel super comforting. I've written some nice and soft chapters and any time I get to get back to the RS squad it's really healing for me. So I think taking on this challenge has been really good for me; I was having trouble with writing discipline and burnout for various reasons (mostly the huge depressive episode this year has been I think), but having something new like activated a lot in my brain and I feel like my creative juices are flowing.

For an example of that, last weekend I was having some break days (my like "omg i love my RS characters sm" posting and "WOW LET'S MAKE A NEW COVER FOR REBORN" cover-making were a result of me taking days off) and had some ideas for one of my other WIPs, Wolves of Hope and Stardust, which is me trying to repurpose the old drafts of Rising Shards when it was a fantasy adventure story, so different that I don't consider it a RS thing. With some elements (characters, chapters, concepts) I was gonna put in WOHAS ending up in Reborn, I was thinking about what to do with this thing now. I thought about making it about the generation before Zeta and be in the RS verse again, but there are some big issues there as the generation before Zeta are major villains in RS and not the like "Fun, wanna see them as protags," kind. The kind where I don't know if people would want more of them. I also don't know if a project I want to try to shop around for tradpub should have any ties to my other stuff; I feel like a publisher wouldn't want that (would they???) due to the complicated ownership of things. So I think it may be best to have that as its own universe not connected to anything. Reborn's in its own universe too, so it's kind of fun to write things that aren't part of a big crossover universe. Next steps for this one are to confirm some new names (for like the fifth time), and to do some world building. I'm reading a lot of fantasy books as of late for my book club and for friends that really want me to read some series, so I might look to those for inspiration for where to take this project next.

—Chiral

[risingshards]

Rambles about WIP titles

So I really like writing titles and coming up with titles for my work; one of the things I love about doing a web novel is coming up with episode titles that sound all TV show-y. I've been working on D6R a lot this week and it has me thinking about what I wanna call it.

Originally, it was called Serrate, which was the name of the planet at the time (IDK why I thought it fit the story to just call it the place it was at) . At one point it was Serrate I: The Hope of Tomorrow, with the subtitle I think having a dual meaning with the royal chosen ones getting dubbed the hope of tomorrow but with our exile main characters actually being that hope.

Then it was called...Rising Shards! And it kept that title until the Rising Shards I'm currently writing formed with a lot of character names carrying forward effectively for new characters, and the plot and style and everything changed and went into its own deal. So the old drafts became a story that I wanted to get back to but I had a feeling that grew more and more that they were generally events that happened before Rising Shards with their own cast.

I was working on a project adjacent to D6R that will still be part of it that I called Versus that I wrote a TON of subtitle ideas for, but I think one of the issues I had with that project was trying to do a story and mush the D6R writing in all at once. Right now my hope is that I can use the D6R drafts already written to combine into one thing, then get to the big Versus story beats I've been daydreaming about forever after within that story.

So this week I've been thinking about what I want to call D6R. One of the Versus subtitles was The Exile Rebirth, which I liked a lot but I used it when I put some of that writing on Kindle Vella, and that went bad so like. I kind of want a clean break from that title cuz it has some bad vibes.

I'm a bit tempted to do one of those ____ of ____ & ____ titles, but that may be too cynical to try for that, like "Oh this is what publishers want from their fantasy titles better do that!" But if I do come up with a title like that I like I won't shy away from it. I work at a library so I've been looking at the new YA titles this week like "Oh so they got the ____ of ____ & ____ ones, the two words merged ones, the ones that don't have a category like that, hmmm..."

I'm really hoping I get that title that just immediately feels right, like it did when I first thought of the character names a long while ago, slacking off in the back room of my computer shop job in my senior year of high school. So when I do figure out the title y'all will be the first to know!

—Chiral