Author's Note / Q&A This Way

Hello everyone, Pie here.

First I’d like to begin by thanking my patrons:

Dargon
Gaveal
Tzuf
aaarrr
Jas
John
Peanuts
Izix

Through your support, you guys have kept me motivated to write throughout the year and honestly, the fact that you’d even consider being patrons for a first time writer means the world to me. It was also through their help I was able to commission some fantastic artwork for both Red and Chey.

Anyway, this Author’s note will touch on a range of things from the release date and schedule of Arc 2, Feedback Review, a brief outline of my plans for the next arc, and other story related changes.

Feel free to skip what you don’t want to read and you can just ctrl+f down to the heading(s) outlined below:

Arc 2 Release
Feedback Review and Goals/Direction for Arc 2
TL;DR of Goals/Direction for Arc 2
Outline of Arc 2
Story Related Changes

Arc 2 Release

Currently I’m 2 chapters into the second arc. As usual, Patrons will get these as soon as they are typo slayred by the magnanimous DraMr. For CHYOA readers, I aim to release at least one chapter a week starting on Monday the 10th. The reason for the slow release schedule is threefold. First is I need to build my buffer again so that I don’t end up in a situation where I have to take a month off for exams or other shenanigans. Second and third, I’m trying to increase both my average chapter length and the overall quality of the chapters. I’m sorry if this disappoints anyone but I hope you can at least understand.

Feedback Review and Goals/Direction for Arc 2

Thank you to the 35 of you who took the time to give feedback, your comments especially were greatly appreciated :)

First up was the Character section of the Q&A. Of those that responded more than half of the total votes (19 all up) gave the main cast a 5/5 for likeability, which is of course fantastic to see. Similarly, the majority of the votes for the development and believability categories went to 4/5 which shows positive signs. However several of you cited that you’d like to see more development in Red, Saccha, and/or Moira. I agree that there is definitely more I should be doing to develop these three, particular Red since she’s supposed to be the ‘main girl’ of the branch. Thus my most important goal for the next arc will be to develop the characters better.

The biggest challenge I foresee with this will be the balance of characters within the arc. While there won’t be that many new ones necessarily, characters like Sam and Chelsea will be taking on a more prominent role in the story, and thus be needed development of their own at the same time as Red, Saccha, and Moira.

One aspect of Red that on reflection I did particularly poorly was how quickly she glued onto John. What I tried and failed to do was demonstrate how she was desperately looking for an escape from Vulpis, and John just happened to be a convenient prince charming. Looking back, however, I feel like their relationship became intimate far too quickly and as it is, is somewhat shallow. I hope that moving forward I can amend that and I already have a few ideas but it remains to be seen how successful these will be.

Moving on to more general things.

I also want to get a better handle on pacing the narrative. Pacing is one of those abstract writing concepts that is difficult to master. I hope that over time I can improve that aspect of my writing.

As far as tone goes, all votes went to either 2 (a little too dark) or 3 (the tone was fine) with the majority in the latter. Based on this I think I’ll keep the tone of the branch around the same level, while hopefully still delivering some laughs along the way. However, I won’t be in a hurry to touch the subject of **** again, the tone will be dark(ish) for a different reasons.

As for the erotica I got very mixed responses. Some felt that the number of porn chapters was fine and would rather I focus on plot, while others want a lot more porn chapters. The quality of the chapters is also something I want to improve, though of course different things appeal to different people. I’m considered putting out a poll at some point to gauge what people are interested in seeing. In general though, I’m going to try and increase the amount of erotic chapters in the arc.

TL;DR of Goals/Direction for Arc 2

I will be trying to:

• Develop the characters more, particularly Red.
• Introduce more characters to the ‘main’ cast without subtracting from those already present.
• Pace the narrative better
• Deliver a greater number of erotic chapters

Outline of Arc 2

My current plans for Arc 2 reign things back into Springfield. There will be a slight timeskip of about two months and John will be back at school. Mostly due to avoiding the Abyss, his level won’t be too much higher (10 levels or so) but he’ll have cleared 3 more floors of Gaia’s and have taken on a few odd jobs for the Order. Most of his stat points in the meantime will have gone into rounding out his stats to a decent level so he can start focussing more on specialising in Agility and Charisma.

In particular, I plan to focus a lot on the Charisma stat, both because I think it’s an interesting stat and it further differentiates my branch from other Authors. So John will be getting some sorely needed Charisma based skills soon.

As far as plot goes in general, I’ll be drawing on some crime fiction/mystery themes for the arc, as John starts doing more contract work for the Order so that he can repay them for covering his mom’s medical expenses. Sam and Chelsea will be taking a more prominent role in the arc this time and my hope is to get some Persona 4 investigation team vibes going. I hope for it to be an entertaining read to you all!

Story Related Changes

This section concerns details that are being changed/retconned between arcs. Thankfully, there isn’t much of note this time.

• The 1000 floor dungeon (aka Gaia’s Barrier) that John has access to is being retconned to only 100 floors. I have no clue what kind of insanity possessed me to make the number of floors that high. 100 floors will be much more manageable with the assistance of a few time skips, and hopefully that’ll mean I can make the floors that are focused on more engaging to read.
• The Interface that John uses (as well as other things like Observe sheets) will be revamped. Mostly this is because I accidentally deleted the wrong file and lost all my current ones; tragically silly I know, but at least it was timed somewhat well. The main difference will be that I’ll now be separating the information across several windows for ease of reading. As it was the UI was dangerously close to information overload, and several people told me it was difficult to read.