SynphonyKnight

SynphonyKnight

A game designer who sometimes masquerades as a writer on the internet

registered at: May 24, 2022
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    Published Chapter Level 3
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    Participant - MAL x Honeyfeed Writing Contest 2023


    Sep 04, 2023

    To:minatika

    I'd thought of the concept for this epilogue chapter a while ago, but up until I actually wrote it, I wasn't sure if I'd use it. Once I started writing it, though, it ended up feeling cathartic to me in a completely different way than the previous, proper final chapter had, so I decided to include it as, like you described it, a shorter after-credits-type sequence. I felt like it was a nice thematic bookend for Layn's arc, as bittersweet as it feels—though, I hope the optimistic aspects managed to shine through enough to balance that out a bit.

    As for finishing this whole thing... I'm really glad I managed to complete it in the end! Sometime around the middle of the story, I was... well, frankly, I kind of hated it, but my outlook definitely improved later on (for one, I definitely think the writing improved in the latter half, but my inner critic probably eased as well). It's a very flawed story, but, here at the end, I can say I'm proud of it still. Though, given I wrote an entire novel thematically centered on self-affirmation and self-assurance, it'd probably be a bit hypocritical of me to say otherwise. And, if nothing else, all I've wanted to do since finishing is start writing more stuff... which kind of sucks, because I was hoping doing this would scratch that itch rather than make it worse, but here we are.

    As it is now, I see this version of the story as complete. There was a lot left untouched (and plenty of stuff I set up or mentioned but never had time to properly execute) that would be interesting to explore, but if I were to revisit the story, I think I'd need to restart from the beginning. Too many decisions were made throughout for the sake of making this function as a standalone that I think it would collapse under its weight if I tried adding much to it in the future. The main focuses were always Layn's emotional journey and his relationship with Lucia, so largely resolving those two aspects are enough to make me feel like an adequate level of 'completeness' was achieved.

    But, finally and most importantly, thank you for reading my novel! 😊 ... And for putting up with my excessively wordy replies, which I've done once again... ugh, sorry. Anyway, good luck with the contest! I'd love to see LS there at the top in a few months' time! And, one final time, thank you for walking this road to completion! It meant a lot to me! 👋

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    1
    Chained Regalia
    Chapter:36












    Jul 20, 2023

    To:minatika

    I was hoping to get some actual chapter writing done during that time, but things didn't turn out that; what I got instead though was arguably more useful, though. The moment I got a chance to look at the bigger picture of things and not have to worry about getting the next chapter done, I got a lot of inspiration for the story as a whole and ended up doing a lot of helpful outlining. In particular, I now have detailed plans for the execution of the remaining major story beats, which should help me a lot, as I've struggled with execution and pacing thus far largely due to insufficient planning. I'm definitely a planner type person, so *not* having enough of it done ahead of time is a new experience for me.

    I had a very general plan for the full story since the beginning, but opted to start writing chapters as soon as possible over figuring out a lot of the small details, since I really had no idea what this experience was going to be like and wanted to get a feel for it. It ended up being fairly counterproductive, since the lack of planning ended up making chapters take longer to write, which meant I didn't have all that much time to devote back into planning, and so on. If I end up doing something like this again, I'll probably opt to enter late and spend the first half of the contest period just detailed outlining and plotting; that approach is just more comfortable for me, personally. But as for this story, I'm on a more solid track now, and have a clearer view of what's ahead (and, especially, at what lies at the end of the track).

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    1
    Chained Regalia
    Chapter:18