A Dungeon’s Soul
Book 3 – the last book in the series for a while – of the Adventures on Brad is now out.
There are a number of reasons I’ve pulled the series to a close. Among them is the fact that this is a great stopping point, where there’s a little bit of hope and curiosity but the arc is now over and done with.
However, another major reason is recent considerations about how I write and writing formats.
Writing Formats
I call the Adventures on Brad my light novel inspired series. Each book is short and more slice-of-life than ‘plot’ driven, a meandering look at the characters. While many light novels have plots, they also take these long slice-of-life looks at the characters.
In addition, when I wrote A Healer’s Gift (and to some extent, An Adventurer’s Heart), I posted the books on Royal Road, chapter by chapter. I’d sit down, write a full chapter, post it and do it again a few days / a day later. With the structure of specific daily chapters in mind, my writing styled itself to keep each chapter somewhat self-contained.
When writing A Dungeon’s Soul, I wrote the entire book as I do normally these days, picking up from scene to scene, trying to work a plot into it without drifting into random chapters. I think it worked, but it started drifting I think from the initial light novel aspect, with less time with the characters individually.
Unfortunately, between RL jobs and writing at least 1 other series, being able to focus and write a chapter here or there didn’t seem to work anymore. However, looking back, I think the entire series actually benefits from the ‘start and stop’ style, at least if I want to keep it to the same ‘feel’.
You see this as well in the way certain novels are written. The Wandering Inn, is very much a webserial. It meanders, wanders around and does a ton of slice-of-life things and flashbacks, switching POVs constantly and having a slow moving ‘plot’. Then again, it’s a web-serial. Buying into the serial is buying into the idea that you’ve got years to finish this. The medium changes the format of writing.
A ‘novel’ is often self-contained, with a common ‘Western’ beginning, middle and end. It requires significanltly different structuring. Which is something I find a bit more difficult to do with the Adventures on Brad.
Shifting POVs
I have a bad habit of head-hopping. It’s funny really – head hopping used to be very prevalent in older books but these days is strongly discouraged. Unfortunately, I often find myself doing that while writing and partly it’s because I limited myself to Daniel’s POV when I started the series.
When I pick up the series again, I probably will shift from a limited POV of Daniel for the entire book to shifting POVs for specific scenes to Asin & Omrak. It’d help to make the book a little more interesting I think.
So what?
All of this is my way of saying that the series is going on hiatus. Sort-of. What I’ll probably do is write in it once in a while when inspiration strikes me, adding a chapter here and there till I have a ‘book’. When that happens, I’ll be ready to publish, but it probably will take some time.
This will allow the series to continue in its rambling ways without putting too much pressure on ‘when’ it gets released. It’ll also let me play around with the POVs and format a bit.
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