A look behind the scenes

Hello to all my followers. I just thought it might be interesting to post a little looksie to my thoughts on things. The currently ongoing story Journeys of Seraphiel has certainly had it bumbs on the road, but at least I've learned a fair bit from it. I said from the start that that particular story is highly experimental.

The first main issue I have with it is the GameLit side of things. Readers may have noted that I've phased out the stats and the System side of things to the best of my ability. Much of that is because the stats especially don't really work for the kind of story I would like to write. When the stats have no real grounding in reality, it's hard to see how they matter. If the MC gets an X number more to a certain stat, that doesn't really make me or the reader feel anything, if we don't know what that improvement means in practical terms. The numbers are too large, and the basically unconstrained limits on the numbers aren't doing any favors either.

I've already got a better system in mind that I can use in any future stories, and I even have ideas pertaining to that.

The second thing with the story is that while I like a lot of what I've done in combining many of the different IPs and characters together, it's simply too much and unsustainable for too long. I can't really focus on any of them properly, when there are too many things mixed together. I can't focus on certain characters, because I know there's a hundred more waiting in the wings, and that means there isn't really space for proper character growth or development. I can't explore ideas fully either, as I feel the need to move onto another one too quickly. This also places a lot on the reader to know the different IPs and that's not a fair expectation either.

In the future, I'd most likely focus on one or two IPs at the same time. One main, and one supportive one, like having a single character from one IP in another. That way I could focus on just exploring a single setting, with some spice from another, and can focus properly on a limited set of characters.

With all that taken into consideration, I don't think the current story is going to be an extremely long one. I'm not going to rush to finish it, and I have a some ideas for the next arc that we'll get a glimpse of in tomorrow's chapter, but I must admit that I'm more eager to explore other ideas, where the problems of this story aren't as prominent.

On that note, I might as well mention a couple of those ideas. Two of them have the GameLit element with the new system I mentioned. One is Warcraft related, and one is a Mass Effect related one. Those ideas originally started as backstories for Seraphiel's lives in those universes, but heavily veered off and expanded into their own ideas. I also have one idea set in our world. It would be a more sexy story, and heavily corruption themed. Maybe because I've been playing games with those themes lately, I don't know. I have no idea if those ideas will take off, but at least I have basics outlined for all three and I'm writing some random chapters for each when I have time and no inspiration for the current story. Sometimes writing something else is rather helpful in getting the creative juices flowing.

Anyway. Just a little somthin' somethin' I've been bouncing around in my noggin.