Chapter 21:

*** Author's Note ***

Road Trip with The Boys


What's up bros?

If you made it this far to the end-- thank you so much for reading! The past two weeks have been a huge grind, and even if this doesn't receive much recognition, I'm proud to have participated in this competition with such a positive and talented community.

This is my first piece of creative writing, with my inspirations from all over the place. I've always had the idea of "Road Trip With The Boys" in the back of my mind, and when I saw the prompt, I finally gained the motivation to put it into writing. Special thanks for @weenkabean on instagram for drawing the cover! It was a huge motivation to see these characters brought to life.

It's unfortunate that due to the deadline, I dropped the intended running gags that made the beginning chapters shine -- the dap/"bro culture" references, the Shakespeare soliloquy, etc. If I were to do this work again (which I want to), I would definitely try to build on those ideas. I would also want to drop the sloppily written drama, and focus on building character development exclusively through events/road trips/journeys-- this is probably why Prius and Ravi's final chapters feel so awkward in the larger context of this story. I think that if done right, this web novel concept has a lot of potential for marketability, and so I will continue to polish this work outside of my contest submission.

Again, thank you so much for your time! Please leave all your feedback, both negative and positive. I appreciate it very much!

- Han


Special note about the story: Some people questioned why I included Coco(a female character), and the "girl fitting in with the boys" subplot. In real life, my group of bros consists of a ton of guys, and one or two girls -- I turned that into three guys and one girl, since it's much easier to write a group dynamic with only four people. This subplot is there because I also wanted to write about issues that are real to us. While this might seem controversial to some, please understand it was not my intention to get political or preachy about gender. I simply wanted to write about a real issue that I've discussed with my homegirl, who is one of my best friends and an irreplaceable person in my own bro group. Thank you for understanding.