Serials are fun and a mess in a dress

This is the conclusion I’ve come to as a result of (re?)starting the process of working on fixing books 3-7 of the Awakenings series. Of course, it’s a serial, the story predates the serial, and it’s all very complicated and crazy and fun.

It’s a story that I wanted to tell but it was a story that I dove into with barely half a plan which sometimes works out great and sometimes doesn’t. Sometimes writing to a deadline, while it forces you to continue to stretch creative muscles, doesn’t do you many favors.
There’s a lot that needs fixing, needs updating, needs smoothing out—this is true of books 3-7, but also specifically true of some plot and character arcs that turned out to be, in the end, not what they were originally intended to be (I’m looking at you, Matt and Hecate, who took the prize for “biggest surprise” so far—which is not to say other characters didn’t also do this to me because more than a few did). This means I have a lot of material to play with, but there’s also a lot of material that needs tightening up.

Some things will need to be pulled out, new things will be added in. In reviewing the content that ended up being book 3 content (since book 2 and book 3 ended up being mixed around a little bit from how they were originally posted—just to make some things flow better and properly link things together), there’s almost no content with the group that Aoife’s with, which is something that will need to change so their plot arc can be properly tied up in subsequent books. I can’t cut them entirely because a) it wouldn’t make sense to do it given the role some of the characters play later and b) at least one particularly important instance where we see exactly how wild talents and magic can be in the broken world.

In many ways, the books of the Founders Cycle (which comprises the first seven books of the series), is about the survivors learning exactly what they can do—the power they possess—and then stomping down hard on the war that they didn’t start but will play a role in finishing. It’s a fun, interesting arc that takes them through the first few years after the end of everything they knew and one that sets up the Ambrose Cycle that follows—but more on that story sometime to come.

Either way, I’ve got my work cut out for me with all of this.

Awakenings: Book One and War Drums are available where books are sold.

Of Starships and Intergalactic Wars

Probably ten years ago, when the Internet was a younger space and podcasting and the concepts of web fiction and indie e-publishing were young, I ended up guesting on a podcast dedicated to web fiction, talking about Awakenings initially. The conversation with the host eventually drifted to my recently released book, Broken Stars, about which the host was duly enthused.

The universe of Broken Stars is in some ways more optimistic than the world of Awakenings—sure, the human race still has problems but the actual apocalypse hasn’t happened and hey, we’re in space. Sure, Earth is held by a galactic state that stands in opposition to our heroes in Broken Stars and there’s definitely a simmering conflict there, but we’ve managed to survive two wars of annihilation and enslavement by an alien race to get there.

More on that in a second.

The question—in the midst of this long-ago interview—that came up from the host, something that is probably the only thing that I remember from the whole interview, was the question whether or not Broken Stars would ever be released as web fiction, if anything in that universe would be released online as web fiction. I remember laughing and saying that I wasn’t sure it quite felt right to do it that way, that the format might not be right.

Fast forward to a pandemic, to another bachelor’s degree, to a much different point in my life than where I was in the days of that interview.

There has been an idea rolling around in my head for a little while now, suggesting that in addition to getting back to both Awakenings and at least the world of the Legacies of Lost Earth, perhaps there was hope for a web-facing taste of the Epsilon universe—of which Broken Stars is a major part.

The Preytax Wars are a historical event that takes place in the Epsilon universe, an event that planted the seeds for the status quo that exists in Broken Stars. Taking place in the 22nd century, several decades after humanity has made its way deeper and deeper into the stars (thanks to a bit of help from a few friendly alien races that made first contact in the later 21st century), the Preytax Wars represent humanity’s first encounter with a hostile alien race and two major conflicts with that race—both of which are generally characterized as life or death for humanity and human society on the whole.

Humanity won, but not without cost and not necessarily as decisively as anyone characterizing it as an existential conflict might have hoped—but no one actually thinks they’ll come back, right?

More on that to come in the future.

I have never been sure if I would actually write a full-blown book in the era of the Preytax Wars—I would have to write several, in fact, due to knowing who some of the important macro and micro stories live with. Something that I have been playing with is putting together a site that gathers fictional news reports, journal entries, sequences, etc. that would tell at least part of the story of the Preytax Wars. It’s been an idea that’s simmered for a little while now.

I suppose we’ll see what happens next.

The Court of Twelve and the UNSETIC Files

Everyone who’s a fan of the UNSETIC Files–or just Tim McConaway and Brigid O’Connell, or James McCullough, or Ridley Thys–can thank LP Loudon at this point, loudly and often.  For the people who don’t know (possibly because they haven’t read Between Fang and Claw), LP Loudon is the brain behind the Hunters (remember Mara, Galahad, and of course, David Tierney?) and one of my longtime roleplaying buddies and, in the past few years, writing partners.  There had been plans between the two of us for some time to interweave my UNSETIC Files stories and her Hunterverse stories, but we’d never quite talked about when that might happen–it was always pushed out into some nebulous future time frame.

As of this past weekend, that time has already started.

I’ll be collaborating with LP on her Court of Twelve serial, The Man Who Made Monsters and with its subsequent sequels.  Monsters is set more than a decade after the stories where we first meet many of the UNSETIC characters that will be appearing in the serial (roughly 2022–we meet Jim McCullough in 2006 with Between Fang and Claw, Tim McConaway, Kate Berkshire, and AJ McConaway in 2008 with The Measure of Dreams, Ridley Thys in 2009 with What Angels Fear, and Brigid O’Connell in 2010 with Bering Songs and Silence), but not to worry!  I still have very definite plans to fill in the gap of time left between those initial appearances and Monsters, and future works will be written with the knowledge that The Man Who Made Monsters is out in the world and that people just might be curious about how and when certain things come to pass.

UNSETIC’s debut in The Man Who Made Monsters is currently set for July 23.

Current projects and ramblings

Well, November’s over and we’re now well into December and I’ve been busy the past few months, as I’m sure folks have noticed.  My updates for Ashes to Ashes and Awakenings have been shorter than usual for the past few months, for which I whole-heartedly apologize!  I’ve been spending some time recharging my batteries the past few weeks and prior to that was knee-deep in some plotting with a few friends for some potential collaborations (in a new fantasy universe, the science fiction universe of The General’s Lady, and in the UNSETIC/Lost Angels universe), but now I’m getting back on track with my own work and I’m loving every minute of it.

I spent my November getting deeply reacquainted with my Epsilon universe and of my NaNoWriMo work, folks may be seeing some short works about General Jackson “Longshot” Hunter, JJ Collins, and perhaps a few others that have been mentioned in Broken Stars and Falling Stars only briefly. Stay tuned for updates on that front.

More recently, I have begun to work on edits and reviews for the special edition of War Drums and the (somewhat belated) release of Awakenings book three, Omens and Echoes.  As a result, Phelan O’Credne has decided to take up residence in a warm corner of my brain and is rocking back and forth, hoping I don’t do some of the awful things I’m pondering for the universe going forward (I’m currently writing and posting book four at awakenings.embklitzke.com).  More updates on that coming soon.

It’s shaping up to be a fun end of year for me, both as a writer and as a crafter (I got a new sewing machine and have been using it to make wonderful things lately).  The new year promises to bring new goals and a niece for me to spoil rotten.

There will be some changes and new weekly features coming in the next few weeks, so check back often!

Snippet Sunday – Awakenings: Book One

Today’s snippet is an additional piece from Awakenings: Book One previously only available in the print and ebook versions of the serial.

Awakenings: Book OneThe world ended on an August Sunday, in a rain of stones from the sky, like something out of Revelations.  Marin Astoris saw the end of the world well before it happened, and her visions of the future become a guiding force for a small knot of survivors at her Midwestern university.

In the weeks after the end of the world, that knot of thirty students and one professor begin to awaken to supernatural gifts they didn’t expect.  These newfound talents may mean the difference between life and death–for them and the rest of humanity.

Thom Ambrose loves Marin with every fiber of his being, but he can’t accept the prophetic gift they share.  If he does, he’ll lose the only thing that’s important to him: her.  His ignorance comes at a price.

Is it a price he and his friends can afford to pay?

Fiction below the break.


Continue reading “Snippet Sunday – Awakenings: Book One”

Doc’s Writercraft: What I know about writing webfiction

While attending the 2013 Desert Nights, Rising Stars writer’s conference at Arizona State the last weekend in February, I was shocked by how many questions I got asked about writing webfiction.  The inevitable question at any break point in the conference was “Are you published?” and when I said I was the self-published, indie-published type and listed what I was working on, people would get increasingly curious when I mentioned the serials I write.

This, of course, led to more questions.

At the end of the day, everything I have learned about both publishing in general and writing webfiction, I have learned by researching these particular topics on the internet.  There is a wealth of information available if you know where to look.  I didn’t know where to look when I started, but I knew how to start looking.

Introduction

I’ve written before about why webfiction was attractive to me (Doc’s Writercraft: Why Webfiction?), but I haven’t gone into much depth about what you need to write it.  By the time you’re done reading this post, hopefully you’ll have a rough idea of the following:

  1. Essential ingredients for good webfiction
  2. What skills and tools you need to write webfiction
  3. Additional resources to help you along the way

I will not be talking very much about monetization of webfiction because I really don’t have very good experience with it.  Other webfiction writers, such as MCA Hogarth, have had extremely good luck with it, however, and I would highly suggest checking out the links listed under the resources section to do more research on that particular subject.

Remember, webfiction is a challenging marathon.  You don’t have the luxury of going back and changing the rules in mid-stream like you would if you were drafting a novel.  Now, some webfiction writers use their serials to live-draft novels.  That’s fantastic and can be really, really fun.  Keep in mind, however, that in live-drafting your novel for an audience online, you’ll lose some of the flexibility you might otherwise enjoy in the plotting and writing of your first draft.

It is, however, a fantastic way to make sure you write consistently and stay on-schedule.

What you need to get started

The most important thing that you will need to write successful webfiction is a good story that you are interested in telling.  Webfiction is in part episodic by nature and ongoing.  You will be writing the same story over the course of an extended period of time.  You’ll need all the trappings of a good book and more.

What makes a good story?  For me, it’s the following (in order of importance for me as a reader and in part for me as a writer):

  • Good characters (characters I give a damn about and want to know more about)
  • Good pacing
  • Understandable/comprehensible/believable problems (and solutions)
  • Good setting

Why are good characters listed as the most important thing?  Readers are willing to forgive a multitude of sins in most forms of entertainment–books, webfiction, comic, television, films–but if you have crappy characters, most readers are not going to put up with it.  You write good characters in your webfiction and people will keep coming back just to find out what happens to them day after day and week after week.  A good cast gives  you a little bit of leeway when you otherwise wouldn’t have any, especially when it comes to the next item on the list, pacing.

Pacing is very important in webfiction.  Unlike in your standard novella or full-length novel, which has rising and falling moments of tension, webfiction has to keep a reader coming back day after day and week after week to see what the new “episode” holds.  This means that while you don’t always have to keep ratcheting up the tension, you will need to be careful to make sure that you don’t have very many long, expository stretches in the story where not much happens.  People will get bored and abandon you in this scenario.  They may wander back later, but you can’t bank on that.

This brings us to problems–these are the challenges that the characters face, the obstacles in their paths toward their ultimate goals.  Depending upon the type of story you’re writing, they may be fantastical, beyond the scope of normal life–and that’s fine.  But they must be comprehensible to your readers.  While the problems may be impossible in our world, the audience must understand and believe that yes, the characters are facing this problem and you, the writer, must keep your reader believing from the moment the characters realize they’ve got a problem to solve until the moment the characters solve it.  If you break your reader’s suspension of disbelief, you lose the reader.  For a writer of webfiction, this is especially important because the minute you lose that reader, they’re gone–probably never to return.  If you’re a webfiction author trying to parlay your webfiction into donations or as promotional material for your traditionally or self-published works, odds are that you’re not going to get anything out of that reader, monetary or otherwise, and if they bother to talk about your serial at all, it probably won’t be in a good way.

Last but not least, setting.  In a lot of ways, settings are almost like characters unto themselves, especially in science fiction, post apocalyptic, paranormal, and fantasy webfiction series.  These need to be as believable as both your characters and your problems and almost more importantly, your setting must be internally consistent.  What do I mean by this?  It means that your setting has to have rules, laws–just like Earth has gravity and this force of nature behaves in predictable ways, so too must your setting.  In a fantasy setting, for example, your magic should work in internally consistent ways.  If your wizard needs to be able to use his hands to cast a spell and his hands are bound, then the spell can’t be cast.  If your hungry vampire needs blood to fuel his powers and he’s running on empty, he’s just going to be like every other average Joe on the street until he gets a snack.  If you can only make a hyperspace jump at certain points in the system and your heroes are cut off from a jump point, they’ve got to find a way to get there before they can escape to hyperspace.  Consistency is key.  If you’re constantly breaking your own rules, then you’ll lose readers–unless you’ve got a damned good way to explain the rule-breaking that doesn’t break your story at the same time.

Skills and tools

So you’ve got a great idea, awesome characters, all kinds of neat problems, a fantastic setting, and you’re ready to start writing webfiction now, right?

Wrong.

There are a few more things you’ll need before you can get started.  In no particular order, here they are:

  • A website (or other platform)
  • A backlog to work from
  • A way to get the word out about what you’re doing
  • The ability to write consistently on demand (so you don’t miss an update)
  • A rough idea of how long each update should be
  • What you want your posting schedule to look like

Most webfiction writers blog their webfiction through platforms such as Livejournal, WordPress, Drupal, and BlogSpot.  I cannot think of any that I am aware of that do it through a static website.  Other webfiction writers use communities such as Figment and Wattpad.  I have tried both and have found it very difficult to build audiences there, but I’m sure a great many writers (especially those who have come from fan fiction backgrounds) have had success with them.  For my own webfiction, I use self-hosted WordPress installations because I find the back-end interface easy to use and the front-end easy to manipulate with downloadable and editable themes.  For those who aren’t as code-savvy, WordPress.com hosted blogs or BlogSpot blogs are a good choice.  Livejournal is a little less robust and fading from popularity, but it’s still a valid choice.  Drupal is a good choice for those who are very code-savvy who prefer something other than WordPress as their blogging platform of choice.

Backlogs for webfiction writers, especially when you’re initially starting out, are incredibly important.  You want to have a story started and to know at least initially where it’s going for a few chapters before you start posting anything.  This is a failsafe against writer’s block or getting busy.  Believe me, writing to a deadline every day of the week can get very difficult, very quickly, especially early on in a project.  In addition, by the time you have a few chapters under your belt, you typically have an idea of where the story is going (if it’s a viable story, in fact), who your characters are, and what your setting is like.  This guards against early failure and gives you a chance to concentrate early on in your webfiction career at building an initial following–and keeping the words flowing.

Your initial following, if you’re lucky, will eventually leverage itself into a wider audience later, especially if your story is consistently interesting and good.  But how do you get that initial audience?  Many writers will have different answers to that question, and quite a few will tell you to leverage your friends and family into your audience.  That’s fine, but I assume that you want to reach more than your cousin Jamie and your best friends Susie and Jack.  Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, can be helpful in building your audience as well, but only if you’re not obnoxious about it.  I don’t know about you, but the fastest way to get dropped off of my Twitter feed is to only hock something you’re trying to sell (or draw attention to, etc).  For me, the bigger step in developing my audience was twofold: I got my fiction listed on some of the larger webfiction databases (The Webfiction Guide, Muse Success, and Epiguide) and did some advertising on Project Wonderful.  These days, I don’t always run advertising campaigns through Project Wonderful, but when I do, I definitely notice a bump in my site traffic.  Not all of these hits will be readers to stay, but if I get one devoted reader out of every ten or twenty hits, I’ll count that as worth my investment.  For those of you who don’t have the cash to shell out, getting listed on the databases and being active in the communities there will go fairly far toward getting your work noticed if you practice proper internet/forum etiquette.

If you ever run through your backlog of work to post–and this eventually happens to everyone and usually at the worst possible time–you have to be prepared to produce a volume of words at a consistent level of quality in a very, very short amount of time.  In essence, you have to write to a deadline.  Why not just skip an update or three?  Because that will cost you readers and fast.  Any time you put your fiction on hiatus, planned or otherwise, you run the risk of someone walking away from your work and never finding it again.  After all the hard work you’ve done, this isn’t something you want, is it?  So you need to prepare yourself for the eventuality that you may be writing 500-2500 words a day to a deadline for your webfiction, depending on the average length of your posts.

The average length of your post should be generally consistent with some room for outliers.  Most webfiction writers tend to hit somewhere between 1000-1500 words per update, but some run shorter or longer depending on their posting schedule.  Senna Black, who writes The Frequent Traveller’s Guide to Jovan, posts weekly (or did until recently–she’s up to twice a week now most weeks) and her posts are typically longer than those in my Awakenings series, which posts three times a week.  You want to be internally consistent so your readers know about how much fiction they can expect a day or a week–and how much time it’ll typically take to read your updates on the days you post them.

You should also have a consistent schedule for posting so readers will know when to hit your site for an update.  Decide this from the outset and stick to it.  Keep in mind that it is very, very easy to increase the number of posts you write a week but more difficult to decrease it.  Start smaller and get bigger is a good rule of thumb.  I initially started Awakenings updating two times a week and later increased it to three.  Jim Zoetewey did something similar with Legion of Nothing (though he, if I recall correctly, is one of the few webfiction writers who has increased production and then successfully decreased the number of updates a week without a discernible drop in popularity or readership).  Other writers, like Senna Black, post one update a week (and with a recent upgrade to two in the last few months).  Some writers have had good experience offering faster updates if they reach a certain cash donation goal, but this works well when you’ve established a large audience that can support this kind of structure.  At the end of the day, the trick is to have a schedule–decide what it will be and then stick to it.

Resources

The best resources I’ve found for learning about writing webfiction are ones that I found just by Googling the terminology.  Here are the most useful sites I tripped over when I was doing my initial research into the world of webfiction.

Additional links:

That about sums it up for this round.  I welcome questions and will answer them to the best of my ability.  I hope that this helps anyone who’s thinking about diving into webfiction writing head-first (or even just dipping your toes into the pool).

 


 

Erin M. Klitzke writes the webfiction serials Awakenings and Legacies of the Lost Earth.  You can follow her on Twitter at @EMBKDoc and find her writing wherever ebooks are sold.

I am, indeed, still alive…

What few normal visitors I have to this site will be gratified to learn that I am, in fact, still alive despite rumors to the contrary.  It’s been a busy summer so far and it’s not over yet.

Just to recap what’s been going on lately…

  • In April, I quit my job of six years at a major retailer of womens’ clothing sizes 14-28.  It was more than time for a change.
  • At the end of April/beginning of May, I started a new job, one with normal 8-5 hours (or 10-7 hours, but  more on that later), an hour for lunch, and good stuff like that.  One of the best parts about this job?  I don’t work weekends.  One of the worst parts about this job?  I generally get up at 6:30 to be at my desk by ten minutes to eight every morning.  Because I’m getting to be an old fart (stop laughing) it’s become increasingly difficult for me to function on anything less than six (or eight…) hours sleep, but I’m working on it.
  • I ate through my backlogs of both Awakenings and The Last Colony, so that eats up a chunk of writing time four days a week.
  • I’m working on the edits for print editions of Epsilon: Broken Stars and Awakenings Book One.  The unfortunate part of converting the files from Word to InDesign and then attempting to fix all of the errors in stylesheets (have I mentioned that I hate those styles sometimes?) was that I lost massive chunks of italics, so the process is taking longer than it should be.
  • I’ve discovered that I actually like to read again.  In order to wind down at night before I try to sleep, I end up reading for a couple hours.  This understandably cuts into writing time but is probably good for my sanity.
    • None of what I said above is helped by the fact that many of the series that I was waiting on the next books of have been released since May.  There’s one more coming in August (Caitlin Kittredge’s Soul Trade) that I’m eagerly awaiting, then it looks like things might settle down a little bit…unless I discover that the next Lightbringer book is out, or the next Graveyard Queen book.  I think I’m safe on Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices…for now.
  • Got rolling on a second draft of Epsilon: Redeemer.  It will be interesting.  Of course, then I got distracted because….
  • I had to get back to working on the sequel to What Angels Fear.  Especially because my aunt said her “friend” read it and is now demanding that I write a sequel (and wants to know when it’s coming out).  Coincidentally, this is the aunt that said she wasn’t going to read anything before I wrote my memoirs (she’s an English teacher).  So as I got to working on the immediate sequel to What Angels Fear, other things began to rear their fair heads and demand to at least in part be committed to paper.  These include:
    • A currently untitled Lost Angels/UNSETIC crossover involving Hadrian Bridger (Ky Thatcher’s main squeeze and Ridley’s former roommate at the Institute), Ridley, and Commander Brigid O’Connell (UNSETIC universe).
    • A currently untitled stand-alone piece about a girl named Caitlin and a boy named Thaddeus using virtual reality tech developed for an MMO to predict threats to life, limb, and national security.  This is also set in the Lost Angels/UNSETIC universe, like many of my works in the modern/near future.
  • Also continued some work on what may or may not be the first UNSETIC piece released (Girl from a Brigadoon is becoming more complex than I anticipated, but what do you expect from one’s first psuedo-mystery?), which is the story of Brigid O’Connell and Timothy McConaway’s first mission together with UNSETIC.

So, in a word, I’ve been busy.  I am hoping to be less busy at some point, but the date of that remains to be seen.  I’m attempting WebSeWriMo again this year, and I’ve set a somewhat ambtious goal for myself in hoping I can get twenty installments for Awakenings written in the month of August (which is just about one a day, with ten days off to work on other stuff) with secondary goals to finish the edits to Awakenings Book One for print and a tertiary goal of finishing Awakenings Book Two.

It strikes me that Book Two should have an actual title, but titles are hard.  I’ll have to think about that.