OOC - Next volume for Sythyry

[sythyry]

OOC: 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.

[Poll #1707310]

Comments

[aryllian]

When I say one for DifferentStory, what I really mean is that I don't actually know if I'd like it or not but there's no real connection there to make me like or love the idea. And I do know that I like to read Sythyry, so "something else" gets a very low rating. I don't really hate it sight unseen -- I'd give it a try.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Maybe something a little less doomy?

When you know everything the character touches is going to turn out wrong, there's no dramatic tension anymore.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Same. I'd like to see Sythyry have some happy adventures too.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I'm not even saying it needs to be happy. Just that it's kinda become like watching Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. The doom becomes less doomy when we know it's coming. By not making the stories so 'failure is the only option' it would actually make the reamining doom even worse because it wouldn't be inevitable.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[How about the Heaven story arc? Or the one in Barency where they picked up the students?

Anyways, nearly any story -- Sythyry or otherwise -- is going to have some trouble in it. Sythyry enjoys calling the trouble "doom". I'm trying to vary the trouble, and to vary who gets in trouble. But as long as I'm writing stories, as opposed to a slice-of-life, there's going to be some trouble, I think.]

[rowyn]

Maybe what they mean is that they'd like a story arc with more of a clear-win ending? Most of the arcs resolve ambiguously although not horribly for the characters. I suspect the issue is less that there's frequent DOOM than the sense that DOOM is coming and that everything that looks good on the surface (eg, Thenel, Hanija) will turn out to be irreparably flawed. Which is more a matter of perception than actuality, since some things do go fine, at least for a while (eg, Lithia & *-Eyes).

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

It does seem like a cycle of self-perpetuating doom. And yet, at the same time, are there any truly bad consequences? When did anyone who actually mattered die permanently in Sythyry's tale?

(But maybe I am looking for a tragedy in what is intended to be a comedy . . .)

[striderhlc.livejournal.com]

Before I even finished reading the above post, I was going to suggest- essentially- the "Part2" solution.

I don't see a problem with just keeping Sythyry as an ongoing serial so long as you keep the numbers of callbacks and active characters under control, and this certainly hasn't been an issue so far. Maybe working in semi-regular recaps would help as well.

It seems like most of Sythyry's adventures on vacation are fairly self-contained. On a couple of occasions, I've stopped reading for a couple months at a time for various reasons and not had any trouble getting back into things when I started again. The self-containedness might be difficult to recreate or maintain if Sythyry goes on to found a town or city-state.

- HC

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Asking people if they'd like a completely different story seems kind of pointless, really, since the people you're polling are the people here to read 'Sythyry'. That's not to say that people might not enjoy reading something else, but you're pretty much going to get a low score on that particular question because of where it was asked.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well ... some of you have read other things I write, and some might want, oh, a new World Tree series without so much focus on transaffection, say.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Also, if you do jump ahead or start a new series, please consider finishing up the plot threads first.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yup! I am not very proud of how I ended Sythyry's Journal.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

You could revisit that time. Perhaps from a different point of view.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

If I'm understanding it right, 'NewTown' is Part2 with a different kind of plot. Right? That sounds like the most interesting way to keep sythyry and change the other characters around. Zie's a married lizard now so zie can't keep gallivanting around the tree!

The only one I don't like is FastForward, because fastforwarding *again* is just going to take it farther away from the mainline WT setting.

[relee.livejournal.com]

I would kind of like a recap. I put you on watch before actually starting to read, and there's a lot of stuff I missed out on. I only really started paying attention around the story arc in Mircanis' heaven and it's hard to sort through the previous entries to find the proper start.

Though, I had tried to go all the way back, rather than just to the start of Sythyry's Vacation.

If you did a primer for the Sythyry Sub-Setting of the World Tree, to explain where they came from and why, then it would be easier to start with just the Vacation.

[arenhaus.livejournal.com]

You know, I still haven't forgiven you for killing Seeks-* horribly...

Go on with this one. Or at least bring it to some sort of climax, rather than abandon it in the middle like Sythyry's Journal.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Blame it on their gods, really. When you have gods who are THAT actively interfering with their creations, and with such vigor and enthusiasm, the chronicler cannot be blamed for the unpleasant fate that befalls some of the people we grow to like or love (or hate).

[mazlynn.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of the challenges of Sythyry setting up a new town in terms of the potential interactions with monsters. Because an area founded by a character of her power could become a traditional city with traditional rules given enough time it would seem, and it would be interesting to see what would happen with a city where doorwaying wasn't a crime. My only concern with that plot line would be that it could become too "quandries of traff society" focused - I find that an interesting thread of the story arc, but I wouldn't want to see it become the only thread, (murdered by pirates is good!) but it would obviously be one of Sythyry's major concerns in setting up a new town in the first place, so it would have to be a fairly central focus at least for a while.

[kibbe.livejournal.com]

Sythyry's journal, and vacation is not a single book. It is a series. AKA, the wellworld series by Jack Chalker. The honor herrington series. As such word count is not such a big deal. Each arc in a way is its own novel, its own story.
You might want to work on closing arcs a little better, so thay stand alone easyer as seperate storys. ALso, perhaps a page that links to the start of each arc, so its easyer for people to navigate through them. The primer idea mentioned by others is also a good idea. It would alow someone to read the porimer then dive right into things without having to run all the way to the begining to get the back story.
On the whole, I think you should finnish the vacation story before moving on. That does not mean you should stay on the vacation, just that you should finnish it, tie up a lot of the loose ends and well basicly return home and let things finnish. That leaves you readily open to moving ahead and on. Then your more easily able to move on. Doing the leap ahead and founding a new city would be easyer, and you could write up little storys giving people an idea of what happenes with everyone else. Sorta like the little bits you did saying what happened with Seeks, and others from the original story. It provides closure and a few happy storys will make your readers happy.
I do not know how much story you have left for the vacation, so it is harder for me to say weather you should end it or not. But, you should at the lest, finnish the story, give it an ending.
As for braudening the story, it would be easy enough to give the story from anothers viewpoint now and again. Even if it was done as small one post storys. It would give readers a better connection to there faverate characters. Another thought is to alow cameos, or alow people to write related storys. Say Joe smoe wants to do a short story with him interacting with one of the chars from your main story. It would probably be so minor as to not be in the actual story arc, but it might alow amusing looks into the world around the strangway.
The leap ahead could be rather fun actualy. It gives you the chance to start a fresh story with fresh characters. Just make sure to give closure.

Sorry a bit rambling and disjointed, its hard to say.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

I really like Sythyry's situation. It's fun.

I would LOVE to see other characters with that much depth of focus, and have to some extent with the story of the city-sleeth in another journal, and so forth.

Sythyry is a (young) wizard, though. Wizards end up ridiculously powerful or dead. The comments about how it's hard to identify with such a powerful being, well, I'm rather mixed on this one. It CAN be hard to identify with a person who has a sentient tactical nuclear explosion that is sometimes set to burning away the filth on a prison floor, but then I think that we have something equally ridiculous: the labors of literally hundreds of thousands of people and the hundred-million-year-old corpses of plants and animals long vanished and buried deep as ROCK grew over those corpses, pressing them into coal and oil ... and that's pulled from the depths of the earth, cracked and shaped into plastic shells, and burned to generate the power of the lightning, while the compressed hearts of exploding giant stars a billion years in the past have been swept up (as metal) and dug from the rock, purified and made into the wire and circuits that clever people have designed to make a small autonomous thing slightly larger than Sythyry but cylindrical, disk-like, that can be set to run around the floor gathering up crumbs and clutter so the human doesn't have to sweep it up by hand.

So. Thinking about it, not that much more ridiculous.

I'd love to hear stories of others, but I have to confess a personal preference to Sleeth and Zi-Ri, and maybe Gormoror if they're sufficiently heroic, over Orren (too tiring and far too likely to be shallow) or Rassimel (obsessive) or Cani (authoritarian pack beasts at heart) or Herethroy (Big bugs.) I'm so-so about the shoggies. They might or might not be fun; I personally dislike thugs for the sake of thuggism, but the element of coarse and earthy makes them refreshing.

And I might be interested to hear more about the monster side of things. I thoroughly agree with many of them that it's profoundly unfair and rather rude that the gods seem to have created so many of them solely to act as Dramatic Fodder for the Primes. This creates a sense of entitlement for the Primes who somehow think that being "gifted" with a complete orrery means that they're somehow higher in the esteem of the gods. Frankly, it appears to mean that they're the ones that the gods want to torture the most.

[revar.livejournal.com]

I love reading the Sythyry stories. But you know, if you go on and decide to write a different story series... well, I'll be reading that one, then. I trust you.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

First and foremost, as you well know, I will gladly read anything that you write.

In my opinion, conflict is the most important part of any story. In the best stories, the protagonist looks like she[*] can't win, but has something special that just barely gives her victory.

With all due respect, as a character, Sythyry is almost too powerful. Inside cities, challenges that would be 'too strong' for hir are getting rarer... especially because sie has Vae on hir side. (Vae just took on all of Hanija... and won.)

The World Tree has plenty of interesting kinds of stories. ("She's a river-bum Orren whose singing voice can carry for miles. He's a Khtsoyis from the wrong side of the tracks with limited precognition. They fight crime!" Errr... maybe not.)

To make the conflict more interesting, I recommend, at the least, letting go of Vae. (She can decide that she wants to visit another part of the World Tree.) Let Sythyry use the talents of the rest of hir crew.

Even better would be to follow the adventures of other characters.

[*]Nongendered 'she', please.

[allessindra.livejournal.com]

The reason I dislike 'different story' is that it woudl come *instead* of Sythyry. I'd definitely like to see different POV characters, and the mention above of 'some of these adventures from a different POV' sounds interesting to read -- I don't know how interesting it would be to write, especially as you'd be revisiting the same events and thus constrained in the writing. (Tho telling of the same event from a POV character for whom the result was emphatically self-referentially different in tone than the POV we have already read might be intriguing.)

I think the next thing that Syth *should* do, when getting back from vacation, is to found zir own city. It would be interesting, to me, to see who among those who know Sythyry would move to said city, and how the .... internal economics of setting up that preferentially self-contained situation would work. It would definitely be a new take on the 'random group of people brought together on a space ship to go and colonize a new planet' trope. It would also give an ending to this that isn't "and then they all went home" while setting up something to fast-forward *to* -- and since Syth would then be much more involved in the governing, that woudl a) be more boring for zir and possibly create more story take-off points, and b) give more reason to tell some of said stories from other POV characters.

or am I completely off-base on these writerly things?

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what to suggest, and it really comes down to what you would enjoy writing.

While it would be interesting to read "Star Trek on the Tree", what I'd probably like more (and what new readers would find more accessible) is something set in the canon starting period for the World Tree game. That way we're seeing adventures that can inspire events in our own games, and not feeling like any earthbranch-shaking events are "destined to happen". In fact you could even set a story shortly before the game's starting year, setting up plot seeds others can pick up on.

I like Sythyry, but there are plenty of other character types you could arrange as main characters. A wandering adventurer trying to gain immortality or challenge the gods? Someone investigating not-quite-dead aspects of the Holocaust Wars or Cyarr Wars? Lovecraftian investigators preventing invasion by Hamstur, He Who Must Not Be Smelled? A wizard developing a new type of magery -- I think terrycloth once came up with a WT equivalent of cybernetics/gen-engineering.

One other thing that might be interesting as a short project would be to pick up on something you mentioned about libraries being divided by species. It'd be fun to tell the same short story from the perspective of every prime species in their own style. (Rassimel: Textbooks, Gormoror: Heroic Saga, Cani: Social Comedy/Tragedy, &c.) If nothing else it'd be good experience in a variety of writing styles.

[vik_thor]

the main one I vote against is another Jump Forward. As TerryCloth said, that gets it even further from the 'main' World Tree setting. There is quite a bit of mention in the rulebook about how the use of bound spells is on the verge of changing civilization.
We're now 100 years after that, and doesn't seem a lot different.
Another 100 years…

Other World Tree would be Very Welcome! Maybe something where Sythyry is just a supporting character?