Progress Update: The Novella Incident...

Heyo, helpful humans!

So it's been a little while since I've posted one of these, and I think you're all due an update. This short story's been in the works for a long, long time at this point, and honestly, if I were in your shoes I'd be starting to wonder how a single story can even take so long.

Well, the truth is a bit unfortunate, but also kinda cool.

Let me tell you about it.

Where are we now?

About a sixth of the way through the final draft at this point. For perspective, a sixth of the final draft looks like ~3,500 words. Do the math, and it turns out that I'm writing a story ~21,000 words long.

Officially, we call a short story that long a novella or a novelette. 

This is easily the longest thing I've ever written for Tale Foundry, maybe even the longest complete piece I've ever written period. I didn't plan for it to be that way, but in order to execute this idea in a way I can be proud of and you can enjoy, I just... need that cognitive real estate. The usual 7-10k words just couldn't cut it this time.

And while it's pretty cool to be writing something a little longer form than normal... this is pretty bad news for the show.

It gums up the works, makes things slow, means there's a much longer interval of waiting than I intended, and ultimately means I  (and the show) are making a lot less money and risking our longevity.

So obviously I can't keep things up this way. Which brings me to my solutions.

What's next?

I'm glad you asked, fair reader.

So there are two problems I've recently had to solve in order to make the show work:

1. How do I properly predict the size of a short story and how long it might take to write?

2. How do I write any short story fast enough to keep bread on the table, while also producing a youtube show?

Pretty tough quandaries, if I do say so myself. Y'all might have seen me signalling this a little on social media, back when I posted that vote about whether I should start taking paid story submissions like a regular lit mag instead of writing them myself.

But that was only one idea. After a lot of cogitation and reflection, I think I've found serviceable solutions for both of these problems.

1. Comprehension Economy — This came to me during a conversation with a close friend about the stress I've been under to write lately. I was comparing the stories I've been writing to the stories I've  written in the past, and realized something:

They've become hella more complex.

And it's not even because I'm becoming a better writer (although I do think that's happening as well); I think it's because I'm becoming a more ambitious writer. I like to challenge myself a lot, but in the future I'm going to have to accept that writing for Tale Foundry isn't about challenging myself; it's about trying out new ideas and producing something fun for myself and the audience. For this current story, I didn't need to write a sprawling multi-setting satire that marries technology and secondary world fantasy in order to try out Pratchett's approach to voice. 

I did though, because I was excited by the prospect of executing on a really difficult idea. And I think the story's going to be awesome for those with the pallet for it, and I don't regret it too much, but I have to put the show's well-being before my own zeal in the future.

So, from here on out, I'm going to be using a method of evaluation that I call comprehension economy to evaluate my story outlines. I rate certain aspects of the story on a scale of 1-5, 1 being totally comprehensible (the audience gets it before I even say anything) and five being so convoluted as to make the audience withdrawal from the story altogether.

This way I can roughly guess how much cognitive labor I'll have to put into conveying all of the elements of the story before I begin writing it. The harder things are going to be for the audience to understand in a vacuum, the more work I'm going to have to do as a writer.

I think this'll help a lot going forward, because I have a serious tendency to tackle high-concepts and difficult premises.

Let's bring things back a little, around the level of Broken-Glass Circus or Devil of The Cradle. Easier to understand, so that I can focus more on the telling of the story than on the conveyance of the bizarre.

So that's my first solution; how I plan to take some of the weight off my shoulders for writing these stories and make them a bit more wieldy.

My second solution has a lot more to do with the rest of the show...

2. Hire a co-writer — Tale Foundry is my baby. I want to protect it and nurture it and do everything for it that I can.

But it's also important to face up to the fact that I can't do everything for it. In order to be healthy, it's going to need to draw on the strengths and talents of a lot of different people, like Felipe, and the input of the community.

So I've been talking to a potential candidate. Someone to help me do research and organize my ideas.

The goal is for them to put everything in order for the next series while I'm writing the short story for the current series. We'll talk every day, plan, discuss, and boil things down to an outline so specific, all I have to do is write up a script in Talebot's voice by the time I'm done with the story.

Y'all have no idea what untold hours this will shave off the process.

I never wanted to face the fact that I'm a slow, slow, slooooooow grandfatherly pedant of a writer, but it's true. I want everything to be as perfect, as true, as carefully-manicured as possible, and if I'm doing all of that compositional work, it's really hard to deliver on content as well. I kid you not, I can sometimes spend days figuring out the perfect way to deliver a particular paragraph.

So this should help a lot. It should speed up the show significantly.

And the best part? I'll still be writing the scripts, I just won't be doing as much work in terms of compiling information and research, which was never my strong-suit anyway.

So, in summation: expect better content, still delivered in the voice and writing style you know, and in a more timely fashion.

Anything else?

Sure!

Streaming's been a helluva lot of fun, and I plan to keep on doing it. In fact, when the Terry Pratchett series closes (and before the SCP series begins), I plan to post an official announcement on the channel about the TF twitch. 

Once I do that, we should have enough traffic to begin holding a writing group on a weekly basis, which is actually one of the things I've been most excited about lately. I've been hankering for that good ol' low-level creative writing class vibe, where we're just sharing ideas back and forth and help each other to improve our craft, and I think this'll be a great way to do it.

For the time being, more Free Time streams, woo!

—

Phew. Well that was one of the longest and most feverish progress updates I've ever posted.

I guess this stuff can just gush right out of you when you're eager to share it, huh?

Thanks for being so patient. Tale Foundry is one big learning process, and it's getting better all the time. Hopefully now we'll actually start to get a little better about timing as well, hey?

All the love,

—Benji

P.S. — More story spoilers coming soon for you engineers, so stay tuned!