David K. Storrs
patreon
What should I be writing?
🕑 Added 2024-05-06 02:27:34 +0000 UTCHi folks! I'm looking for some feedback. Bear with me, this is going to be rambly.
I've been having a lot of trouble writing for the last few months; I'm managing to maintain Marked for Death because I have so much momentum and an established audience, but working on other things has been too hard.
I think maybe I'm getting past that; I got excited earlier today and did some note taking / basic outlining, but I'm not sure what the best thing to work on would be. I have a couple of ideas that I've been considering and I'd be interested in any thoughts you have.
First, I have been kicking around an idea for a paranormal romance novel featuring a polyamorous lead character and two partners who, unbeknownst to her, are shapechanged non-human immortals from opposite sides of a millenia-long clash filled with generational hatred, politics, war, and ruined dinner parties. The planning is super early days and all this might well change but I'm envisioning the two guys wanting to make it work with her so they can't actively kill each other and must instead settle for sniping at one another. My original conception was that she had two partners at the moment, one who actually is human and one who has been concealing his paranormal nature. The human can occupy something of the same slot as Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings: he's the honest, down-to-earth guy with no special powers or skills but a lot of heart, who acts to support his friends and hold the party together even when tensions are high. Or, alternatively, maybe that's not enough and I should leave him out. Dunno, i'm waffling on that.
Anyway, the big problem would be the families of Jethro and Balzac (not their actual names!), the two paranormals. As soon as they find out that their scion is dating a HUMAN (gasp! the shame of it!) there's going to be trouble. Once they find out that she's poly their will be vapors being had, and when they discover that one of her other partners is from the Other Side...well, 'avoid ground zero' is always good advice.
As stated above, this is all super unplanned and just a wash of ideas kicking around in the old noggin', but I'd appreciate any basic thoughts on the lines of "yes, that sounds like it would be interesting to read" or "is this a kissing book?! gagging noises"
The other option would be to do a rewrite on Patchwork Realms. The premise is decent: a fantasy heist novel starring an isekai'd powerful and intelligent dog who just wants to go home to his family, and maybe get some bacon. The character of Athos (the dog) got positive reactions from everyone, as well as being fun to write. The setting, the eponymous Patchwork Realms, consists of a world where bits of other realities drift in and out sometimes, bringing people and places and treasures and gods and different physics and even entire magic systems oh my with them. Given that it's a heist novel, I don't want to reveal too much about the background but the umbrella plot is 'Athos is recruited onto a team to steal a thing', whereas Athos's arc is from a newly-sapient, naive, overly trusting pupper to a more mature person with clearer understanding of the world.
The problem that PR had in its first draft was that it was too scattershot and the pacing was terrible. There's a lack of focus as too many plot threads crash together, most of which are distractions that prevent Athos from actually making progress on his goals while forcing him to go off on side quests. The pacing is overly rushed with no time to breathe between events. Of Athos's three companions, Eugene is a fleshed-out character that is intended as a hate magnet while Estelle and Marcus are so bland that I had to look up their names before I could write this sentence.
So, yeah. Decent bones, some meat on them, but a lot of woodchips mixed in that would need to be thrown out. Were I to take PR on as my next project I would do some outlining and then do a complete rewrite, not a revision on the existing material. The words would all be new and hopefully therefore fun to read if you read PR before. Some scenes would be recycled -- probably Athos's arrival in the graveyard, probably the fight with the wolves, maybe a couple others, but overall it would be novel, pun intended.
Anyway, thoughts welcome. Do either of those ideas interest you?
One final point, and I apologize for having to put this here: I'm soliciting suggestions on what you would like to read. I would be very happy to receive any thoughts you have on the book ideas I've shared above, but please understand that (A) I might or might not use them and (B) if I do, you are not gaining any moral, financial, or legal rights to the book. In the past I had someone tell me "oh, well, you discussed Two Year Emperor in the comments on Reddit each time you posted a link to a chapter and some of what was discussed got used in the book and therefore it belongs to all of us and you shouldn't be putting it into Kindle Unlimited where I can only read it for free by making and then canceling a trial account." I would like to get to the point of being as full-time professional author at some point, and that means I need to be able to monetize my work. Unfortunately, Amazon owns the lion's share of the ebook market, so I will need to publish with them. Also unfortunately, putting the book in Kindle Unlimited requires that the book not be available for free and putting it in KU really isn't optional, since it typically generates roughly 50% of an author's income. Chapters would continue to be available here on Patreon and obviously if you have downloaded them then more power to you. (I honestly can't tell if anyone downloads the zip files I post here. I doubt it, since at one point I put out a zip file of a 'chapter' that actually said "hey, I just wanted to know if anyone ever reads these, drop me a line and I'll give you the actual link." Only one person ever pinged me to get the actual link.
Comments
Harold George
I wish was here earlier and checking in more regularly. Sorry about the lack of feedback. As for what I'd like to read...I don't gravitate to romance, but I won't shy away and turn my nose up at it if happens to be part of a story. I'm usually reading an isekai or LitRPG, and when I do encounter romantic scenes, they can be pretty subdued for the most part.
TGR
Just add things that elicit emotion imo I could be wrong since I'm not an author, though I am subbed to a bajillion things on Patreon so maybe my perspective will help anyway. Sex sells first by a landslide, doesn't have to be egregious but it shouldn't be actively avoided. Herbivore JP protag archetype doesn't sell well for Patreon. Sex >> Romance for male audiences. (Note: That's sometimes reversed for female audiences. The Paranormal Romance idea would probably give you a female audience since you've got the template of a relatively normal girl with interesting / powerful men vying for her attention. She's bringing her personality to the table, which is nice for wish fulfillment purposes because your reader thinks "that could be me!". I honestly dunno how many subs / money that makes on Patreon though lol, I don't pay too much attention to writing aimed at women.) Anything involving power scaling / power fantasy works well. Isekai is the easiest baseline to work with but not necessary. Anything involving a likeable or relatable MC being respected or liked by characters in-story sells, so long as your average reader can say "that could be me!" or "that could be me if I got my shit together!". Trope wise, touches of the rawest emotions usually sell well. Vengeance well earned where your opposition regrets opposing you. Earning respect / awe, the thrill of victory, etc etc. Having things be too easy for the MC detracts from keeping engagement. Everyone has read curbstomp OP protags enough that they're sick to death of them, so while it gets a cheap thrill I don't think it really opens wallets anymore. The feeling of getting stronger or better needs to be there because it sells, but if you keep using that you run into obvious problems. Have your Mari and Hazou type characters, basically. (Whoops I pressed Enter instead of shift-enter, I was still typing lol) Crossovers in established popular series work to get attention. MCU, DC, popular anime like Naruto, Bleach, DBZ, DXD, FT etc. Then use that audience to make an original fic. I think you've sorta done that with MFD but I don't know how wide that audience is... there's definitely a lot of engagement from the players who are there though lol Anyway, you use all of those as a baseline, then add the EJ touch because your natural writing is obviously super good and you're good at characters. Add a touch of the horror or unnerving stuff that you're really good at. There's so many areas where people WANT to read good stuff, but the authors aren't experienced enough to make those worlds shine, so I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit there. EDIT 2: I see in your reply to Andrei's comment that you prefer going in the direction of original fic over fanfic, which is still perfectly doable. It just comes down to the emotions that you're trying to evoke in the audience. Think about a target audience, think about what they want to feel, then write with the goal of evoking those emotions. Usually, it's sex/power/love/loyalty/anger based imo. Anyway please excuse the disorganized ramble, I'll contemplate it and organize it into something actually usable if you want another time EDIT 3: No I won't lol who am I kidding, way too lazy for that I'm sure you can figure out what I'm trying to say somewhere in here though
David K. Storrs
Oh, and for the record? I'm unsurprised PR didn't keep pulling you in. I went back and re-read it recently in order to get it reloaded into my brain so that I could continue it. I was appalled at how terrible it was.
David K. Storrs
I haven't discussed sharecropping, but it's an interesting idea. I think I would prefer to move away from my fanfic roots and focus more on original work -- I've done multiple original novels thus far but I think the bulk of my output has been fanfic and I would like to reverse that. Thank you for the suggestion, though.
David K. Storrs
Interesting. What would you say is the style to draw in wide swathes of people? I have checked the patreons of the authors who write stuff that I read, but I haven't done a wide survey. Some of the high-number Patreon authors make perfect sense to me but then there are some where I find myself going "How does this have thousands of subs? This has to be inertia from when the story started and was excellent before it turned into glacial navel gazing, right?" OTOH, maybe I'm wrong and that's simply something that tons of people love and I'm the odd one out.
Andrei
I personally have no interest in the poly romance (or romance in general to be honest). My favorite stories are always LitRPG, with growth, cleverness and exploration. Romance should be a realistic add-on to that where applicable rather than being a central point. Have you considered discussing with other authors who have created expansive universes and writing characters and stories within those worlds? I've been recently reading 1% Life Real, a parody/side story of 1% Life Steal, and it reminded by how amazing it would be if someone wrote stories within the world of Plum Parrot's Cyber Dreams. He created an absolutely enormous and fairly unique cyberpunk universe and a collaboration like was done for Sufficiently Advanced Magic would be incredible! And it would allow you to earn money while relying on the already known name of the main storyline for the marketing side.
TGR
It depends on the goal imo. If Goal = make THIS current project the one that transitions you closer to having a massive Patreon ala BlueMuffin / Ideasguy, it would be back to the drawing board because neither of these are the style to draw in wide swathes of Patreon subs from the audience who likes to pledge on Patreon. Paranormal romance's protag wouldn't work for obvious reasons, Patchwork isn't the right flavor of isekai that's popular rn If Goal = balancing two factors of 1) get you writing something that's exciting or interesting for you to write / bonus writing practice in a different setting and 2) pull in a decent crowd of ppl who will be engaged with the story, but not necessarily those who are Patreon users, thereby increasing your general popularity as a writer while keeping you active in different writing fields then I'd lean towards Paranormal Romance. But I gotta wonder with that premise how you keep the story engaging... I think the story format would be one where you'd have to be creative to keep it from getting stale, but it's certainly do-able and could be fun. I think I wouldn't be the target audience though and it's not something I would read, but it absolutely could get traction. Of the two it's definitely the stronger pick. IIRC I read some of Patchwork and I liked it, but it didn't keep pulling me in. Can't tell you why, sorry lol, maybe it's just NMCOT. I mostly only started it because I love your MFD work and was like, anything written by EJ will be good lol. Either way good luck and hope you have fun with either direction that you take!
