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

[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.