Feedback - I appreciate it! (Patreon)
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I got a private message and wanted to say that if one person asked, I'm guessing more are thinking the same thing!
Each of you who make comments, point out corrections (bad spelling, my sudden lack of a word that is supposed to be there, missing punctuation, etc) and also offer ideas on why something works or doesn't work helps me a ton.
I go back and look at stuff and ask - can I make this better?
I also try to see if I can fix things. I rewrote Dragon Rider book 3 because of feedback from the readers. Sure it was hard, but at the end of it all, I feel its a better story because I did so.
Also I try to grow as I write.
For example:
My Time Loop story - I literally had an idea on the plane, and banged out 18k words. In my head its there. I've also jotted down some notes (on paper as always). But part of what I did was a single dump of 'hey this is so cool, how would this work'.
The feedback of 'Uh.. the MC is being an idiot' is great not just because we thinking - he cant make a mistake but of how it went. Either I have to write it in such a way that it doesn't fail so hard or that the MC isn't just being a flipping moron. Its ok to die to something your not aware of. Its totally wrong to run across a field of potential magical traps when you know its boobie trapped.
That means I need to go back, basically start that last chapter over and take a different path.
Trust me - I had the whole 'grinding out better skills' written down but had the initial first deaths as he learned some stuff the hard way. Perhaps those come later but again as a surprise and not an expectation.
So things like that mean a lot as it helps me improve across all my stories.
UL1 - Max has gotten smarter. He studied for a while and now we see that he is falling back into the old 'rushing' into things... don't worry it gets better, (again book 6.. my beta readers are dying as I haven't edited and sent new chapters but I'm working on chapter 320) he constantly has to improve and be smart. When he isn't, bad things happen.
no longer can i simply allow him to be an idiot but I can allow his overwhelming 'gentle spirit/kind heart' to get him in trouble because that is the core of Max.
Viking - Einar/Magnus cant make stupid mistakes. Sure stuff might happen from lack of knowledge of his new world, but lets be honest. Someone with his background has to cut out a lot of it. Yeah he might piss off a Valkyrie or someone else by choosing the wrong path, but as a whole, he's trying to do something that's impossible and with limited people and resources.
Then trying to scale that, keep it going, adding more vikings, fighting harder and larger battles, the scale of all which grows gets a bit harder to keep in focus. Some complained about having too many new characters but those are for long term stuff. Eventually when he has a warband of 100 people, he'll need leaders to run each pack. We're setting those up.
So - again let me say - keep the comments coming. Don't feel like you can't be honest and say - man this doesn't feel like it works - so unless you got something planned, you might need to change this.
TRUST me - I want to write the best story possible and I appreciate every bit of feedback you give! Everyday I can't believe I'm barely a year into this (Dragon Rider hit RR on Aug 7th 2023!). So i know I have a lot to improve!
Thank you again for supporting me!