I've Started a Third Draft

In December of 2022 I uploaded part of the first draft of All-New Sloane Lone onto itch.io for the 2022 Yuri Jam [the first draft has since been delisted]. Two weeks ago I published the incomplete second draft here, thinking I was never going to finish the project anyways.

While reading the second draft and making a handful of minor edits for publication, my brain got working. Without even intending to, I started problem-solving, and thinking of solutions to things that had me completely stumped roughly two and a half years ago. Then, for the first time in YEARS, I felt the urge to write fiction again.

It's not just because I came to the old draft with a fresh perspective. It also turned out that my hormone levels had been out of whack for most of those preceding three years, which was preventing me from writing erotica. I thought it was depression, or any number of other things. But in reality it was because I was taking an anti-androgen I didn't need to be taking.

Regardless, a third draft of All-New Sloane Lone has begun in earnest.

There's a lot to get into here, but I'll start with that problem solving stuff I've been mentioning. The ending of the second draft is more-or-less as far as I could go with that draft; I simply didn't have a lot of concrete ideas of how to move forward with the scaffolding I'd built myself. I think I managed to get roughly a third of the way through a narrative.

The problems that I've solved should get this third draft roughly two-thirds of the way through the narrative. And I'm much more confident that I'll discover how to navigate that final third when I reach it than I was with the old draft.

Stuff That's Changing

In the foreword to the second draft I mention that I'm probably going to get rid of the Mary and Janeane plotlines. I'm 95% sure I'm getting rid of the Janeane plotline -- it now feels like a vestigial thing, and frankly I never had good ideas about where to take Janeane's plotline. With Mary, I'm a little less sure. I really enjoy a lot of the interactions between Mary and Sloane, and I might have to keep her in the narrative.

The sorceress, Sylvia, is definitely being discarded. Not only because introducing magical elements into the narrative was a mistake, but also because I've thought of something that's going to replace Sylvia's function in the narrative and there's no space for both things.

Writing Software

I wrote the first two drafts of All-New Sloane Lone using google docs. While the syncing functionality of google docs is incredible, and great for writing on my phone, it's really not good for writing the third draft of a book.

1. I need to be able to look at my old drafts for comparison a lot while writing the latest draft, and because google docs only allows chrome users to use dark mode, it means staring at a completely white monitor for long periods of time, which I just can't do.
2. google docs is not good at scaling; when you have headings and comments and such, it really demands at least two-thirds of a monitor's space, and when you need to look at multiple drafts simultaneously it's untenable.
3. A google docs document is fundamentally a single extremely long scroll, even with headings and such. Once a document gets to be over 50,000~ words long, it becomes a lot more awkward to edit. During the home stretch of Dark Elf Feedee, Sin Knighteye and I started having issues working with google docs. Being able to divide things into chapters is an essential feature.
4. google docs isn't publishing software. Its epub exports are not very good and it lacks a lot of finer features that other writing programs have.

Imagine look at this dogshit for hours on end. And imagine one of your two monitors uses a VGA cable, which means its brightness can't be adjusted and staring at it is basically like looking at the fucking sun. It's just not feasible.

I started by trying to use Nimble Writer, which is a $10 piece of writing software that can be found on Steam. I'd bought it a couple of years ago, never did much with it, and wanted to give it a fair shake. There are things about Nimble Writer I really enjoy -- it scales decently, notes can easily be placed next to the thing you're working on, and it only has a handful of features. Its export also seems to work really well.

Unfortunately, there are some things that prevent Nimble Writer from being easier to recomend. Its most granular level is chapters, which is probably fine for most writers, but I work on a scene-by-scene level. Its project files save into a proprietary format that can only be read by Nimble Writer, which creates risks. Granted, most writers are regularly going to be exporting PDFs to send to their friends while working on a book, so it's unlikely someone will have their project file corrupt and lose literally anything. But, it's still not ideal.

I decided to look for another alternative, and I found myself using Obsidian. I'd already started using Obsidian to store my research for a non-fiction book I'm working on about open world video games, and so I had a baseline level of familiarity with the software. But stock Obsidian isn't good for writing books. Thankfully, a writer only really needs two plugins to start working on a novel in Obsidian. I made a video about it:

The advantages to using Obsidian are numerous. All of its files are saved as markdown files that can be read by any txt reader. It scales incredibly well. It doesn't have a cluttered GUI. It doesn't constantly try to invade your privacy [I should clarify that Nimble Writer doesn't either]. There's more stuff I mention in the video, but one of the things I realized after making the video was that I could export my old drafts as PDFs from google docs and then put them into my Obsidian vault for easy reference:

So, Obsidian is definitely what I'm going to use to finish writing the book. I've never enjoyed a piece of writing software quite like this.

Other Stuff

I've "completed" an entire new chapter of the book. I say that in quotes because, inevitably, new changes will have to be made as more stuff is added to the book. I was able to write the new chapter because it takes place in a new setting, which means I didn't have to answer some questions about stuff that happens earlier in the book.

I've also completed half of the next chapter, but now I'm at a point where I really can't keep adding new stuff without revising the first few chapters. Which sounds boring, but I'm excited to dig into the new changes. And while it's a little daunting and stressful to worry about fucking things up again and having to start a fourth draft, things have felt so effortless doing revisions in Obsidian that I imagine my concerns will melt away quite fast.

What I really need to do is make a new plotting document, which might have to be a table made in LibreOffice Writer. Something that can give me a feeling of security. I've used plotting tables in a lot of projects, and while sometimes things just don't work in practice the way they do in a plotting document, they usually provide a good idea of if things will fit together or not.

Something that's proving difficult this time around is finding test readers. A lot of my erotica writing peers read the first draft and offered suggestions. Fewer looked at the second draft. Getting people to consider the third draft is very difficult, and I can't really blame them. It's difficult writing a non-serialized book; you're not locked into choices as chapters get published, because the entire book is always simultaneously in flux [at least potentially]. Which I believe ends up producing a better end result, but it does mean the creative process can be very tortured.

[Please don't volunteer to be a test reader if you don't already know me or aren't mutuals with me somewhere.]

The final book of All-New Sloane Lone is going to be divided into two halves -- the actual story All-New Sloane Lone, which will be the better part of 100,000 words, and a collection of short stories that take place in the same universe/canon. I haven't finished copy-pasting everything over from google docs†, but the project is already 28,278 words long. The second draft of All-New Sloane Lone was 24,000~ words long, and I've only brought in half of the first chapter. I also haven't brought in much of my Heaven Isn't Real material, and so it's entirely possible over 50,000~ words have already been completed.

[†Due to the bone-headed way I wrote things in google docs, I have to manually copy things over line-by-line. Which I guess is a silver lining, because it forces me to reacquaint myself with material.]

[By the way, Loren Lunarian and Therapy have already been completed and can be found on ReadOnlyMind.]

Of course a lot of things need to be revised / edited, but it's reassuring to know that, yes, there's a lot of stuff here. I'm excited to eventually create a POD-able file at the end of this and hold my first physical copy of a book I've made.

Anyways, that's all the updating I have for now. People who follow me on here might be wondering about The Spider-Queen of Manhattan and Goth Witches. I've already outlined the logistical problems that make completing the comic a bit of a nightmare. With Goth Witches, it's mostly a motivation thing -- I'm not hyperfixating on TTRPGs at the moment. It's mostly because it's difficult for me to schedule games with most of my internet friends, and where I live IRL there really isn't a TTRPG scene.

Hopefully, the fact I'm circling back around to All-New Sloane Lone after three years makes it clear that I do finish these things. It just takes a lot of time.