NOVEL NEXT Stepping Wild, Afterwords
Thank you for making it to the end of this book. The fourth in the Dungeon Runner series, the first in the Tibs of the Wilds trilogy. It was an interesting trek for me. I hope that made for an interesting read for you.
As noted, Tibs's story isn't over. Far from it. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but the plan is for 10 books. Three trilogy and a conclusion. I'm already writing book 5 and posting the chapters on Patreon, so if you are interested in catching up to his story early, draft 1, just go to https://www.patreon.com/kindar there is a 3$ tier that only notifies you of Dungeon Runner posts so you don't have to deal with the clutter that is my 'I write more things than anyone can sanely keep track of' site. I also stream my writing of this series on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/thetigerwrites Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 8am EST
This separated book came about by accident(I didn't know about the option to create volumes within a story submission. Chapters for Mind Your Step and further books will be posted within the Dungeon Runner submission directly only. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36484/dungeon-runner
I will also post updates every 20 chapters or so, to give you a sense of how things are progressing.
And now, some backstory of how things went slightly off plan with this book and lead to, in my opinion, something better.
To start with, I am a discovery writer. I don't need an outline to get a story out there. When inspired, I can get discover a story quite quickly as I write it. Draft 1 of Book 1 of Dungeon Runner was 90k words long and written in 21 days. Possibly the faster I ever wrote a draft. Books 2 and 3 were also discovery written, but I a more 'normal' speed.
A detail I have discovered in the process of writing multiple series that are more then 3 books long (I have three published, not counting Dungeon Runner) is that discovery writing a book after the third one isn't as quick for me as the previous three. And that having an outline is really helpful in keeping things moving at a reasonable pace.
In fact, I love working with an outline.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
But I can't write one to save my life.
Enter my co-scripter. Through a series of encounters he came to help me resolve a book I though was stuck and help write outlines for the rest of that series and others. Most of my series that are more than three books have his hand in it.
Dungeon Runner was supposed to have an outline as well. We sat down somewhere around the start of book 3, draft 1 and started on it.
The process is that I'll tell him my plans, we will brainstorm, then he will write what I've come to call a treatment for what we went over in that meeting. Basically putting the whole discussion down and adding his ideas. At the next meeting we go over it, make the needed adjustments, discuss what comes next and so on, until the book it done. Then he takes that and breaks it down further in what he feels works as chapters, and it becomes the outline.
The last three books of Tristan, the last two of Death by predation, the entirety of A Heart's Life, and most of Monsters and Bad Men have followed that process and it works really well.
It was the plan for Stepping Wild. But I could already see book 3 was in flux, since I was discovery writing it, and decided to hold up on the outline itself until I was closer to the end so we could account for the changes. I think my plan was to work on it once I'd started draft 2.
Except I forgot all about it. So that when it came time to start on Stepping Wild and went looking for the outline, I didn't find it. When I asked my co-scripter if he had a copy, because I am well know for misplacing things like that. He reminded me we hadn't worked on that. I'm also well known for my bad memory.
Not having the time to spend on working on it(yes, I'm also well know for waiting until the last moment) I just used the treatment.
And I sort of fell in love with that. I get the guidelines an outline provides, but they are much looser here, letting the characters be who they are with fewer restraints on their actions.
This wouldn't work for every story. Faster paced ones need an outline to keep me from meandering off. But for Dungeon Runner, it is wonderful. It is how the rest of this series will be prepared.
So, yeah. Again, thanks for taking the time to read this story. Thank you to everyone who has pointed out mistakes; hopefully, I fixed them correctly.
And I'll see you when book 5, Mind Your Step, starts posting.