To all my dearest Parasocialites,
I have the most excellent news:
The story of ALL THE PROMISED BURN has been outlined, written, playtested, and edited. It is done.
It is such a huge weight off my back. I am so pleased with how I've tuned it here, at the end. And if I were to suddenly die now, you could still understand the vision -- you could have the script, most of the art, the gameplay... why, you could even ASSEMBLE it without me! I could even RELEASE the game episodically into Early Access.
In a week here, I have a big YouTube video going over the whole process. BUT I didn't script that video. And let me tell you: I do not think optimally at talking speed. I think optimally at writing speed. Why didn't I just script the video? I dunno, man. If we're being too real: I looked cute and I was losing the light. *sobs* The things we do for YouTube...
Anyway, this blog post is gonna cover the some parts of the process that slipped through the cracks of the video:
Soooo, the protagonist is basically a self-insert? Are any of the other characters inspired by people in your real life?
Yeah, haha! There's a lot of stigma around self-inserts but if it's good enough for Dante's Inferno, it's good enough for me. And all of my characters are like different slices of my brain anyway -- I feel it's very important to be able to have empathy for my POV characters. I don't like to write for someone who I don't understand on some level -- especially if I am framing them as a bad and toxic person (which all my characters are, tbh), and so if I were in their scenarios with their circumstances going on, I would likely make the same decisions as them. I've just always been the kind of person who has treated media as a place to practice having difficult emotions -- so when I make something, what better thing to do than to practice going through my OWN emotions? I also definitely over-explain as a trauma response -- but if I just write a giant story to give you empathy for me, now I get to milk my trauma response for its entertainment value. As God intended!
So yes: Arlasaire is especially a self-insert, between her appearance being close to mine, her being aggressively obedient to very particular authority figures, and, at the time when I first started writing her, I was going through a loss as well. And as she has been going through her healing journey of realizing it is possible to love and to be loved again, so was I. As well as the way she's wrestling with her identity -- the identity thrust upon her by her adopted family vs. the identity she actually has -- as that has been a thing I've been doing on a much more subtle level for years now. However, despite her inner turmoil reflecting my own, I'd like to think I am not nearly as violent as her OR as cynical as her OR as unwilling to make new friends. I've only ever been in a fight once, in fourth grade, in which I tackled a boy to the ground after he said girls were not as strong as boys. We became best friends after that. Arlasaire would never XD
My fiance helped me write Diacaius, Kivihk, Sipestro, and Zalathiel and often helped me pilot them through the stories -- though I think he'd protest, if we tried to say they were "based on him". My fiance's just incredibly smart -- and it's much easier to write incredibly smart characters when you just get someone else to do it. (I do not consider myself smart. But apparently, sometimes, other people do. I think this is a mistake on their parts.)
Most of the other characters are a combination of anime tropes put through a more-grounded, more-western storytelling filter -- like how Isaurala is a Yandere, except she's a Tanky-communist (loosely) instead of obsessed with a love interest. Or Lucienne is a villainous Ohimesama with a harem, except she's like... traumatized. And so on and so forth.
How did you stick to a schedule instead of being blown whichever way motivation leads you?
I mean, it's been 8-years so the answer is... I haven't always. Instead, (and I talk about this a little in the video), I have always optimized for 3 things: Productivity, Pleasure, and Time. In other words, I want to do the most fun stuff in the shortest amount of time. My exact writing system has changed over the years.
In my college days, I wrote when I felt like it (which was often because I genuinely love writing). At my full-time-job, I would always make myself write at least 1-sentence every day. (And over time, that would build to a lot without stressing me out.)
And now, in my full time era, it's honestly just like... I just do it? Sorry, that's not a fun answer but it's like as inevitable as brushing my teeth -- there's no "Oh, I don't feel like brushing my teeth today!" I just know, before I go to bed, I have to brush my teeth. It's the same thing with working on All the Promised Burn -- I know I will make time to make progress before the day ends. I actually have to put in effort to have leisure time and to spend time with friends and to consume media. Maybe my brain is broken, but when I am working on a project, I will literally GOVERN my thoughts in my free time to specifically THINK about that project, instead of thinking about "whatever". (I have designated "whatever" time, but like... car time or drifting off to sleep is Project Thinking time. The morning before I am out of bed? That's actually free-thinking time.) (Sidebar: I am worried I am sneaking the most unhinged thing I have ever put to digital ink in this paragraph. But I'm serious. Do not @ me.)
Also of note: I am a planner, when it comes to both writing and game development AND I know the power of system design: Players in games will always do the thing that gets them the most points the easiest. The only reason this isn't true in life is that "winning" at life is a far more complex and obfuscated goal AND real-life is multiplayer with politics turned ON -- so, if you think you will not win, you might resort to helping other people win OR ensuring the winners win less. (This is called Kingmaking and Kingbreaking, respectively.)
So, I have systems to make my life easier: I make it easy to do the thing that needs to come next -- I leave the documents and game files open on my computer, so it's already in front of me when I sit down. I always end each day knowing what I will start doing the next day, so I don't waste time in the morning making decisions. Most of my friends are also creatives, so in a (friendly) way, I feel pressure to keep up with my peers. If my peers ever fall behind or get ahead of me, I get new peers who are more my speed. As my fiance loves to say (as of last week haha!): "You are among the stars that guide you." So get yourself better stars, if the current ones suck. OH and very importantly: I plan out lunch for the entire week so it doesn't interrupt me and I don't bother to do dishes until the evenings, when I know I'll be tired and have less energy anyway.
All this to say: If you are struggling to "stick to a schedule" or other plan, then maybe you need to revamp your (eco)system to make it inevitable that you stick to it.
What were the most challenging parts of writing your Fantasy RPG?
I went over my trouble spots a little in the video, but the tl;dw is THE MIDDLE. The whole middle of the story has been rewritten more than once. The first time, I had this whole thing with Diacaius being waaay more abusive to Arlasaire, trying to throw love interests at Arlasaire and they wouldn't fucking stick (first, it was Solveng -- who became the Inquisitor-General who dies immediately--, then it was Erythros, --the cultist who got moved to an Enemies-to-Lovers romance sidestory and then CUT from the final story-- and then Gil, revived from the dead. Don't even fucking ask, it was so terrible.) I knew it was IMPORTANT to me that Arlasaire have a new love interest, cuz the story is about her healing from the old one. And what better way to show than than for her to fall in love again? I even invented a girl who would show up in the story after the story named Hesiva, and she had drank a potion that gave you horns like a Demon permanently. She is not in the piece anymore either lol. (The answer to the love interest problem with polyamory. Which, I think works nicely for someone who was too obsessed with one person, for her to have multiple key bonds with other people.)
It ALSO was completely floundering with the "Gods come back to cause problems" plotline. (Something something Spider God out of left field, Eris getting a person who looked like Diacaius impersonate him, oh Lordy, it was a MESS!) Partly, because it came out of nowhere (I had not set it up, I had JUST thought of it) and partly because I didn't know where it was going. As it turns out, if you don't know what you are doing and have no context to do it in, your writing is bad.
So, I ended up having to tear out the entire middle of the story and write it better. And it sucked. I think there was probably like 50k-100k words in there that I completely threw out and rewrote (given that the first half of the story was 50k and this was, at least, as long). I "shortened" it, in theory, (with fewer individual insane-o chapters) but after edits, this section has ended up at like 70k words.
That being said, any and all rewrites suck and are hard. Some rewrites I talk about less include: The Saravanya rewrite (made her better defined from Arlasaire), the Kivihk rewrite (made him... um... function in the story), the initial Erythros rewrite (condensed her whole novel-length arc down to one short story (that, yes, I threw out)), the Black King rewrite (where there was a God no one could remember called the Black King), the Solveng-Inquisitor-General rewrite (he wasn't initially the Inquisitor-General, but he got combined), the Riavh arc improvements, the Ymver arc improvements, the Diacaius-softening-rewrite, and the cutting of Arlasaire's excessive angst scenes.
What was your favorite part to write?
The part that I think is the best written (because it is the most edited) and was my favorite to write was chapter 88 through 117 in Telethens (not the outside-of-Telethens' people's perspectives -- they were added later, and sadly, you can still tell). In these sections, Arlasaire begins to oppose the Gods -- and the others get drawn into the chaos without knowing what they're up against. And it's SO FUN. These chapters have some of the best prose I have ever written. They're electric, they're snappy, they're fun, they're flirty, they're suspenseful, they're action PACKED. Is this what they call the "Fun and Games" section of a story? I couldn't tell you -- I've never read a craft book in my life, I learned everything I know from 1-on-1 mentoring and recorded interviews with filmmakers. But it's MY favorite chunk.
The easiest part to write was the Nouveau Thuille arc -- the very first part of the story. While the character voices have changed a little, the PLOT has not changed (except the ending does not kill as many people), because it was so tightly plotted the first time. And it was GOOD. And I loved it.
Your devlogs always have a lot of big emotions. How do you take care of your mental health?
If I had to list ONE SECRET that FIXED MY MENTAL HEALTH 5EVER (Therapists HATE her!!!), it's being my best friend. I work really hard to be the best possible friend to myself possible. That means doing ALL THE THINGS you would do with an actual best friend, but with yourself. This includes: Radical Honesty. Self-acceptance. Positive Self-Talk. APOLOGIZING when I think something mean about myself. Doing nice things for myself. Telling myself I can do better when I can, but also hyping up all my little wins.
I could go into "How to be a best friend to myself" more but I wanna talk about the radical honesty: I don't lie to myself. I don't believe in thought crime anymore -- or like... that thinking something mean can be a sin -- except, if I am mean to myself, then I do apologize. After all, thinking mean things about others doesn't hurt other people. Thinking mean things about MYSELF though... that DOES hurt me. And sometimes, I feel jealous or angry or irrationally annoyed -- and in my youth, I would berate myself for having these feelings. Now, I'm just, "Oh my God, this person can fucking KICK ROCKS -- they SUCK!" and then, I don't say or do anything mean in the real world. I am pleasant externally, for the benefit of everyone else. And accepting that I am kinda a cruel, difficult, and irrational person in my head has helped IMMENSELY.
I also follow all these same policies with my other best friends -- you know, the ones who are other people. I am EQUALLY honest with them -- I just take a few seconds to make sure I am SAYING my honest thoughts in a way that will guide them to be their best selves, instead of just being rude. There's a difference between radically honest and brutally honest -- and there's no need for brutality when it comes to best friends. Save your brutality for your enemies. They need it more.
Do I still have hard times? Yes. Often. But I know that I'm gonna be there for myself through all of it. In fact, the worst times are when I am NOT in conversation with myself and I'm just yelling at myself internally and I want to claw my veins out. But even then, I still get myself water and a blanket and a tissue box to cry. Maybe I'll get ramen or ice cream, depending on my mood. And then, the difficult feelings pass! And the sun rises and all is well.
You have Beta Readers. How did that all work?
Okay, so basically: I put out a call for beta readers and then gave them all access to one big document (that was half of my work lol, cuz the other half wasn't ready and I just decided not to test it like n insane person). This way, they could see the feedback other beta readers gave and then agree or disagree with it. (This is one method. The other method is getting feedback individually, without biasing but I went with this method, cuz it was easier for me.) I gave them a deadline of 9 months out. I think of like dozen people I asked, 3.5 people (the 0.5 being someone who read the first half in a previous draft, and then just read the second half once I put out the beta reader call) got through the whole thing. Everyone else DNF'ed. This is probably not a great ratio, BUT ALSO a lot of people I asked were friends. And (this is not to call out my friends, I love them) the people who finished were all strangers on the internet who were actually interested in the story, not just people I happened to know. So that's piece of advice #1: If the people around you do not beta read for you, that isn't because they hate you or that your work is bad. It COULD mean that. But it MIGHT just mean that reading this stuff isn't to their taste. That's OK.
I honestly think the main two reasons people DNF'ed is because 1) Reading is not their main hobby AND 2) because the worldbuilding was too thick. It was harder to get invested in the emotional stakes, because there was too much worldbuilding to figure out to UNDERSTAND why the emotional stakes were there. I also had one of my beta readers say "This whole thing feels like a sequel to something that doesn't exist -- I feel like I don't totally grasp these characters' backstories and the worldbuilding." (And to be fair... Little Burned Maiden IS a prequel and they did not play it. Though this would not have fixed their issues lol) I did two actions to address this main issue:
One: I took out ALL proper nouns save for the absolutely critical ones, in the first 8 chapters. This will hopefully reduce the mental load people have to carry.
Two: I made it a video game about learning. How does this help? Well, you don't have to REMEMBER that they're in snowy ruins anymore in your head -- you can look at the ruins and see they are snowy. You don't have to wonder "Where is the Upper Continent?" anymore because you can physically see it at the top of maps. Heck, you don't even have to visualize where the Southerners are from -- because I will show you a map while I expound about the War and you will see the map change color to reflect the areas they conquered. Not only that, but playtesting the game with people who genuinely don't know about my worldbuilding DID lead them to understanding the world. So I think this will legitimately fix so many problems.
I playtested "the plot" without the worldbuilding by summarizing the plot, out loud, without notes, to one of my friends. I wanted to see what worldbuilding was ABSOLUTELY necessary and when was it necessary. And what I realized is that... there ARE lot of moments where, knowing the specific worldbuilding makes the story better with its intricacy BUT the emotional beats are not reliant on you understanding much beyond the basics of the worldbuilding. You don't REALLY need to know who poisoned who at the dinner or why -- you need to know that NOBLES DID SHENANIGANS and this made Riavh sad, because they were doing shenanigans instead of being Noble TM. It's like the political fantasy version of how like... Genshin Impact has crazy layers of worldbuilding (something something 3 moons something something fake sky something something 5 Sinners and Hypoborea and the Abyss) but you don't need to know that: The robot lady is sad that the moon goddess is gone because the WORLDBUILDING has trapped her somewhere far away. I feel like the plot of Yssaia functions much the same way.
Now, you're probably asking:
What about the rest of the feedback? And how do you pick out good feedback from bad feedback?
Most of the rest of the feedback was about specific plot points and/or sentences that didn't work or didn't make sense. Most of the time, I would defer to the readers -- I have lived in this world for 8 years in my brain. I know the worldbuilding like I know about the causes of the First World War. They do not. My technique was often to explain as little as possible, and trust that you would figure it out. When people did not figure it out, I would always try to clarify these elements as much as possible.
However, there were also a lot of times when people would point out that Arlasaire, my dear protagonist, was being "too harsh" or "too nice". And pretty much every one of those critiques would come early in the story, before they would get to know her, and I would always know they were wrong -- Arlasaire is Arlasaire. These early moments of contradiction are testaments to the kind of person she is, -- a girl who says one thing and does another, who hates everyone and yet is inevitably kind anyway. Arlasaire does not understand herself -- so you cannot understand her by listening to her inner thoughts. You have to look at what her inner thoughts mean -- and those who got to the end would often say they loved how difficult she was, and that they hoped she would get better.
What I find is, when people give feedback, they are right that there is a problem and they are wrong about the solution. They were right in identifying that the way the worldbuilding was shown WAS confusing. But they were wrong that I should try to write a whole prequel lol. They were right that there IS problem where Arlasaire is NOT an easily accessible character. But they are wrong that I should get rid of these contradictions in her character.
If you're at a state where you are gathering feedback, my best advice to you is listen to the feedback that guides you towards your vision and disregard feedback that doesn't understand your vision. Do not let people change your vision (unless you realize your vision is stupid, like how the middle of my story was original super stupid), only let them change how you achieve it.
SO WHAT'S NEXT?
The edits of these last three months have taken 3 times the amount of time I wanted them to take. And you know what? I can't do anything about that now. (Radical acceptance!) But now that this weight is off my shoulders, I can begin the long process of putting the story into the game. I still have art that isn't quite done. I still have interactions that need to be programmed. But if the story is done, then all that really remains is the implementation of it. This may, of course, be the hardest part yet... but I'm ready for it. And I hope you are too.
I still have about 10 more months of my fiance's fieldwork -- and then, my stint as a full time creative shall come to an end. So, the next question though is: Do we think I can pull it off before the fieldwork ends?