With Worth the Candle concluded at a hefty 1.6 million words over four years, I can finally give some authoritative tips! I can’t promise that these tips will work for everyone, because writing follows some very individual processes, but I think they generalize well. If you want a more general post on the more business/audience/process […]
Post Mortem: Worth the Candle
As I write this, Worth the Candle isn’t quite done, but it’s got so little left to go that it might as well be finished. It’ll clock in at roughly 1.6 million words, having taken approximately four years to complete. This post mortem will give some broad thoughts on what went right, what went wrong, […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 246: Reflections at the End
The Dungeon Master looked different. He was still wearing a hoodie. This one said “Dice Girls” on it, and had a d4, d6, d8, d12, and d20, all with legs, arms, and little faces. They were dressed up, each with their own costume. I thought from context they were supposed to be the Spice Girls, […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 245: Long Live the King
The Long Stairs had, in fact, gotten harder, and I didn’t think it was just a function of us losing power as we went along. If I had to guess, part of it was because we were seeing more of the second iteration of the campaign, which had been more deadly. Because it was more […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 244: Long Pig
Before we reached the last Landing, Arthur’s armor promptly fell apart. The thousands of black beads fell off him and hit the floor all at once, clattering to the ground and rolling everywhere. He wasn’t quite naked beneath them, but he was just in briefs again. They had to have been magical, because they’d changed […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 243: Long Memory
We were back in the rooms, taking them one at a time, and following through the RDP as much as we were able to. During the time we’d been in the Landing, both books had gone through unrecoverable rot, and consisted of the same word, over and over. The copies had likewise rotted, and I […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 242: A Long Row to Hoe
The third Landing was a maze, one of such great size that traveling through it, even on the correct path, was going to take a while. The walls were a hundred feet tall and twenty feet apart, featureless dark grey, capped with regular lighting that gave a hostile, institutional vibe. It was all laid out […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 241: Long Shot
Moving through the rooms was easier, now that we had the crystals in our heads. Using them, we could confirm that it was Earth, or at least a version of it, since one side benefit of the crystals was that they were capable of telling you whether or not someone existed. We all picked different […]
Worth the Candle, ch 240: The Long Haul
You might be asking what I expected when we met Uther. Honestly, I’m not sure. Maybe I thought that it would all just end, and the Dungeon Master would pop out from behind a curtain and say, ‘Hey dude, congrats on saving your friend, it’s all over, you can do what you want with Aerb’. […]
Worth the Candle, ch 239: Old Sins Cast Long Shadows
I thankfully still had multithreading. As I spoke to Uther, half of my mind was focused on the ring on his finger. I didn’t know what, if anything, to do about Bethel. The entire reason we’d brought her was because of her immense power, and if it had been possible for us to bring that […]
Interesting Things to do with Time Loops
Time loops are a relatively established genre of fiction, and while Groundhog Day wasn’t the first, I think it lays down a lot of the foundation for the genre and demonstrates an essentially perfect form of the basic structure. Someone realizes that they wake up in the same time and place no matter what, and […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 238: A Certain Kind of Longing
Naturally, the easy ride couldn’t last long, but at least it was for a reason we’d seen coming. “Halt,” I said, and Bethel spat us back out, into a room with cerulean blue tiles and a large bathtub in the middle, one with an octopus that hadn’t done anything yet. I was keeping my eye […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 237: Long Story Short
WAR DEPARTMENT FIELD MANUALTACTICS AND TECHNIQUE OF DELVING THE LONG STAIRS REGARDED CLASSIFIED BYAUTHORITY OF DOD DIR. 5200. 1 R BY Lt. Ralkers ON 01-17-1991 Section IGeneral Purpose and Scope — This manual is designed for the use of the fireteam leader in training members of the fireteam in missions which pass through HELLMOUTH and […]