I edited 1.1, primarily to downplay the ‘family being horrible’ and clarify the visions, with a few minor tweaks elsewhere. The other chapters, I didn’t have a lot of time & primarily fixed continuity errors.
I binge-read Worm, and came over here from HPMOR. You’re an excellent author, and worlds ahead of authors, pandering to the masses, who downplay the power of thought.
I look forward to Pact.
A question, out of curiosity, however – do you ever use reader suggestions or pick fun things from comments and include them, rather than simply looking at feedback as positive or negative? I’m curious as to how the Awakening will turn out, and I’m interested in how much you have concretely nailed down.
I’m more a gardener than an architect. That is, I like to plant elements into the story and then cultivate them rather than form a plan ahead of time & then stick to it. I know a few key ‘scenes’ or ideas I want to add to the story, but I’m going to let the story emerge and let those scenes fall where they need to.
I tend to do best writing for worlds that I’ve built in a lot. Both Pact and Worm have a lot of background material I can cannibalize. As with Worm, I wrote stories centering around virtually every character you see. So I know who they are and what their motivations are, because they were protagonists in some earlier draft. This provides some underlying structure to the otherwise flexible writing, gives me some of those scenes I’ve envisioned beforehand, and allows me to hammer out the tenets of the setting.
Our writing styles are similar, then. My main problem is that I get distracted by too many of those scenes and spend too little time seeing how they have to connect to one another. Most surfaces in my apartment are covered in flashcards with snippets of dialog, descriptions of rooms, cities, outdoors locations, people. I just apparently lack the drive to stitch them together, but maybe adopting your habit of writing short fiction drafts around the individual characters (or related pairings, like Guts and Glory) will help.
Also, your work has a surprising amount of Canadian content (or, surprising if you’re not Canadian) – are you Ontarian, or did you spend a lot of time there? If you’re a fellow Canadian, hello from Victoria!
I recommend, if you’re struggling and failing, to avoid the trap of doing the same thing over and over again. Try to break it up, write a bit where you start more in the future, or change the viewpoint character. Over time, doing this, staying consistent-ish, you’ll start to stitch together the overall world.
I say consistent-ish because you shouldn’t be afraid to deviate from the game plan. Just stay aware that you are deviating and why. So long as you do this, it’ll stick in your head better, and you won’t forget that you changed from the original idea.
Was Echidna in Worm called Echidna due to the peeps in the comments section pointing out the similarities, or was the PRT joke just a nod at the comments and you already had a name for it?
Hey, just out of curiosity, are you going to be writing any of the other stories you previewed after you’ve finished Pact? I know it’s a ways away but I found Faces pretty interesting.
Hey, Wildbow, have you considered contacting Big Bang Press about publishing the Worm novels? Apparently they’re focusing on recruiting fanfiction writers to write for them, and while Worm is hardly fanfic, as a web serial, it’s still operating in a similar sort of space as them, since most fanfics are web serials as well.
I just wanted to say I’m a huge fan and I’ve finally caught up with your writing, after getting through all of Worm and Pact. It’s really great, and the only thing I dislike is that your updates happen at 4am where I am, so I can’t read them until later 🙂
By the way, are you going to add Pact to the sidebar on this blog where it says ‘My Writing’? Or are you waiting until you finish the story first?
Also, I’ve started trying to fill in the Worm wiki (username WaylanderTheSlayer), and although I haven’t got much done yet, I hope to be able to soon (after I’ve handed a project in). Is there any chance you could add some interesting author trivia to some of the characters?
Other than that, I’m going to keep reading Pact as it comes out. I look forward to tomorrow’s update!
Sooo, suppose I went on a narrating binge and recorded myself reading Pact. Would you mind if I were to make this recording available for anyone in the internet? I’d like to show my terrible, hour long narration around.
I know you’re deep into Pact and don’t really want to hear people going on about worm. Still, my opinion for what to do during the timeshift. The time shift is the perfect time for a quick break in the action where things are positive. Most of us want to see how Brocton lives and grows in that time. We also want to see Weaver get to know her new team-mates. It’s a good place to be somewhat positive for a while.
Pig's Pen 
Yay!
YUS
yay! Have 1.1-1.4 been edited at all? I want to know if I need to do any rereading.
I edited 1.1, primarily to downplay the ‘family being horrible’ and clarify the visions, with a few minor tweaks elsewhere. The other chapters, I didn’t have a lot of time & primarily fixed continuity errors.
Not a lot will be different if you reread.
Cool, thanks for replying. I might reread anyway (I initially found the visions a bit confusing, but the later chapters cleared it up for me)
And the crowd goes wild!
Congratulations on the launch!
Re-reading from beginning, noticing some details that make sense in a new light.
Woooooooooooooooooooooo! Here’s to 2014 and a great new adventure!
Cheers to you, my good pig!
Set sail!
I binge-read Worm, and came over here from HPMOR. You’re an excellent author, and worlds ahead of authors, pandering to the masses, who downplay the power of thought.
I look forward to Pact.
A question, out of curiosity, however – do you ever use reader suggestions or pick fun things from comments and include them, rather than simply looking at feedback as positive or negative? I’m curious as to how the Awakening will turn out, and I’m interested in how much you have concretely nailed down.
I’m more a gardener than an architect. That is, I like to plant elements into the story and then cultivate them rather than form a plan ahead of time & then stick to it. I know a few key ‘scenes’ or ideas I want to add to the story, but I’m going to let the story emerge and let those scenes fall where they need to.
I tend to do best writing for worlds that I’ve built in a lot. Both Pact and Worm have a lot of background material I can cannibalize. As with Worm, I wrote stories centering around virtually every character you see. So I know who they are and what their motivations are, because they were protagonists in some earlier draft. This provides some underlying structure to the otherwise flexible writing, gives me some of those scenes I’ve envisioned beforehand, and allows me to hammer out the tenets of the setting.
Our writing styles are similar, then. My main problem is that I get distracted by too many of those scenes and spend too little time seeing how they have to connect to one another. Most surfaces in my apartment are covered in flashcards with snippets of dialog, descriptions of rooms, cities, outdoors locations, people. I just apparently lack the drive to stitch them together, but maybe adopting your habit of writing short fiction drafts around the individual characters (or related pairings, like Guts and Glory) will help.
Also, your work has a surprising amount of Canadian content (or, surprising if you’re not Canadian) – are you Ontarian, or did you spend a lot of time there? If you’re a fellow Canadian, hello from Victoria!
Ontario, yes.
I recommend, if you’re struggling and failing, to avoid the trap of doing the same thing over and over again. Try to break it up, write a bit where you start more in the future, or change the viewpoint character. Over time, doing this, staying consistent-ish, you’ll start to stitch together the overall world.
I say consistent-ish because you shouldn’t be afraid to deviate from the game plan. Just stay aware that you are deviating and why. So long as you do this, it’ll stick in your head better, and you won’t forget that you changed from the original idea.
Was Echidna in Worm called Echidna due to the peeps in the comments section pointing out the similarities, or was the PRT joke just a nod at the comments and you already had a name for it?
Hey, just out of curiosity, are you going to be writing any of the other stories you previewed after you’ve finished Pact? I know it’s a ways away but I found Faces pretty interesting.
I think I’ve said so elsewhere, but…
I do want to do something like Boil. Maybe after Pact, maybe not.
Faces would work better in a visual medium, like a webcomic. As is, I think it needs some hashing out first.
Peer… probably won’t appear in any recognizable form. I’ll likely cannibalize it for assets for a later story.
Hey, Wildbow, have you considered contacting Big Bang Press about publishing the Worm novels? Apparently they’re focusing on recruiting fanfiction writers to write for them, and while Worm is hardly fanfic, as a web serial, it’s still operating in a similar sort of space as them, since most fanfics are web serials as well.
http://bigbangpress.org/
Hi wildbow,
I just wanted to say I’m a huge fan and I’ve finally caught up with your writing, after getting through all of Worm and Pact. It’s really great, and the only thing I dislike is that your updates happen at 4am where I am, so I can’t read them until later 🙂
By the way, are you going to add Pact to the sidebar on this blog where it says ‘My Writing’? Or are you waiting until you finish the story first?
Also, I’ve started trying to fill in the Worm wiki (username WaylanderTheSlayer), and although I haven’t got much done yet, I hope to be able to soon (after I’ve handed a project in). Is there any chance you could add some interesting author trivia to some of the characters?
Other than that, I’m going to keep reading Pact as it comes out. I look forward to tomorrow’s update!
-Dakeyras
Still missing Worm. Any news on that?
Sooo, suppose I went on a narrating binge and recorded myself reading Pact. Would you mind if I were to make this recording available for anyone in the internet? I’d like to show my terrible, hour long narration around.
I know you’re deep into Pact and don’t really want to hear people going on about worm. Still, my opinion for what to do during the timeshift. The time shift is the perfect time for a quick break in the action where things are positive. Most of us want to see how Brocton lives and grows in that time. We also want to see Weaver get to know her new team-mates. It’s a good place to be somewhat positive for a while.
That is all.