Upload Notes: Halloween Tales, the Dryad (Patreon)

One last piece of candy at the bottom of the bag~ I hope you guys enjoyed this Halloween-themed series! It was fun to throw together a few similar ideas that had been bouncing around in my head for awhile. I'm hopeful that I can do something like this again come next Halloween, or maybe for some other holidays. Let me know if you can think of anything fun I should try~

As for this addition, well, let me get the positives out of the way first. I think I captured a nice atmosphere -- something I realized while writing this selection was that I've become really obsessed with settings lately, and describing their features in a lot of detail. My logic here is that, with stories that tend to be this exact length, I have an awkward amount of space to make characters and situations engaging. So, by putting a lot of effort in selling the scenery, I like to think I absorb the reader in a little better~ Ideally the details of what's all around the characters helps accomplish the moods I want, where I'd otherwise be able to lean on the characters themselves to just act out what I want. Since these stories are on the shorter side, investing too much into the characters could be a problem, so, I think this is usually a great compromise~

Any more positives? Uhh, hm. Well, I think the words themselves were pretty good~ Nice words, the words really worded things out in a wordy way. Good words -- gotta love em, words.

Okay, the negatives. I'm just gonna be honest: I sort of hate this one, and wish I didn't convince myself to write it lol. So maybe I'm just biased, but I don't think this story is very enjoyable, especially compared to the quality of the previous two... which I'll get into later. But for the Dryad, ugh. I knew I had a rough road ahead of me for this one, it was just... such an obscure idea. It's not a traditional Halloween monster, nor is it a traditional size situation. From that angle alone, I kinda just wish I had caved and did some other monster that'd be easier to write for -- a werewolf or something, since I had a few ideas for that kind of story.

For some stupid reason my ass really wanted to shit out a story with a contrast to the other two. Rather than a focus on violence or meanness, I wanted to have a story where the giant was gentle...r. Gentler. I always intended her to be a little on the crazy side, but I def thought the end result would be someone much nicer, very different from Ellia and Holiday. Jacquelyn just sort of felt flat (ironically, hey!), and ended up seeming inconsistent in all my read-throughs. She goes from something uncaring about killing people to having a strike of sympathy, and then quickly goes back to somewhat-senseless rampaging. It... doesn't flow super well, but maybe someone out there disagrees. While fixing this draft, I had envisioned the story having two starker halves; the gentle half with helping Jennifer, and then a violent half where she's resurrected. But in the end, the first half became much of the whole story, and the second half was more of a cliffhanger.

Lol. I think at best what I should have done is sandwich this story between the others. That was the original plan, but I wasn't inspired for the Dryad, not as much as the Ghost for sure. It probably would've felt less clunky, slightly, but man there's so many glaring flaws here. The characters mean nothing and get no characterization really, the interactions are all bland and typical for Cursey content, the dialogue is a drag, the whole concept is just weird...

I think I just flubbed this one up really bad. Sorry guys~ I'll try to make it up with some better stories. For this story, I felt like not posting it would be a lot worse than posting it haha, so it sorta has to go out. Sorry about all this. I know this isn't how you guys would want a series like this to be concluded, but at least feel confident in knowing I'm learning from my mistakes.

The other two stories, I just want to reflect on them in hindsight a little... I think the Vampire was actually quite good of a story. I think it had a good pace and rhythm, and in a better world, I probably could've just fleshed that one selection into an enticing, full story -- so that makes me feel worse about the other two, haha. The Ghost, it isn't bad... I just don't think it's something the usual size connoisseur would enjoy. Maybe if you're like me and enjoy spooky houses and more out-there concepts, it can be a fun read. Overall though, I think it was a drop in quality, and it sorta preludes the problems to come later on in the Dryad part.

I think these stories are gonna weigh on me for a bit, but, I'll shrug them off. I've got loads of other projects to be working on, stuff I know you all are excited to see come out. I hope this ramble wasn't too negative~ but I think putting out my honest opinions makes for a more genuine reading experience. I do really hope at least some of you enjoy the Dryad~ please though, just don't lie about any criticisms you have. Give me your honest and open thoughts, dig into this one, please don't go easy on me here. Thank you all for the support~