Re: opinions, longer story. So what I hear you saying is, that you were making a cake, and you think

[dragonlady7]

goof, now that i've said this i'm becoming more sure i need to split them, i cannot decide this is the worst, Anonymous

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I have also had many lovely replies on the post in question, which tumblr now makes it so difficult to reply to that I’m just. Not. but.

This is in fact the case. My post was writtein confusingly enough that like, it was maybe not obvious that 1) these additional chapters are going to be written and posted regardless, and 2) on approximately the same schedule whichever method I choose, and the entire question I’m grappling with was and remains, “does this additional material warrant splitting itself off onto a new story or should I cram it into the existing one”, and I still don’t know. It won’t be more or less complex, the material won’t be different in any way, it’s just whether I’m going to put a new title on this next bit and organize it around a slightly different central theme, or just glom it onto the end of the first story that I had originally conceived of only being three chapters.

The bonus of keeping it in the same story is that people subscribed to the story don’t then need to go subscribe to a new story, and also it’s easier on rereads to figure out which story has the actual thing you’re looking for if there aren’t two separate stories along the same stretch of plot. The downside of keeping it in the same story is that people can’t leave another kudos (that’s a dumb reason though), and it gets unwieldy as it gets longer, and on rereads actually sometimes it’s not easier to find your favorite moment in a super long story.

Does the material stand on its own? Well, Ideal Man is largely gender and new-relationship shenanigans; the new material has largely not addressed any new gender questions, but rather has just shown them getting used to one another, and in fact more explicitly is about him learning to trust her despite the historic precedents of it not being a great idea to trust mages. Like, there’s gendershit in it, but it’s mostly background, there’s no angst about it or focus on it. It’s mostly Lambert beginning to trust Keira enough to show her other things about himself.

Probably, then, what makes the most sense is to just glom it onto the end of the previous story, largely because I don’t want to have to come up with a new title. I was hoping I’d write enough of it to get to the action sequence I’ve vaguely outlined for it that will sort of be the focal piece of the new chapters, but I haven’t managed to in several days of work and I am just tired and want to post the other chapter I’ve had finished for like. weeks, at this point. it’s literally been sitting there in drafts for weeks, and I added another thousand words but it’s still just sitting there and I want validation and have not seen the sun in four days and am just so tired.

so anyway.

Look for that chapter later today, I’ll post about it, and thank you for the sweet validation of helpfully encouraging me as I witter on about this.