I am more of a discovery writer than a pnner. It feels weird to advertise that I often fly by the seat of my pants, but that’s just the way I work best. I typically establish a setting and the major characters, but I usually let the actual story itself come to me when I open the bnk document like a shaman trying to summon the rain—it feels more like a coincidence than any grand design when things work out.

  I do have some ideas about the story’s path, of course. It feels like I’m following a vague guideline. I am slowly working towards a conclusion that will hopefully satisfy me. If it doesn’t then c’est vie. So far I’ve had about four different ideas for how to eventually end this story. I’ll need to start being a bit more decisive in story beats.

  Discovery writing means sometimes I have ideas I can’t implement with a live chapter-by-chapter release, and so some of those ideas end up getting shoved aside even if they were great. It’s disappointing, but the narrowing framework I establish with every chapter also helps fuel my creativity. Retcons should only be a st resort for a completely broken story.

  The setting was fun to make. Borrowing from other Gate/Hunter stories was fun. I always hated the cliché of ‘one day (in the st 10 years) gates appeared’ that these settings often rely upon. I pondered what a world would be like if the gates had just always been there. That idea sparked a lot of this story’s setting. It felt so obvious. It lets me make all mythos in the world real and a part of the setting. Of course, I’m really picky when I reference mythology and religion. I try not to step on any toes because that’s not the point of this story.

  Scale as a main character is easy to write because I based her a lot on my younger self. Someone who is immensely weak to their own family (especially in regards to confrontation), trends toward introversion, suffers anxiety issues, and is very much in the weeds of imposter syndrome. She also has a bit of a temper she inherited from her father and struggles to rete to others. Her sudden asexuality is something I’ve experienced, and it’s a jarring feeling. It’s as if you’ve lost part of yourself and you can’t expin why. So much of our identities are tied up into these things but we don’t realize it.

  As far as power-scaleing goes, there are Consteltions in this universe that are of a higher level than Scale, but none of them will appear in this story. I want the tension in this story to never be “will Scale win the fight?” I hate “Will the main character survive” plots because that never works for me when I’m reading stories. I don’t feel tension when the Main Characters are in danger because they’re the main characters. They always win in the end. “Will the Side Character survive” however is a completely viable strategy.

  One of the commenters actually hit the nail on the head in an earlier chapter when they compared this to a Superman story. If it’s not clear, I’m a huge nerd. I love Superman (my favorite comic is Kingdom Come). The ideas of exploring character retionships when the power dynamics are so skewed both interests and excites me. The thought of Alyssa (the one person who has always been on Scale’s side) finding out Scale could have repelled the dragons without the Tower descending but didn’t because she was too much of a coward to confront her mother? That thought feeds the storm in my soul.

  Harper was not liked, which was kind of intentional. Nobody will like a bratty teen that bites the hand that feeds (or in this case saves). Originally I wanted her to be older (college age) but I decided to lower her to 16 for a few reasons but I don’t want to go too much into detail here. It just works better for the side plot.

  Caroline is actually one of my favorite characters. I love that misguided, crazy bitch. She’s unapologetic about being bad. I’ve based her on an old RP character I pyed for 7 years. A very determined but slightly mad prophet whose visions are just a little off the mark. Someone who doesn’t realize she’s being maniputed or, if she does, doesn’t care.

  Olimaw might get a chapter ter detailing her past and why she is the way she is, so I don’t want to go too much into detail about her. I think there are enough snippets in the story to understand her motivations, though. She is where immense loneliness meets great expectations. She’s ultimately a vilin but one who doesn’t think she’s harming the protagonist. In fact it’s the opposite. She thinks she’s saving her daughter from repeating her own mistakes.

  Things that will never appear: Scale’s human mother and Scale’s dragon father. A deliberate choice. Scale’s human backstory is something I wrote out fully but I don’t want to share openly. I like subtle hints about things over direct fshbacks. I actually regret putting in Harper and Caroline’s fshbacks because it felt like a failure on my part. Having to directly tell you what happened to them is antithetical to proper story writing (at least in my opinion), where ideally their histories would be pced into the current narrative through context clues. Just thoughts for future stories, I guess.

  I’ve included excerpts from ‘college lectures’ or ‘awakener handbooks’ before as an experiment to see how it flows with the story. I think these are crutches. Only one of these sections had any narrative weight (that being the one Harper attended), and I think they were poor form. I’d rather not include them in the future but I’m also a zy idiot and they’re such incredible cheats to just sm down some worldbuilding. I don’t like them. I shouldn’t do them. But goddamn is it ever hard to have characters talk about a Tower that hasn’t appeared for a thousand years naturally in their conversations. >.>

  I try not to reply to comments often when they’re about the story itself because I feel like if I’m expining the story in the comments it’s because I’m not telling it well enough in the chapters. I do appreciate people pointing out spelling or grammar mistakes (because I do be making them). I also don't mind negative comments so don't feel pressured to be polite. If you think I'm an idiot go ahead and say it. I'll love you anyways.

  I have never used generative AI of any kind. I think that’s pretty clear since I feel I have a fairly strong narrative voice. I think those AIs sanitize nguage and make stories worse overall. For example when you write the sentence: “The tears streaked down her face.” most of the AIs will tell you to repce ‘streaked’ with the word ‘streamed’. (it’s got a blue squiggle right now as I’m writing this on gdocs, dammit) But I don’t want to evoke the image of a watery tart. The word ‘streaked’ is heavy, has that harsh consonant sound in it, and it evokes the image of running mascara leaving behind streaks on her face. It isn't always the right word, but it can be the right one. These kinds of decisions are things an AI can't make.

  I’ve written a lot of webnovels over the years under different pen names. My own imposter syndrome makes me hotswap names like a video game loadout. It’s reassuring to see people reading my cringe stuff even after all this time, even under a different pseudonym. So thanks for liking my story.

  With love,

  KB_Wa