On Writing “Vengeance”

I want to thank those of you who have been reading the first episode of a new writing experiment — or rather, it is an old experiment being approached from a completely new angle. It’s great to get the positive feedback you’ve been sending my way and it is encouraging continued effort on the longer experiment.

Next week will bring a new story from the stranger’s world.

A little bit of history and a smidge of road-mapping for those interested in such things…

The first episode’s first post appeared in several separate forms over the years, but had it’s origin in about 2006 or 2007. I wrote it and forgot about it. About ten years ago, I found it again, likely posted “as is” without edits on another variation of this site. Then, in the first half of this decade, it looks like I may have overhauled it significantly from the original version and posted it on the previous iteration of the site, sceadugenga.com (which is now just a rune and ogham repository).

Everything since that initial post has been entirely new material, aside from a handful of paragraphs that carried over to the second post of Episode 1. As I find my rhythm and register for this story, I hope you’ll see some gradual improvements in the overall pacing and writing. I’m constantly learning new ways to look at narrative — some is self-evident when I think about it, others are brand new insights.

So, what is the plan, Michael? you probably are not asking.

Episodes are largely structured to run over 2-5 posts a week, with the bulk of them in the 3- or 4-part range. As I have it currently framed, this story is expected to take 26 episodes before the first narrative arc is complete. If there is continued readership after this arc is complete, I will consider continuing the series with a sequel or related narrative arc.

This is already the largest and most complex project I have ever undertaken, especially when you include the unnarrated world-building that you, the reader, may never see. But internal logic consistency is an expectation of myself, so it is worth doing so that there are fewer, if any deviations from the overall story logic.

The first few episodes have gossamer-thin threads of the larger story arc tucked away within them, but are intentionally written to feel like stand-alone short fiction focused on the stranger who has yet to offer up a name. In fact, compartmented story telling is the goal with the whole series except for a handful of core episodes. I don’t want someone to come part way in and feel like they can’t follow the series because of the ten episodes they missed.

Although I have a loose framework that I am building from, I am constantly surprised by the narrative as I write it. I have a sense of how episode 26 will end the arc, but the fogs of unwritten narrative obscure all but the faintest outlines so far. In that sense, this project is very “pantster” in the way it is being written. I have a little better view of the shapes in the fog through episodes 5 and some of 6, and clarity on some of the events in episodes 12 and 22 (both subject to change), but certainly not the details.

But it also follows a bit of the “snowflake” writing methodology, where I take an idea and expand it outward in a very nebulous manner and then try to tie it down a bit to get a better look at what “little horror” I’ve created [all jesting aside, this story is less rooted in horror and more rooted in a dark, gothic western folklore framework with grimdark overtones]. And then I go from there.

Anyway, I’m hoping to keep earning your readership. I appreciate it immensely and intend to honor the time you take reading the stories in this little experiment of mine. Please let me know if you have questions about my writing process or the stories themselves.