Haven’t Talked About Extra In A Bit. How ‘Bout An Update?

Yeah. It just occurred to me while doing some editing work on it, earlier, that I haven’t really done a dedicated post on EXTRA in quite a while. I’ve brought it up, of course. As recently as… well… all three of my last posts? But I figured now would be a nice time to do another full post on the subject. So! Let’s talk about my little passion project.

“How Goes The Writing?”

Well, my outlining habit strikes again. I’m a thorough outliner. I like to plan out all of my stories in as much detail as I can. And while this project isn’t as thorough as I could potentially make it, it’s still pretty in-depth with certain details. I haven’t written anything beyond Chapter 2 yet because I took a pause to map out the first few arcs, which accounts for about… checks… 21 chapters. Give-or-take a few. And I have several arcs planned, well beyond even those. So I think I’m good to start moving forward on this again. The first few chapters are probably going to be the longest because there’s a lot of set up to do with the characters and whatnot. But I’m actually expecting the series to, overall, feature pretty short, breezy chapters (for me). And it’s a style we’re probably going to also emulate with Burning Sky, the further along it gets. Nine different books at once obviously requires we move at a pretty ridiculous pace. That will thin out, but it’ll be some time before that happens, so wish us luck! We’re… pro’lly gonna need it.

As for the actual writing process, it’s… kind of strange. EXTRA isn’t really… “fun” to write. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the story and all. But it’s a very different experience from writing Burning Sky. There’s certainly a lot of pain in that story. Suffering, dark themes, sobering moments, the works. But they’re written from a very… observational angle. I’m very distant about it, in a way. My own feelings aren’t really mixed into the story. I’m mostly writing a story to entertain. And that’s a subject I think warrants coming back to in a later post. This story, though, was partially inspired by personal experiences. So this story, or at least some of the characters in it, reflect thoughts and feelings I’ve personally had. I’m writing a bit more from within than I typically do. I don’t think the approach is necessarily superior. I’ve never really been one to care that much about identifying with characters, as we know (It doesn’t really have any effect on me. And that’s not my emotional instability talking. It just doesn’t work). But I do get it. And writing a story that has a little of me – not my sensibilities, but me – in it makes it more apparent. Still doesn’t particularly have any meaning to me more than any of my other stories, but at least I hope it can be used as a means of sort of understanding me a little, if nothing else.

“First Chapter When?”

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I decide to just post it in the next couple weeks. I wanna start posting once I get Chapter 3 done. But I do wanna get some early readers on Chapter 2 as well. I’m probably not going to do Early Readers after Chapter 3 just because I want to see if I can get into a groove of one chapter a week, or at least bi-weekly so I’m planning to just use the first few chapters to identify the strongest and weakest points of my writing and use that feedback as a loose sort of guideline. Like I said, this is a much less demanding and strict project than Burning Sky, so I’m not expecting any chapter will be perfect on debut. But the early feedback can give me a general sense of direction. Then whenever I want to make an official, printed version, I can just go back over it to edit and tighten things up. Optimistically, I’ll say “end of the month.” Realistically, I’ll say “I dunno. It happens when it happens.”

“Yo, How Can We Get In On Early Reading?”

This one’s not locked to Patreon, so you can just ask in the comments, on Twitter, or on Discord (Voyager#7586). Naturally, I’ll send you Chapter 1 and, if you’re interested, I’ll send along Chapter 2, as well as Chapter 3, should your interest remain.

“Speaking Of Twitter, What Was This About?”

Ooh, I just got some reeeally fun stuff regarding a certain project that I'm looking forward to sharing.

— Voyager (@GalvanicTeam) April 11, 2020

Oh yeah. Well, let’s address that, then. So, a while back I showed off the first character concept of the story’s protagonist, Mio. And I decided to get some artwork together of other significant characters in the story. Some time after that I went ahead and got the design done for another important character in the story. So, hey, why not take this opportunity to introduce them? Meet East Lumos Academy’s #1 Gyaru – Ragyou!

I’m not going to give you the whole spiel on the character. You’ll just have to read up to find out about her when the first few chapters drop! Once again, this fantastic artwork comes from MadiBlitz and I couldn’t be more pleased with how she turned out! Captures the essence of the character pretty much perfectly, I say. But you’ll see for yourself when I start releasing the story to the interwebs.

As with before, what kind of character do you guys think she’ll wind up being? I guess you could say… I’m Curious! …what? I haven’t done it in a while, okay? Looking forward to what you guys think, anyway! ‘Kay bye!