Ben Stovall Blog

Tag: creative-writing

  • December 2024 Irregular Update

    December 2024 Irregular Update

    Hi.

    Yes. I know. It’s been much, much longer than I intended since the last one of these. Since the last blog post in general. I … did not mean for it to go this way. Hell, I think the only thing that’s putting a fire beneath my ass to do this now is that I have my 2024 Year in Review post ready to go and it feels like I should probably address some stuff before I do that.

    So. What the hell happened, huh? Maybe we can both figure it out after prattling on for a while.

    Where were the blog posts?

    Well, at the top of the year, I had some turmoil with D&D. Well, more correctly, holdover turmoil from our experiment with Pathfinder. The homebrew game I was running petered out. We had one player who wasn’t all that jazzed about going back to D&D and another who was losing availability for a couple of months. So, we wrapped up the dungeon we were in and called the game.

    Not something I’m unfamiliar with – I’ve been running D&D for nearly fifteen damn years at this point. I’ve had more games get canned than reach their intended conclusion. Still, this one stung. This game was practically full-on sandbox and I wanted to more or less run the game as a gift for the table, let them explore and self-direct to the extreme. I was happy to put in the extraordinary time I might need to week-to-week to set the track down right in front of the train, but it still didn’t work out. And perhaps the complete lack of direction wasn’t the right fit for the table or the characters they made, maybe it was entirely down to the external obstacles, but it stung to lose that campaign.

    After that, I ran Blades in the Dark for about three months or so with the two players who stuck around. That system was some good fun, and we enjoyed it well. It’s built incredibly well for allowing the players to have the initiative in their choices and actions – it’s the exact inverse of D&D. In the latter, the DM has a situation they present to the players and the players respond; in Blades, the players lay out a heist (called Scores) and the GM reacts to their actions. Perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, but it runs well and we had some good fun!

    Once we got to the end of our “first season” of that game, we got one of our players back and were joined by two others and we went back to D&D. I’ve been running Tyranny of Dragons since June and it’s been going well. It’s my second time using the module and I’ve made some major edits to its structure – ones I’d love to share here on the blog, but half of my table has a habit of reading this blog, so that’ll have to wait – at least until we’ve passed the moments that have been adjusted.

    (I know, I know. How can someone have a habit of reading this blog when it’s been silent basically all year. Hush.)

    Another major source for much of my RPG related-posts was playing in a friend’s game who was running the game for the first time. I had the boon of seeing someone with no experience running the game and it reminded me of many of the lessons I’ve learned over the years – and he managed to do some inspired things despite his inexperience that I wanted to praise. Unfortunately, that table also dissolved due to out-of-game circumstances (luckily after the module’s completion).

    I’ve since had the privilege of joining another game that’s run once a month run by another friend, but I had this block, this wall up, that held me off from drafting anything.

    I had some other topic ideas at the start of the year, which made me feel fired up enough back in the January Irregular update, but … well. I lost confidence in claiming that I had any worthwhile experience to actually write those posts.

    These ideas were about the steps I took for independent publishing. Problem is, it’d be delusional to say I’ve done this successfully – at least, to the degree that I feel like my experience would be valuable to someone desperately googling for advice. Regardless of the validity of that worry – it held me off from drafting those posts. So. There it is.

    And … Red Watch?

    In January, I was feeling good about my decision to rewrite the first two books, and I still think pulling them down was the right decision for me. By February, I had completed the draft of A Violent Peace, and sent it out to several folks, people who’ve previously read for me. To my knowledge, none of them ever got around to it, or got very far into it. And I do not begrudge or blame or have any negative feelings toward them; beta reading is a lot of work for no compensation – any time it’s done, it’s a favor, and I’m thankful for them all offering to begin with.

    The point is, the complete lack of engagement was disheartening. The book probably still has many problems. I think there’s some stuff within it that works well, but there’s likely far more that just isn’t working.

    I spent the next two months diving headfirst into the rewrite of A Tide of Bones. I made some excellent headway and I was really liking some of the changes I made. … But there were many more things that were proving exceptionally difficult. I had adjusted the characters a little to provide a new central tension in the first quest of the book, but those changes were … I don’t know if they were right. And I just kept struggling with more and more things; with proper POV division, with some repetitive motivations following the events in Souhal. There’s obviously too many characters, too, but I don’t know what to do about that.

    I mean, clearly the solution would be to cut characters. But to do that would be to surrender the goal I had of not completely changing the canon of the stories so returning readers could pick up A Violent Peace. And would require major rewrites to A Violent Peace, given that it was written with the previous canon to begin with.

    So … do I scupper the whole thing? This project is like a hydra – every problem I address spawns more. How much more do I want to wrestle with it? How much does it get mangled before it’s unrecognizable? Am I going to tie myself to this anchor and just keep on with it? Or do I cut it loose?

    I think … it’s probably the latter, isn’t it? It’s been eight months since I’ve written a word that wasn’t for D&D because of this weight around my neck. I even flubbed the journaling.

    “Sometimes, taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind.”

    Maybe it’s time to do just that, Ekko.

    So … what’s next?

    If I’ve learned anything, it’s that making promises or exclamations in a random blog post aren’t worth a damn from me. Lately, I’ve been failing to find things to do – to find distractions that will keep me busy and off-track. For a long time this year, I was playing too much Warcraft, too much Baldur’s Gate and Deep Rock Galactic, over-prepping for D&D, all sorts of stuff. But, the sheen’s wearing off.

    When I’m not doing anything else, I end up writing.

    So. Let’s see what we end up working on, then.

  • Third Time’s the Charm

    Third Time’s the Charm

    I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I can see the appeal of something like numerology. You can do a lot with numbers to fit them into a narrative. They’re malleable and also observable.

    Growing up playing Super Mario 64 and Zelda games, three’s always been a bit weighted in its appearances. Throw Bowser three times; collect three spiritual stones to unlock the Temple of Time; you’ve got three days before the moon crashes into Hyrule–good luck, kid.

    We like making three significant. We like to see Threes. Trilogies, acts, whatever.

    But this post isn’t about magic numbers or video games.

    Instead, it’s about my books.

    The Third Book

    That heading’s a bit ambiguous, isn’t it? I released Ebonskar as my third book, sure, but I was working on the third Red Watch book first. I finished Ebonskar before completing a draft of A Violent Peace, but the latter is the third book in its series. That’s the numerology coming back around.

    And, truth is, those two are only two-thirds of what I had in mind when writing that header.

    Let me explain.

    So, Ebonskar. That book really grabbed me when it did. There was no way for me to get around it. It was all I was thinking about at the time – my head didn’t have space enough for it and Red Watch 3 to linger in there. I had to get it out first.

    And I’m really proud of it. I’m not just being a salesman when I tell people I think it’s my best work yet. It’s a good book – it’s not perfect, but the people who’ve liked it loved it. (So far as I’ve heard, anyway.) With Ebonskar, I felt like I crossed a new threshold in my ability as a writer. I can see the difference in its quality and that of my earlier works.

    Which, has caused some turmoil. Namely, that I don’t feel right selling my first two books anymore.

    Flipping through the pages of A Tide of Bones or Legacy is more liable to make me cringe than not. There’s some good ideas and such in there, yes, but my inexperience really bogs them down and makes what good there is hard to appreciate, even as the author of the work. Truth is, I fumbled.

    It was a lot of work to write a book. I didn’t want it to be for nothing; I didn’t want it to be a fantasy. I’d wanted to write my whole life, and I had, so, why not sell it? Right? I got goaded and I goaded myself into releasing it.

    If I could go back, I’d tell myself to wait. I’d tell myself to keep writing and learning, and to come back to Tide someday. Which brings us to today.

    A Really Dumb and Necessary Plan

    I’m proud of A Violent Peace. I think the third Red Watch book has some good bones, and I’m excited to hear back from my beta readers. Problem is, I don’t know how I can sell it if I don’t feel right selling the two preceding books. I have to find some way to be happy with them again to sell the series at all.

    Good news, though: I’m this whole business. I can do something dumb, something semi-self-indulgent, something necessary for me and I’m only affecting myself.

    So, effective immediately, A Tide of Bones and Legacy are no longer available for sale. They’re off the market.

    Until I finish rewriting them.

    My plan is to redraft A Tide of Bones and its sequel and release them again this year. If all goes as I hope, there will only be a few months between each book, and A Violent Peace will still be available toward the end of the year.

    This is the announcement.

    Strap in, readers. It’s going to be one hell of a year.

  • April 2022 Irregular Update

    April 2022 Irregular Update

    It’s been about seven months since my last update post. I do believe these posts will continue to pop up irregularly, but getting at least two major updates out in a year seems like a fair minimum to reach for. So, here’s how it’s been going.

    Where are you on Red Watch 3?

    Some mixed news here. Shortly after revisiting the project, reading through what I’ve written and my outline, I ended up making some major revisions. I caught on to some glaring pacing issues, restructured how I was planning to present the chapters, and ended up with an entire storyline that proved to be too much for the book. I hope not to leave that hook hanging, though. When I’m getting my completed draft into the hands of beta readers, I might work on that plotline as a companion novella – something similar in scale to Thuna, but it likely won’t be included in the book for Red Watch 3 as a collection. I’m still adjusting some stuff, finding out what I need to rewrite in the new draft, and more challenges could end up coming down the pipeline, but I’m making progress.

    It’s undoubtedly the most ambitious thing on my plate. I’m needing to be more considerate of how to keep the plates spinning with all that I set up in the first two Red Watch books and bringing everything forward in a satisfying way. I’m hoping to get a draft in the hands of my beta readers this year. I’m sorry that the wait for this book is proving so long, but I haven’t surrendered. Thank you for your patience, everyone.

    How’s the blog going?

    I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would. Being upfront about just writing about anything I wanted helped me open myself up to it, for sure. I’ve always been a quiet person socially, just felt like I didn’t have much of value to add to most conversations. But, building my own little soapbox on my website worked, since anyone who doesn’t want to hear from me can just … not be here? Easy enough.

    When I was starting the blog, though, my hosting service had a system for comments to be left on each entry and I was sad to see that disappear. I’m interested in some entries serving as a conversation starter, but I’m not trying to cross-post every entry here on every social media site. I never cared for them much – getting me to log onto my Facebook is like pulling teeth, and I use it specifically for book promotion.

    All to say that it’s good. I’m like the pace of getting out two entries a month, and I think I’ll at a minimum manage at least one. I will say most of my ideas right now revolve around D&D, and despite my passion for the hobby I don’t want that to be the blog. I’ve been working to ensure I don’t do too many posts like that back-to-back.

    Anything else?

    I’m planning to run a sale on all three of my books in May. I’ll, naturally, be mostly promoting Ebonskar as my newest book, hoping to get it into more people’s hands. So, if you were waiting for a sale to pick them up for yourself or as a gift, it’s right around the corner. Tell your friends! (If you want to.)

    As a more sore subject however, I decided to make another revision to A Tide of Bones earlier this week. Smaller in scope than what occurred before the release of Legacy, but something I’d been unhappy with for a long time. I’ve changed a lot as a writer and person since I worked on Tide and an early scene in the book wasn’t sitting right with me.

    I’m speaking, of course, about the scene with Lytha and the thieves. In the original version of the scene, there’s an implication of intent that I have now removed. The exchange is explicitly only about the money, now. The story ultimately was not improved by including that implication and in fact, likely worse for it. It’s something I have expressly forbidden from occurring in my tabletop games, and it didn’t sit well with me that it existed as an introductory moment for this character.

    As I understand, the change applies retroactively to the kindle version (unless you have the downloaded version and are offline on the device, perhaps?) but, naturally, old print copies of the text will retain the original scene. I include the mention here as almost a bit of future proofing – for if someone discovers the discrepancy of the scenes and wonders what happened.

    That’s about it.

    Thank you for reading.