So before I begin with a lengthy post, you can get caught up with what I have contributed in the past 2 "Get Creative" challenges:
The first was a song:
The second was also a song:
This time I got a little something different. For those of you in a rush to get down to see what my contribution is, then...I'm sorry. It's not just "click the play button" like in the past as this is something I am a little more protective of. The link I have provided is password protected Apparently my hosting site has disabled that functionality. The very last paragraph (besides any "edit" notes I may append) will contain information on downloading the file. Strict? Yeah, probably. Limiting? Of course. That's the point.
What Is It?
It's a novel I've been working on like a fucking coffee-shop hipster for the past 2 years. More on the history later, but the book itself is a...well...I hesitate to use the term "Sci-Fi" as the genre to describe it. Simply because that implies there is a degree of "science" to go with the fiction. I would much prefer to describe it as "Future Fantasy" but that isn't exactly a commonly accepted genre tag.
It's in the future and I expect my readers to accept the technology that is used without me having to stop and explain why it's there or how it's there and the ins and outs of it's functionality. In general, I have written it with the expectation of my audience to be bit smart.
While I am not an expert writer - I haven't had any formal training - I did my best to try and avoid as much heavy exposition as I could and leave things up to be determined by the reader (to a certain degree of course).
I do throw as bone here or there to try and help prevent people getting lost, but at the same time I try not to just halt the story just so I can get you caught up in what is happening in the world I created.
What's It About?
I'm bad at synopsis's...not to mention I fear the "Spoiler Saints" who will cry when too much has been revealed. I don't know what to say that is too much or too little, so forgive this very limited synopsis, it's the best I can do (Also I am very sleepy but eager to post this, so my writing is lacking).
*The story follows Quil - a junior high student who has a burning curiosity that he can't quell due to the boredom of the home he lives in. With recent events striking his own curiosity he tries to seek answers but winds up getting swept up in a misadventure that leads him across the universe (and god this synopsis sounds cheesy).
There is the obligatory Sci-Fi bounty hunter who is devoted to keeping the promises he makes and unfortunately makes a promise he wasn't prepared to keep to Quil which results in him becoming Quil's escort across the stars as Quil seeks the answer to the mystery of a stolen android girl and what her grand purpose is, or if there even is a purpose since she's clumsy, easily distracted, and acts like a small child rather than model to aid whoever the operator might be.*
I hope that was good enough, if not a bit cheesy in summary.
What Are the Influences?
Look, this is some autistic weeb shit right here. I'm a fan of anime (but not the type who would use an anime character as his avatar). That should be pretty clear to anyone who has seen me around the forums as I have regularly posted my own Youtube content which are pretty aggressive, brutal, and offensive reviews of anime.
In that sense, it becomes pretty apparent that the whole book has not only taken influence from many different anime, but, to a degree, embraces the quirks and cliches of anime - at least the quirks and cliches that I see as someone who is not part of the Japanese culture.
A lot of it I try my best to write these references as part of the story to not make it so obtuse and further help it seem like the story embraces the anime that I watch and enjoy (and try to avoid the /fiction territory because that shit is just really fucking autistic).
This isn't like the "Duke Nukem" of anime where I just plop some reference to some anime and call it a joke. This isn't like Neptunia is to the video game industry. As I said, if there is any reference I make sure it is written in as PART of the world it takes place in, rather than an unsubtle and unfunny reference that does little but break the fourth wall and remove any immersion into the story. Those kind of references would just remind you that you are reading a book about something that is probably better than the book you are reading. I'm saying my book sucks
In addition to that, my influences don't stop at just anime - though, that is the most apparent. Technology obviously has played a huge part of the influence I have. This is something that you should pick up pretty clearly in the first episode, but you will definitely notice it in the second.
Why is it "Episode 1"?
I'm sure you are asking that, but before I go into that:
What is the History of this?
A question I am sure no one has asked yet.
I started writing this 2 years ago simply as an outlet to express myself quickly and...fairly meaninglessly. I had no intention of actually taking this writing seriously. It had been the first time I had written in years. Back during my early college days to all the way back to elementary I liked writing stories.
I remember the reason I did it too. I was never a big book reader. I remember when I was young I slammed my foot down and said, "If there are no books I am interested in, then I will write one myself". To this day I am still not a big reader, but I can happily say I have a few more books under my belt since that day (one would hope so)
But as time had moved on, I had pretty much given up on ever actually finishing a book. There was a story I had dreamt up (literally, I had a dream of it) when I was in 8th grade that I tried writing for 6 years. The first 4 years I spent working on it I had written 256 pages. Unfortunately because I was a small, dumb kid at the time and thought "Whoa, Twilight...like...totally gets all these emotions I feel" my work of 4 years was tarnished by angsty characters with vampires and werewolves.
So I spent the next 2 years rewriting the story with more direction while also cutting out the /TwilightFic part of it. (Had I known 50 Shades of Grey would be successful, I might have kept the /fic in there)
Eventually I lost interest and gave up on it...I guess that's what happens when the project haunts you for so long, it's hard to find motivation to keep going when it seems like you have barely made any progress on it.
One day I was talking to a friend that I had brought up that old story and talked about it a little. She wanted to read what I had, but unfortunately I no longer had a digital copy of it. I did have a printed manuscript of the first 50 or so pages, so I decided to copy it by hand and send it to her. It was funny, once i got caught up with the 50 pages, I was enjoying writing so much again that I kept going.
Then my motherboard died and my hard drive had to get wiped. I had forgotten to back it up anywhere else and all that progress was lost again. To me it was a sign that story was finished and will never see the light of day.
For the record, I have learned from that mistake. I now, on a daily basis, back up my writing locally and offsite
So what does all that have to do with this story? Well, being the uncreative fuck that I am, I retooled that story. The old story took place in a contemporary setting. I decided to take names and locations and retrofit them into a futuristic setting. The whole beginning of this new story was built on my depression; using writing as my outlet and taking an existing story and just seeing how the pieces might fit into a different setting.
There was no outline to begin with.
It was within the last few months I wanted to start showing off my work as I am now pretty far along with the book. However, before I started making any public presentations with what I have, I wanted it to shine it's best. So let's go back to that previous question:
Why is it "Episode 1"?
Episode 1 is the first section which I revised and rewrote. It was about midway through my writing on the story I developed an outline, character motivations started falling more in line with their action, and the story telling itself earned a degree of it's own identity instead of aimless writing.
So, armed with the far better writing that came midway through, I have been going back and revising all the older chapters to give the characters more depth, to have plot devices align with the goal of the story, and add more flavor to the story telling itself. Episode 1 is obviously the first few chapters that I have finished revising.
What Does Episode 1 contain? How far have you revised? How far have you written?
Slow down! 1 question at a time.
This story has had 3 different prologues to set the stage and every single one felt dumb and useless and mostly just spoiled the plot within 2 pages. After realizing a prologue seems to be pointless for this story, I decided the first 5 chapters actually already are a pretty reasonable prologue. While the original 5 chapters before the revision still mostly contained the same A-B story arch, a huge part of my revision was making sure to also use these 5 chapters to establish a broad outline of the universe like a normal prologue might. So...in a sense, these first 5 chapters in episode 1 is just an extended prologue.
As for revisions itself, I have begun revising the chapters that would be contained in "Episode 3" and it takes me about 3 months per episode. However, since my writing got better along the way, the hope is that the further into the story that I revise, the quicker it will become for me to finish these episodes (that's the hope, at least).
BUT, I have a stipulation on releasing these publicly which I will get to later.
As for how far I have written; I have written to chapter 24 which effectively is the start of the climax...erm...maybe it's the chapter just before the climax. Point is, there is about 1/4 left of the story that hasn't been written (but has been heavily outlined) on the note of that outline, there are a few gaps that need to be filled in which will come when I can see a clearer picture on the story after the previous chapters have been revised with the realigned plot
When Can I Download This? When Can I Download the Next Episode?
I have posted 2 links. I gave some minor peer reviewing to a few friends and family members and got some feedback - mostly on formatting. Since I am too dumb to figure out how to publish it as an ePub ebook, I have instead made 2 different format PDFs. The first is the standard formatting (my original intentions) with 14 point titles, 4 point spacing between titles, 11 point font with 1 point spacing. This is very legible on my 7" tablet screen that I preview this one.
For smaller screens I have a larger formatting option. 20 point titles, 4 point spacing between titles, 14 point font, and 1.5 point spacing.
[see edit notes]
Usual disclaimer: this is an early preview of my writing. The episode may not accurately represent the final product.
(and if you are curious, I use FBReader (free) on my tablet for PDFs)
Please be sure to read the legal page on permissions. This can be found on the last page of the document. Page 48 for the 11 point version and page 101 for the Phone Friendly version.
As I mentioned, it takes about 3 months for me to do a complete revision to these chapters - and I still work my day job (thankfully I don't work many hours) on top of the other creative stuff I do: music and youtube. So I can only write when I can. I hope to release one episode each "Get Creative" topic posted, but, I just can't make a promise on that end. I would probably assume I will post every other month to every 3 months. HOWEVER, I will only be interested in posting it if this goes over well.
I mentioned I let some friends and family have a look at it and out of the dozen people I contacted, only 3 actually got back to me on the story - and 2 of those people I basically had to bug them consistently for them to actually read it.
I don't expect every single person who downloads it here to tell me they read it and have some sort of discussion about it, but I do hope to see a good ratio of downloaders to responders. It will help motivate me to keep posting.
See, the deal is; because I've never had any formal training and I haven't read a lot of books, I am usually struck with some pretty debilitating doubt about my writing. I know it's not the best, but sometimes I think I am out of my league in this field.
So, while my music and youtube stuff can receive hate and negative feedback (or the thing I fear most) no response at all - I'm use to that. With my writing, that kind of stuff - at least, right now in it's early stages - I'm too uncertain and I worry these kind of responses will only cripple my motivation. So while I am not necessarily looking for you guys to suck my cock and tell me it's the most bestest writting ever, I think more gentle criticisms would be appreciated.
Anyways...time for me to proofread this article so I don't sound like an illiterate fuck...that probably wouldn't sell you on wanting to read something I wrote.
EDIT
Due to a lack of interest, I have removed the links.
If you at all have any interest in reading, please contact me through PM