I mean, isn't people leaving comments on your chapters saying they can't believe Toshi would turn around and do this or that sorta the same thing?
Yeah, but the thing is, it'd be nice to have someone to point it out before publishing.
Although... Honestly? Most of those questions are things that I already asked myself and so the answers are coming up in future chapters. I don't think I know of a question from a reader that actually made me change what I was going to write. You know, someone asks, "Why is Y doing X?" and then go, "Oh. I should add that."
Then again, I have a near-autistic level of pattern recognition. I mean, I'm working on making the underpinning magic system with the full knowledge I will never explain it in full to the reader. It's there so I can use it as a reference, not as something to tell the reader.
For everything I've written, I bet I've written at least half that in things I took out because I felt it was redundant, or its there for the express purpose of making sure I know what my own continuity is. If you consider the fact I've published 816k, and I've got about another 85k in the can, it's quite the claim to say I got about 400k I'm never going to show anyone, but... yeah. I do.
I used to say, If you want a good story, write three times what you need, throw out half, then SQUEEZE until you get it down as tight as you can. However, I've gotten better over the years. I know what needs to be tossed often before it gets out of the outline stage. Now I just write 150% of what I need and then squeeze it down.
But in regards to your original question, you have to understand, I foreshadow things YEARS in advance. When there is something odd, It usually is because it means something. So when Toshi acts odd, I have a reason, I just might not reveal it until the next book. I know that can get annoying, but it's how I write. My continuity is tight, but the price is, In order to let the mystery unfold, it involves trust from the reader, which can take a long time to build up. I find those kinds of questions are telling me I'm on the right track, even if the reader often finds it annoying.
It also doesn't help I don't do black and white morality. I don't even do shades of grey. I got a whole RAINBOW of morality. How the MC can kill a bunch of people then say three chapters later, I only kill monsters. Well, to the MC, those people were monsters. The acts they committed forfeited their claim to being human. In terms of Good Vrs Evil, what he did was evil, but he redefined them as "monsters" and so they no longer had the protection afforded to "humans".
In one aspect, it makes the guy look like a hypocrite. I suppose he is, but he is internally consistent.
That's what most of my comment questions are often about. Internally, all my characters are consistent, but objectively, what they say, what they claim, and what they do might not seem to fit.
I have an omniscient 3rd party narrator who is reliable, but my characters are often NOT.
The forums are nice and snappy. I like it.
Odd thought...
Have you tried being a "publisher"?
What I mean is, I have no desire to figure out and deal with the mess of self-publishing. I like my stories and maybe after I finish all of them, I'll go through the effort of publishing somewhere. However, if you wanted to clean it up, submit the cleaned-up version to me, then find someplace that doesn't fuck with my ownership of my IP to publish, I wouldn't mind going 50/50.
People are already stealing my shit to publish and sell for money, so if someone wants to split the profits with me, in exchange for knowing I hold ALL creative rights and I don't want to have to deal with the paperwork, that'd be fine.
I'm sure there are people out there who would feel the same way. So instead of just being an editor, become an editor/publisher and seek out people who aren't self-publishing.
Don't go to these shady sites that retain publishing rights or control of the IP if you upload anything. I'm talking Amazon or some shit. I dunno. I don't care enough to figure it out. I'd want to know exactly what was going on before you published because I care about the quality of my work. However, if you filed the serial numbers off FTS, I'm sure one could make some change off that.
But I'm sure there are people who wouldn't mind a manager, basically. I used to have one of those when I was a ghostwriter. Alas, that industry had collapsed BEFORE ChatGPT, and it's only gotten worse.
