Tales of MU Relaunch Information
Jan. 4th, 2011 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinRight now Tales of MU is in the midst of what I think of as "the collision course", which is my attempt to bring to a close the most pressing plotlines afflicting our protagonist. When that's finished, we'll be going into "the fast forward", during which things will be happening even quicker but will be dealt with at a glance. You might think of it as the "where are they now" for volume 1.
After that, we go into the start of volume 2, which is entitled Sophomore Effort. Yes, for those of you who've wondered how far ahead the time skip is going to go, the name is a big clue. We're skipping ahead to the second year.
The end of volume 1 is not going to explicitly resolve every single dangling plot line... that would be a bit of an information overload, as well as be anti-climactic in some cases. Some plotlines will still be ongoing in the second year, and some will be left up to reader inference or filled in later.
There is inevitably going to be some anti-climax in this, but much less so than if I allowed the story to just wither and die, as it has threatened to do.
Fully Anticipated Questions:
What's the time frame for this?
Back when I decided to do it, I arbitrarily picked January as a time that was both 1) a little ways off and 2) hella symbolic. Now we're into January and I'm not willing to set a hard launch date for volume 2 because I want to make sure I'm doing justice to the end of volume 1, but suffice it to say that it's coming, and with the three-a-week update schedule it shouldn't take too long to get here.
Why skip ahead a whole year? Why not a few months, or until the next semester?
Multiple reasons. One of the big ones is that I want this to feel like a fresh start, for the readers, for me, and for the characters. No, I haven't covered even half of Mackenzie's freshman year, but I feel like I've said what I wanted to say about it, and I feel like I've documented as much first year awkwardness as I care to write about and as many readers care to read about.
It's time to move on to bigger and better things, like second year awkwardness.
What changes can we expect in the storytelling?
There are a few devices I've tried to incorporate during Tales of MU.... some at the outset, some at various other points during its run to date... that I think would both make the story less impenetrable to new readers and make it easier for me to keep track of things and keep the story moving forward instead of focusing so often on where it is at the moment. I'm going to be bringing back all of them.
The first is more use of retrospective narration.
When I started out, Mackenzie would "re-introduce" characters and concepts who hadn't appeared for a while, usually in their first appearance in a new book. Some readers complained that this was jarring and broke the immersion for them, but I think on the whole it makes it does more to help people get into the story than it does to take them out of it.
Book 1 of Volume 2 is going to start out with a "the story thus far" that will contain enough information that a new reader can pick it up from that point. They wouldn't know everything that longer-time readers would know about the people and places that are encountered in the story, but even people who've been reading from the beginning don't know everything about everyone we encounter. Or about anyone we encounter. There will be sufficient information, in other words, but not an overload.
This will entail a little bit more direct addressing of the audience than there's been in quite a while. Mackenzie's narration talked to the audience from the beginning... in fact, first person narration is nothing except talking to the audience... but for some reason even things as mild as an occasional mental "You know..." seemed to prompt some readers to cry "OW! MY FOURTH WALL!", which has made me increasingly averse to doing it.
The second is more "meta information" about each chapter outside of the narration, including a dateline at the top for each story and a new system of tags separate from the character-based ones. Want to find all the chapters that deal with Mackenzie's dreams, or all the ones that are conversations around the lunch table? You'll be able to. Tagging of the older chapters is going to be done as I re-do them for the print editions. New chapters will bear tags as soon as they go up. I'll welcome comments with suggestions for applicable tags, especially during the early phases of this.
So, are you going to spend years on the first month and a half of the sophomore year and then skip ahead again?
Ideally? No. I'd meant to be further ahead in Mackenzie's timeline by this point, but a bunch of stuff happened. If I were writing a novel, this would have resulted in massive editing and a delayed release date. In the webcomic-like model of writing and publication I use, it resulted in schedule slippage and a related form of plot doldrums as a lack of momentum in my writing becomes reflected by a lack of momentum in plot. Part of the purpose of having a clean "relaunch" and starting afresh with a new volume is to break free of that.
I'm not saying there won't be points in the future where I or the story are moving slower than other times, but I'll be watching for its encroachment in the future to make sure we don't get bogged down again.
There will be times where I deliberately skip ahead a bit and periods of time that I skim over things, but there's a key word there: deliberately. I'll be doing that to avoid getting bogged down to the point where such a drastic action seems necessary.
Does this talk about skimming and skipping mean that you'll be skipping over [the part of the story I don't like, which is only an annoying interruption and distraction from the main plot] so that we get to see more of [the part of the story I do like, which is the most important part of the story because it is clearly the main plot]?
No. [Part of the story you don't like] is still going to be present, and even more gallingly, there will be times when [part of the story you don't like] seems to be given precedence over [part of the story you do like]. You must understand that [part of the story you do like] is not actually the main or central plot of the story, and the moments when it is at the forefront are not rare moments of clarity on my part but just natural fluctuations in the telling of what is and always will be a sprawling, untidy, and unkempt beast of a story.
I'm worried that the change in timeframe and setting will mean that I'll be seeing less of my favorite characters, like Amaranth. I would be absolutely devastated if Mackenzie outgrows her relationship with Amaranth during the break between the first and second year and we never see her again. Could you give me some reassurance that this will not be so?"
Absolutely! Do not worry, gentle reader. Amaranth will be just as big a part of Mackenzie's life in her second year at MU as she has been during the first one.
You're fucking with us deliberately now, aren't you?
Now?
:P
In all seriousness, what I meant by the Amaranth question was to reassure people that while the story will be changing, it won't be changing too much. It'll be about substantially the same people in substantially the same place, and it's written by someone who is substantially the same person as she was when she started.
To understand the nature and magnitude of the change, imagine if instead of doing this I rebooted the series with the "ultimate" version, starting over and re-telling the story of Mackenzie and Puddy and Amaranth and everyone else from day one. I might take the opportunities to tweak characterizations, to clean up the plotlines a bit, to give the storytelling techniques a bit of an upgrade and overhaul, but the end result would still recognizably be the same characters and the same stories.
The point of this change is to give myself the freedom to do something sort of like that but without burning down everything that's come before and paving over it, and without people actually having to sit through the same plotlines again, no matter how much snazzier I try to make them. (I tried this with Star Harbor a couple of times. I wasn't pleased with the results.)
Are you going to edit down the first volume into something more manageable?
Nope.
It's going to receive some edits in terms of cleaning up typos and formatting, and I'm going to clean up a couple of minor things that are actual errors (like Two using almost the exact same line about gelatin counting as a fruit twice... and no, that's not something that can be explained by her nature. It results in an actual contradiction in the text.), but by and large it's going to stand as it is. There will be a few very minor retcons that I know I'm going to make, but if anything pops into your head when you read that, it probably isn't it because I'm not planning on changing anything of consequence.
Why not?
Because I'm a writer, not an editor. Because I've said from the beginning that I'm not writing a novel in the conventional sense. Because I'd rather have a record of where I've been than a monument too how far I've come. Because I'd rather move forwards than backwards.
Are you going to at least collect the rest of the first volume into print?
Yes, definitely. I'm going to be starting by redoing the books that have already been collected, at which point the current versions of them are going to be going away. I don't think this is any great loss, but if I don't say this now then I'm afraid I'll hear from people who wanted to own the original versions and mourns the missed chance.
Actually Asked Question: Are we going to miss out on Mackenzie's second class with Callahan?
No. Callahan didn't specify when Mackenzie has to take it, so she's not going to take it in the "skipped" semester. I actually wrote that offer into the story so there'd be a reason for Callahan to still be in Mackenzie's life after the jump.
...
So, that's it, basically. If you have any questions I did not address, just formspring.me or comment below.
After that, we go into the start of volume 2, which is entitled Sophomore Effort. Yes, for those of you who've wondered how far ahead the time skip is going to go, the name is a big clue. We're skipping ahead to the second year.
The end of volume 1 is not going to explicitly resolve every single dangling plot line... that would be a bit of an information overload, as well as be anti-climactic in some cases. Some plotlines will still be ongoing in the second year, and some will be left up to reader inference or filled in later.
There is inevitably going to be some anti-climax in this, but much less so than if I allowed the story to just wither and die, as it has threatened to do.
Fully Anticipated Questions:
What's the time frame for this?
Back when I decided to do it, I arbitrarily picked January as a time that was both 1) a little ways off and 2) hella symbolic. Now we're into January and I'm not willing to set a hard launch date for volume 2 because I want to make sure I'm doing justice to the end of volume 1, but suffice it to say that it's coming, and with the three-a-week update schedule it shouldn't take too long to get here.
Why skip ahead a whole year? Why not a few months, or until the next semester?
Multiple reasons. One of the big ones is that I want this to feel like a fresh start, for the readers, for me, and for the characters. No, I haven't covered even half of Mackenzie's freshman year, but I feel like I've said what I wanted to say about it, and I feel like I've documented as much first year awkwardness as I care to write about and as many readers care to read about.
It's time to move on to bigger and better things, like second year awkwardness.
What changes can we expect in the storytelling?
There are a few devices I've tried to incorporate during Tales of MU.... some at the outset, some at various other points during its run to date... that I think would both make the story less impenetrable to new readers and make it easier for me to keep track of things and keep the story moving forward instead of focusing so often on where it is at the moment. I'm going to be bringing back all of them.
The first is more use of retrospective narration.
When I started out, Mackenzie would "re-introduce" characters and concepts who hadn't appeared for a while, usually in their first appearance in a new book. Some readers complained that this was jarring and broke the immersion for them, but I think on the whole it makes it does more to help people get into the story than it does to take them out of it.
Book 1 of Volume 2 is going to start out with a "the story thus far" that will contain enough information that a new reader can pick it up from that point. They wouldn't know everything that longer-time readers would know about the people and places that are encountered in the story, but even people who've been reading from the beginning don't know everything about everyone we encounter. Or about anyone we encounter. There will be sufficient information, in other words, but not an overload.
This will entail a little bit more direct addressing of the audience than there's been in quite a while. Mackenzie's narration talked to the audience from the beginning... in fact, first person narration is nothing except talking to the audience... but for some reason even things as mild as an occasional mental "You know..." seemed to prompt some readers to cry "OW! MY FOURTH WALL!", which has made me increasingly averse to doing it.
The second is more "meta information" about each chapter outside of the narration, including a dateline at the top for each story and a new system of tags separate from the character-based ones. Want to find all the chapters that deal with Mackenzie's dreams, or all the ones that are conversations around the lunch table? You'll be able to. Tagging of the older chapters is going to be done as I re-do them for the print editions. New chapters will bear tags as soon as they go up. I'll welcome comments with suggestions for applicable tags, especially during the early phases of this.
So, are you going to spend years on the first month and a half of the sophomore year and then skip ahead again?
Ideally? No. I'd meant to be further ahead in Mackenzie's timeline by this point, but a bunch of stuff happened. If I were writing a novel, this would have resulted in massive editing and a delayed release date. In the webcomic-like model of writing and publication I use, it resulted in schedule slippage and a related form of plot doldrums as a lack of momentum in my writing becomes reflected by a lack of momentum in plot. Part of the purpose of having a clean "relaunch" and starting afresh with a new volume is to break free of that.
I'm not saying there won't be points in the future where I or the story are moving slower than other times, but I'll be watching for its encroachment in the future to make sure we don't get bogged down again.
There will be times where I deliberately skip ahead a bit and periods of time that I skim over things, but there's a key word there: deliberately. I'll be doing that to avoid getting bogged down to the point where such a drastic action seems necessary.
Does this talk about skimming and skipping mean that you'll be skipping over [the part of the story I don't like, which is only an annoying interruption and distraction from the main plot] so that we get to see more of [the part of the story I do like, which is the most important part of the story because it is clearly the main plot]?
No. [Part of the story you don't like] is still going to be present, and even more gallingly, there will be times when [part of the story you don't like] seems to be given precedence over [part of the story you do like]. You must understand that [part of the story you do like] is not actually the main or central plot of the story, and the moments when it is at the forefront are not rare moments of clarity on my part but just natural fluctuations in the telling of what is and always will be a sprawling, untidy, and unkempt beast of a story.
I'm worried that the change in timeframe and setting will mean that I'll be seeing less of my favorite characters, like Amaranth. I would be absolutely devastated if Mackenzie outgrows her relationship with Amaranth during the break between the first and second year and we never see her again. Could you give me some reassurance that this will not be so?"
Absolutely! Do not worry, gentle reader. Amaranth will be just as big a part of Mackenzie's life in her second year at MU as she has been during the first one.
You're fucking with us deliberately now, aren't you?
Now?
:P
In all seriousness, what I meant by the Amaranth question was to reassure people that while the story will be changing, it won't be changing too much. It'll be about substantially the same people in substantially the same place, and it's written by someone who is substantially the same person as she was when she started.
To understand the nature and magnitude of the change, imagine if instead of doing this I rebooted the series with the "ultimate" version, starting over and re-telling the story of Mackenzie and Puddy and Amaranth and everyone else from day one. I might take the opportunities to tweak characterizations, to clean up the plotlines a bit, to give the storytelling techniques a bit of an upgrade and overhaul, but the end result would still recognizably be the same characters and the same stories.
The point of this change is to give myself the freedom to do something sort of like that but without burning down everything that's come before and paving over it, and without people actually having to sit through the same plotlines again, no matter how much snazzier I try to make them. (I tried this with Star Harbor a couple of times. I wasn't pleased with the results.)
Are you going to edit down the first volume into something more manageable?
Nope.
It's going to receive some edits in terms of cleaning up typos and formatting, and I'm going to clean up a couple of minor things that are actual errors (like Two using almost the exact same line about gelatin counting as a fruit twice... and no, that's not something that can be explained by her nature. It results in an actual contradiction in the text.), but by and large it's going to stand as it is. There will be a few very minor retcons that I know I'm going to make, but if anything pops into your head when you read that, it probably isn't it because I'm not planning on changing anything of consequence.
Why not?
Because I'm a writer, not an editor. Because I've said from the beginning that I'm not writing a novel in the conventional sense. Because I'd rather have a record of where I've been than a monument too how far I've come. Because I'd rather move forwards than backwards.
Are you going to at least collect the rest of the first volume into print?
Yes, definitely. I'm going to be starting by redoing the books that have already been collected, at which point the current versions of them are going to be going away. I don't think this is any great loss, but if I don't say this now then I'm afraid I'll hear from people who wanted to own the original versions and mourns the missed chance.
Actually Asked Question: Are we going to miss out on Mackenzie's second class with Callahan?
No. Callahan didn't specify when Mackenzie has to take it, so she's not going to take it in the "skipped" semester. I actually wrote that offer into the story so there'd be a reason for Callahan to still be in Mackenzie's life after the jump.
...
So, that's it, basically. If you have any questions I did not address, just formspring.me or comment below.