DONE Ghosts of Smoke

Discussion in 'Works in Progress' started by Yuli Ban, Jul 28, 2018.

  1. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    If you've been following me, you'll know that I currently have two other works in progress that actually have any progress to their name— Astral Falls and Nightmare Online.
    For various reasons, work on them have stopped. In Astral Falls' case, it was because the sheer amount of spelling errors made editing a goddamn nightmare. In the case of Nightmare Online, it's most doubt as to whether the story itself is captivating.
    There's also the desire to at least earn some money with this. I'd have been more comfortable with Astral Falls if I had more income, so my plan there was to break into litRPG and make enough to support further endeavors. I didn't want to put in months worth of time writing 120,000 word novels that inevitably failed to make a splash because I had no marketing or followers, so my plan of action was to first write several novellas and short novels (between 30,000 to 50,000 words each) and release them to gain some subscribers and cash.

    That's still the goal.

    So naturally, I'd be planning to put out a new tome that strikes all the beats, right? Plays the market safely, takes no risks, and maybe even throw some erotic harem times in there. And that's what I would have done if I didn't suddenly wake up with 18,000 words of Ghosts of Smoke.

    I still don't think the story is that challenging, mind you, but I could definitely have played it safer for my first public outing.

    The main character is named Lady Elizabeth of Whittington House, daughter of an English earl. She plays the role of a highly martial elf-maiden in a fairly standard fantasy MMO called Ultima Thule: World of Chevaliers. After casually attending an in-game marriage between two Players, she is framed for a crime: the murder of eight Players and usage of an illegal weapon. That weapon being a lightsaber that the bride had traded with her not long before. She had an alibi: she was actually helping a platoon of halflings recover an amulet, only for those halflings to doublecross her. Nevertheless, she is still arrested and taken to be tried and executed— which means a monthlong ban. She meets a talkative rogue on the ride to their execution sites, and he offers to help her escape. But before she can give an answer, she is yanked from the game.
    Her daily 3 hours playing the game are up, so she has to return home. She believes that her avatar is doomed either way and questions whether or not to return to the game the next day.
    Which she tells to her father, Lord Richard, who has grown increasingly desperate for any means of sustenance and strongly doubts that any video game could ever pay to live. Her brother, Christopher, gets into a spat with their father and Elizabeth retires, deciding to plan her next courses of action and doubting that there are more chances for her.
    The next day is when the chaos begins, as it turns out she had answered the rogue in time and he helped her escape, thus beginning a quest to get him back to his guild and clear Elizabeth's name. As usual, this all goes wrong.




    Word count: 25,613.

    I'm unsure how many words this will have. I originally intended for there to be about 30,000 words, but it's starting to look like it might go up to 50,000. There's no chance I can meaningfully wrap up this story in only 5,000 words unless I shift into 'cliffnotes' mode. So it'll likely be closer to 50,000 words.

    To put it into perspective how quickly I've been writing this thing, it was 12,000 words long when I started writing this post— and that was yesterday!
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]



    "Ghosts of smoke" is this old phrase I heard back around 2015. Back then, it meant something much darker because I was on a totalitarian dystopia high (i.e. "Ghosts of smoke vanished from the chimneys; no one knew they were ever here"), but now it's more or less no different than "sins of your past". I thought it sounded cool and decided to use it.
     
  2. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Word count: 40,106
    Thankfully, far fewer spelling errors than I had with Astral Falls, so rewriting this will be easy.
    Will it be finished in 10,000 words? Prolly not. Maybe 20,000. However, it definitely feels a bit more, eh, "literary" than I set out to write. No wonder: the original idea for the story 3 years ago didn't have any litRPG elements (though it meandered without direction) and it's not exactly a safe topic: young English noblewoman struggles to survive after a violent communist revolution following a post-Brexit cyberpunk dystopia that fell apart, but she has virtually no useful practical skills and probably doesn't need any because of the march of automation. In her case, she's playing the game more to keep making money to live, except since she used to be one of many spoiled-evil brats who tormented underclass players, all her past assholery is catching up to her right as she has an epiphanic realization about all the harm she caused.
    In the current draft, there's not a lot of IRL moments— maybe 3/4 in-game, 1/4 IRL— but I've definitely felt the call to expand the real world.
     
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  3. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Blarg, due to some fatigue, I only got (exactly) 600 words done yesterday, so
    Word count: 40,706
    Today should be more productive. I'm shooting for 5,000.

    I'm also for want of a good opening line.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2018
  4. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    So I did 2,300 instead. Still something!

    Word count: 43,013
     
  5. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Woot!
    Word count: 50,119
    Might do another 500 before I hit the sack.
     
  6. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Word count: 53,047
    Definitely should be wrapped up by 55k words. Then it'll likely expand to 60k words once I do the rewrites. So a fairly short story, all things considering. Considering the original story was literally a short story (about 10k words was the plan), I'm not surprised that adding the litRPG plotline gave it a short novel's worth of ideas.
     
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  7. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Word count: 58,007

    Minus two words: THE END.


    Yep, I'm officially finished with the story! All that's left to do is edit/rewrite. My rewriting process is pretty simple:

    1. Copy one page three times to get myself "in the zone", i.e. finding all narrative problems and mechanical issues
    2. Then rewrite that page from the ground up, occasionally keeping whatever doesn't need to be changed because it is too functional and can't be improved (which is not a lot at all)
    3. Continue rewriting from there, no need to copy any further page three times since my mind is already in the zone
    4. Repeat step one

    After that, I'll just need a cover and marketing.
     
  8. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Word count: 60,000+
    As for when it'll be released, I can pretty much safely say "early September". I can only hope people like it because looking back, the overarching IRL segments definitely aren't standard for the genre and the MC's arc plays out without a lot of overly epic stuff happening. I'm perfectly fine with it. Just as some bits of spoilers, I know some people will lament that I don't do a whole lot of upfront worldbuilding here; the entire plot happens within about ten square miles, so a lot of stuff is implied more than shown.
    But this is a story I've wanted to tell for a while now. Either it will crash and burn at 7-figure rankings or net me $10,000 in one month; there's never been any middle ground with me. Either way, I'm glad to have finally written it. To have played with this particular "post-revolutionary setting" at least once. I'm definitely gonna do it again.

    Seriously, why aren't there more post-revolutionary stories out there? There's nothing more exploitable than humbling a formerly haughty heiress. It makes for some great-ass drama. Especially since, in most cases, the characters you're set to root for are definitely very flawed people. I guess the underdog revolution is just a more popular topic.
     
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  9. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Keep it up!
     
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  10. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    I just noticed this. It was entirely by chance, like holy hell I did not plan for this.

    You know the 4 parts of a story? The beats and whatnot, and how you need certain beats to happen at certain times? Ghosts of Smoke actually follows them all! I'm not kidding— the plot points and pinch points are almost exactly, to the page, where they should be.
    I didn't plan out Ghosts of Smoke at all, mind you. It just sorta... happened.
     
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  11. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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  12. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    When I say I didn't plan out Ghosts of Smoke, I do wish to point out that I mean "outline specifically placing events where they need to go". I did have a three-year-old story concept I've done nothing with, one which did have a fairly substantial write-up involving it and I simply ran with it. Around the 20% mark, I started winging it entirely instead of prewriting parts. Somehow, this still happened. And I'm shook.
    I'm no fiction master. I think this was just pure coincidence.
     
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  13. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    The story's at 66,000 words from all the additions. There's a slim chance it could reach 70,000 words. But I can tell everything's wrapping up. The last thing I'll need is a cover.

    And for the record, this is a pure standalone. I have no plans for a sequel or spinoffs or a prequel.
     
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  14. Simon Fiasco

    Simon Fiasco Bringer of the Avocadopocalypse LitRPG Author Beta Reader Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Awesome. Looking forward to it!
     
  15. Gryphon

    Gryphon Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    Congrats on getting to the flag, Yuli.
     
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  16. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Good news everyone: it's at 71,000 words!
     
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  17. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Right, so if I can bet on anything more going on in the story at this point, it's that I can get it up to 72,000 words or so with what little else I have left to do. Except I only think I can from filling in descriptions that I ignored at the time. It may peter out around 71,600 or I may be underballing it and actually have 2,000 more words left to add in. Who knows!

    I went from 0 to 58,000 in about 10 days and that was after I expected the story to sprout 30,000 words. Sure, that'd make a pathetic story, but it would be something to get my feet wet in the genre after spending over a year reading others' works. Even 71,000 words is fairly short— even using 1.5 spacing (which is the most I feel comfortable using), that's 220 pages. I could read that in a free afternoon (and technically have!). However, I'd be lying if I said I expected the final product to only be 30k or even 58k words. The only reason why I didn't spend months crafting a lovingly and carefully designed novel is because you're not supposed to start off with a lovingly and carefully designed novel! What's better— having a shitty 60k word novel after a week that you can spend another month rewriting and refining or spending that month writing 1k a day and releasing the first draft or spending another two months rewriting and refining the thing and eventually losing interest (as I'm apt to do)?

    After wasting half my life fretting over raw crippling perfectionism (that once meant I'd even pass up on writing stories because I knew I'd have better writing skills in the future (how?)), I've decided to say "screw it with a drill" and build it all at once like a madman. All of a sudden, my productivity skyrocketed and I'm actually getting stuff done.

    So why am I saying this? To inform any future lurkers and padawans who need some advice and feel like they're spending more time thinking about their story than writing it (or want their first draft to be the masterpiece) in my usual over-wordy way that accounts for every situation that may apply: Just worry about telling the story. It's fine if there are long stretches of pure dialog with nary a tag or description of body language, or if you use stock descriptions for people and objects (if you describe some of them at all). Hell, for one of the characters in this book, I literally described her with "she was a woman in red" and that was it. A fairly important character whose physical description matters to the plot could be summed up with one short sentence that I'd later fill in because what was important wasn't making sure that I'd paint a beautiful picture for my later editing eyes to imagine about how awestruck I'll make those 100,000 readers who will definitely obviously without question buy the book in the first month. No, what's important is getting to 'The End'. It doesn't matter how purple or beige the prose is in the first draft since no one else will ever see it anyway (hopefully). It doesn't matter if there's copious 'talking heads syndrome'. Let there be cringy narm, [use Proper Noun here], and a genocide of the English language. Sure, read over the first draft to make sure story threads aren't starting to scatter everywhere (or better yet, use the opportunity to tie them all together later on). It's fine. Why?

    ONLY HACK FRAUDS PUBLISH THEIR FIRST DRAFTS.

    Don't be a hack fraud. Not that I ever did anything like that. Nope.
    Shifts eyes
    [​IMG]
     
  18. Herko Kerghans

    Herko Kerghans Biased Survivor LitRPG Author Citizen

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    ((That last post was an awesome read, mate; just wanted to mention that!!! =))




     
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  19. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Great news! The story is officially done. It is exactly 75,000 words. The only thing left to add to it now is the legal matter, links, and eventually get the cover.
     
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  20. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Here's the bare cover:
    [​IMG]

    As illustrated by Sandra Assaf. Gonna smooth out a few features and then add all the whatnot.
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2018
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