A Story Obstacle Overcome

[Dhael_Ligerkeys]

There's been a few hurdles in my story that I've had to deal with mainly because of the hard decisions I've needed to make. When you're working with a massive scale story, the little things can have massive effects down the line and there have been several instances where I've needed to take a pause to evaluate the story. I'm very proud of myself thus far and it's mainly the decisions I've made to sort of set up that future. Here's a few:

1. Do I kill Chul? Deciding to kill off what would have been the biggest secondary support character to my MC was a massive decision that took a lot of thought but was a lasting decision that's effected it ever since.
   
   
2. Do I injure my MC in any of these Maedra battles? Much like with Mushoku Tensei when Rudeus lost his hand, I had to struggle with potentially lopping off a limb from my MC in his fights during the entire first book. Deciding not to has forced me to be creative with my fight scenes and has forced me to put my MC through a harsh training cycle where he's almost constantly losing/getting his ass beat but never quite on the cusp of failing entirely because of his rigorous practice outside of combat.
   
   
3. Deciding to kill off secondary characters, much like when I off'd Chul. Deciding to make every character in my book tangible and on the chopping block made it significantly easier to make the hard decisions. Ever since, my book has a 80%+ death rate. It's not entirely good in a way because there's no longevity to those character relationships across multiple books, but it weighs a lot heavier on the MC and there's more tension when shit gets real. Because then all of those characters you get acquainted with now have their survivability in question. Good because I don't need to hesitate if it means progressing. Bad because Readers may not get as attached because their favorite characters might get offed in 5-10 chapters.
   
   
4. The climax of my first book. The numerous small decisions here to kill certain characters and drive the story down a hole into the burning hellscape it ended up becoming was incredible. It left such a lasting effect on the story, on my MC, and provided my Readers with a full understanding that I will slaughter everyone and everything. It also allowed me to establish the rule that my MC will face ultimate failure in the story. He can do everything right, struggle and grow, but the world around him will not wait for him.
   
   
5. In the second book, I've begun establishing more long term relationships and these little hurdles have given me plenty of setup for later on. How I've handled them are perfectly inline with what I want, have been well received by the Readerbase, and I think I've done a good job writing them. Even though I'm absolute dogshit with character development, I think.

Damn, those are some real stakes and not many authors are brave enough to use them. Well done!
Imposing real consequences on the characters really makes a story feel worthwhile.

Im glad to see you get my humor.

However, all jokes aside...

It is a real problem in writing that thinking that big stakes mean more. I had an arc where the group struggled to buy a magic sack of holding. Not unlimited space, just a magic bag that held about 80 times Normal.

It was EPIC.

To go shopping.

It is dependent in the situation. The stakes. Same group fought tooth and nail to get recognized as an adventuring team. Just noticed.

It was a big imotional deal because fir the team, how low down they were, how far they had to climb. The halfling who was a boatright, the asthmatic half orc barbarian who wanted to be a monk. The Elven wizard who was supposed to be a druid but wanted to blow shit up, and the drow priestess who followed a good goddess and wanted to reform her mom, the priestess of Lloth.

Honestly, they accomplished very small things, but for them, it was huge.

That's my point. Learning how to speak a new language CAN be as important as dealing with horrific childhood trauma.

It's all about how you spin it.

Mav

Yeah, not all obstacles have to be Mount Everest for there to be meaning. And it's not all about what the characters themselves go through. Some of the big obstacles those the author themselves have to overcome.

 

[ManwX]

Fight scenes can be hard for some. Each of us seem to be better portraying one specific element of story telling and struggling with others. You did fine work there, well done.


You're very good at describing the scenes and portraying the despair. Well done.
Now, I don't know if putting it here changed its presentation, if not, it might be worth a proofread. There's some punctuation missing and it could do with being broken down into paragraphs.
Other than that, really good work!

Anything that brings a guy (or girl) closer to a yandere must be challenging to portray.


Wanting the same end, but disagreeing on the means to get there is a tale as old as time. It requires a great mind to hold opposing view, let alone successfully pulling off portraying them. Well done!

Aww.. thank you for the compliment. Yeah your right when I pasted the content it literally jumbled up everything and made it into a single paragraph.. but thank you for you compliment.. really appreciate it..

 

[ReadLight]

There's been a few hurdles in my story that I've had to deal with mainly because of the hard decisions I've needed to make. When you're working with a massive scale story, the little things can have massive effects down the line and there have been several instances where I've needed to take a pause to evaluate the story. I'm very proud of myself thus far and it's mainly the decisions I've made to sort of set up that future. Here's a few:

1. Do I kill Chul? Deciding to kill off what would have been the biggest secondary support character to my MC was a massive decision that took a lot of thought but was a lasting decision that's effected it ever since.
   
   
2. Do I injure my MC in any of these Maedra battles? Much like with Mushoku Tensei when Rudeus lost his hand, I had to struggle with potentially lopping off a limb from my MC in his fights during the entire first book. Deciding not to has forced me to be creative with my fight scenes and has forced me to put my MC through a harsh training cycle where he's almost constantly losing/getting his ass beat but never quite on the cusp of failing entirely because of his rigorous practice outside of combat.
   
   
3. Deciding to kill off secondary characters, much like when I off'd Chul. Deciding to make every character in my book tangible and on the chopping block made it significantly easier to make the hard decisions. Ever since, my book has a 80%+ death rate. It's not entirely good in a way because there's no longevity to those character relationships across multiple books, but it weighs a lot heavier on the MC and there's more tension when shit gets real. Because then all of those characters you get acquainted with now have their survivability in question. Good because I don't need to hesitate if it means progressing. Bad because Readers may not get as attached because their favorite characters might get offed in 5-10 chapters.
   
   
4. The climax of my first book. The numerous small decisions here to kill certain characters and drive the story down a hole into the burning hellscape it ended up becoming was incredible. It left such a lasting effect on the story, on my MC, and provided my Readers with a full understanding that I will slaughter everyone and everything. It also allowed me to establish the rule that my MC will face ultimate failure in the story. He can do everything right, struggle and grow, but the world around him will not wait for him.
   
   
5. In the second book, I've begun establishing more long term relationships and these little hurdles have given me plenty of setup for later on. How I've handled them are perfectly inline with what I want, have been well received by the Readerbase, and I think I've done a good job writing them. Even though I'm absolute dogshit with character development, I think.

Hmmm...
*Thinking