OOC - Next volume for Sythyry
Feb. 20th, 2011 10:43 amOOC: Sythyry's Vacation isn't new and small any more. I've been writing it for two years now, and, since I've kept myself to a stricter schedule, it's gotten to nearly three hundred thousand words. That would make a thick paperback novel, comparable to one of the books in Wheel of Time or Song of Ice and Fire (for two that I found wordcounts on line).
So maybe it's time to do something else with Sythyry and friends. My goal is to establish a new storyline which new readers could read and enjoy without having to go back and glomp through all of Sythyry's Vacation. Which is what I did when I started Sythyry's Vacation --- two years ago it was easy to get started without having to glomp through the even larger wordglurd of Sythyry's Journal!
(This is not an urgent matter. I've got over a month of Sythyry in the queue: a whole new plot arc in Hanija, and one which barely mentions the word 'tofyof'. But sometime in the next few months I will need to make this change, if I do it at all, and so I'd like to be thinking about it.)
Here are a few ideas:
Code | Explanation |
KeepGoing | Continue Sythyry's Vacation. New readers who don't feel like reading backstory can muddle along, or indulge themselves carnally with some elfimel, or whatever, as they please. |
Part2 | Continue Sythyry's Vacation, but with a break that lets me kind of restart it as a separate storyline. (E.g., a return to Barency and Vheshrame to drop off many of the current chars, and then going somewhere else with, probably, a reduced crew.) This would keep many of the characters and situations on Strayway, but go off to different places, and not rely on previous history much. |
NewTown | Sythyry returns to Vheshrame and starts constructing a new town. This would come right after Sythyry's Vacation. It would have some of the same characters, but a fairly different structure and set of plots. |
FastForward | Pop another century or so into the future, kill off all the mortal characters, and do a radically different plotline. If Sythyry goes to found a new city-state, this is probably how I'd do it. |
BroadFocus | Enough Sythyry. Imortal super-powerful wizard with immortal super-powerful friends is not that interesting a point of view. Tell stories about Sythyrys' crewmembers, but from various points of view, or third-person. |
DifferentStory | Really, enough Sythyry. Tell other stories. |