Oct 07, 2025
To:Moe Tie
Aaaaahhh thank you so so so much for reading all the way to the end and leaving such an insightful comment (twice, even?? :0)! 
I agree with a lot of the points you bring up. I dislike to publicly talk about the flaws I see in my stories as I post them since I don’t want to sour the reading experience for anyone who might stumble across it, but this story certainly needed a few more drafts, and one that’s focused on characters most desperately. I still wanted to post this story to the contest though, and I think under the time constraints it’s not too bad. If we had like a month or two more, I would have definitely let it cook longer.
The characters don’t have as much work behind them as I wanted them to have, and it’s something I’ve struggled with a lot. It makes me fall onto very generic, „fuzzy“ silhouettes or archetypes of characters instead of fully fleshed-out ones. To be honest, no one really got an arc in this story as I didn’t plan any, and that was a big mistake. Again, one I would fix with more time, but that’s how it is.
Same goes for the plot! I think the scope of the story was both too wide and too narrow, and I would either have to fix the „bones“ to shrink the story to the word count, or add like 20-30k for it to get fully realized. Actually, Berus and Mikkah crashing down to the little farm and escaping was supposed to be the „second“ arc but I can totally see how it might feel like it still belongs to the setup. I wanted to have more of a „village liberation arc“ as they travel to the castle, getting more powerful and seeing more of the world, but again, not enough time for that. Sad times.
Despite its flaws, I’m really glad it’s still readable, and even kinda enjoyable! I’m also glad you liked the mmo aspect of it because I don’t have that much experience with mmos myself. I’m usually not too big on worldbuilding and wanted to focus on that and description as I wrote the story and I hope that translated well into what’s actually written.
I think the big realization this year with both contests is that I can write something story-shaped in the allotted contest time, but that it doesn’t get to its full potential (or anywhere near it, really). It just needs to cook longer in the planning phase, and also I need to dive deeper into editing/rewriting, which I haven’t really done before so it’s both scary and exciting!
So, thank you again for writing down your thoughts, as well as your feedback all throughout the story. That was extremely helpful to me!
