Really cool story. It's especially impressive for effectively being your first draft.
But, and I know you're aware of this, being the first draft it is a little bit rough. It's not my place to tell you how to run your Substack, but I think taking your time to polish up your work and maybe posting less frequently, is better than posting something before it's ready just so you can stay on track for your publishing schedule. It's something you see a lot of on Substack and as a result the quality of the fiction here is all over the place-although to be clear there's plenty of amazing fiction as well. I fell into that trap myself with Storm God, and while I've gotten positive feedback on it, I still regret it because I know how much better it could've been.
It feels weird giving feedback like this because sometime it seems like there's some serious devouring mother energy going on in the Substack fiction community, but it's the sort of feedback I'd like for myself and you seem like the sort of person who would take it in stride.
I just want to reiterate, this was a good story. But I've seen how good your fiction can be, in my opinion some of the best on Substack, and I'd hate to see that quality sacrificed at the altar of the Substack content treadmill.
Sorry if this is out of line, feel free to completely disregard this comment if it is.
Nope, Maximilian, not out of line. I remember when you were looking to find that balance with Storm God and I gave you this exact same piece of advice: quality over quantity, slow down to make it good. Here I am disregarding my own intuition, and its good to see that one my closer followers can notice it. All that said, I decided to publish this for a few reasons.
First, I've been here less than four months, and my plan was always to commit to weekly publication and only reevaluate after the 6-month mark. I'm still new, still learning, so I'm keeping onward with my plan (for now).
Second, within that process I've learned that deadlines help me produce. This was a deeper experiment within that. Can I do it in one day? That was the challenge to myself. For quality's sake, I don't know if I'd do it again, but I have no regrets.
Third, in the scheme of things on my end, this is a story I didn't have much emotional attachment to. If this doesn't work, I thought, I didn't burn a character or a story I've been loving and harboring for a long time.
In the end, I thought about just putting the words "flash fiction" at the top, as a way to set expectations about its rough quality, but decided against it. I'd rather not "apologize" or "hedge my bets" ahead of time by telling people to lower expectations. I can be honest about my own thoughts on a piece (yes, this is rough), but I also think one of the worst things you can do with art is tell your audience ahead of time that you don't think its good.
Anyway, those are some scattered thoughts. Your comments are well-received and welcome, and I had much of it in mind even before I hit publish. Thanks, as always, for reading and taking the time. I enjoy having you hanging around my comment section, Mr. Siddell!
Honestly almost anything from AD 250 - 1000 is my "favorite" but even that's such a huge sweep and I could further periodize that into four or five discrete "epochs" haha. And as with all my fiction, this is technically second-world fantasy, but because I'm still a little cagey about the proper nouns I've created I simply didn't include any besides individual names. I'm still not certain the names of the empire and the "barbarian" nations are what I want them to be...
The reason why I thought of the late Roman Empire might be that Vulso and Garro sound like names from a Romance language. And regarding AD 250 - 1000, you are absolutely right. While many of us are prone to think up somewhat romantic images when we hear the phrase "the Fall of Rome", like barbarians showing up overnight and burning down cities for good, it was such a long historical process in reality that most of the actual Romans might have not sensed that the empire was falling. After all, Sauron had to work for centuries against Gondor too.
The names: absolutely. Vulso was a literal Roman name, while Garro was an invention meant to mimic the linguistics. Plus, the architecture I describe (and the image I used) was very much inspired by Roman frontier circa AD 50 - 150 (before they became stone structures in the 3rd-4th centuries). Anyway, my comment wasn't meant as a correction of your intuition, more as a confirmation. I'm not hiding where the inspiration for this story is coming from :)
I really like how you shifted the perspective (from something Vulso-centric to a more distant third-person view) in the same breath as you shifted forward in time. It was well done and made palpable the severity of his injury.
Thanks, W. I like the more distant narrator, generally, but each time I tried to tell this story I found myself starting in that closer view. I'm glad the eventual zoom-out felt smooth. Thanks for reading!
Your piece has a lot of movement. I can relate to the pressure you describe, so I’m several chapters ahead of posting one each week. There will probably be occasional weeks when I only have time to write my short non-fiction sidebar so I don’t leave a hole for the week.
Thanks. I'm not sure I'd recommend getting things out just for the sake of it, but that's what I did here as an experiment for myself. Try different things and see what works!
Really cool story. It's especially impressive for effectively being your first draft.
But, and I know you're aware of this, being the first draft it is a little bit rough. It's not my place to tell you how to run your Substack, but I think taking your time to polish up your work and maybe posting less frequently, is better than posting something before it's ready just so you can stay on track for your publishing schedule. It's something you see a lot of on Substack and as a result the quality of the fiction here is all over the place-although to be clear there's plenty of amazing fiction as well. I fell into that trap myself with Storm God, and while I've gotten positive feedback on it, I still regret it because I know how much better it could've been.
It feels weird giving feedback like this because sometime it seems like there's some serious devouring mother energy going on in the Substack fiction community, but it's the sort of feedback I'd like for myself and you seem like the sort of person who would take it in stride.
I just want to reiterate, this was a good story. But I've seen how good your fiction can be, in my opinion some of the best on Substack, and I'd hate to see that quality sacrificed at the altar of the Substack content treadmill.
Sorry if this is out of line, feel free to completely disregard this comment if it is.
Nope, Maximilian, not out of line. I remember when you were looking to find that balance with Storm God and I gave you this exact same piece of advice: quality over quantity, slow down to make it good. Here I am disregarding my own intuition, and its good to see that one my closer followers can notice it. All that said, I decided to publish this for a few reasons.
First, I've been here less than four months, and my plan was always to commit to weekly publication and only reevaluate after the 6-month mark. I'm still new, still learning, so I'm keeping onward with my plan (for now).
Second, within that process I've learned that deadlines help me produce. This was a deeper experiment within that. Can I do it in one day? That was the challenge to myself. For quality's sake, I don't know if I'd do it again, but I have no regrets.
Third, in the scheme of things on my end, this is a story I didn't have much emotional attachment to. If this doesn't work, I thought, I didn't burn a character or a story I've been loving and harboring for a long time.
In the end, I thought about just putting the words "flash fiction" at the top, as a way to set expectations about its rough quality, but decided against it. I'd rather not "apologize" or "hedge my bets" ahead of time by telling people to lower expectations. I can be honest about my own thoughts on a piece (yes, this is rough), but I also think one of the worst things you can do with art is tell your audience ahead of time that you don't think its good.
Anyway, those are some scattered thoughts. Your comments are well-received and welcome, and I had much of it in mind even before I hit publish. Thanks, as always, for reading and taking the time. I enjoy having you hanging around my comment section, Mr. Siddell!
Excellent! The shock of the sudden attack after so much quiet was visceral.
Thanks, Liz!
Now I'm guessing that your favorite epoch is late antiquity with all those Huns and Germanic tribes.
Honestly almost anything from AD 250 - 1000 is my "favorite" but even that's such a huge sweep and I could further periodize that into four or five discrete "epochs" haha. And as with all my fiction, this is technically second-world fantasy, but because I'm still a little cagey about the proper nouns I've created I simply didn't include any besides individual names. I'm still not certain the names of the empire and the "barbarian" nations are what I want them to be...
The reason why I thought of the late Roman Empire might be that Vulso and Garro sound like names from a Romance language. And regarding AD 250 - 1000, you are absolutely right. While many of us are prone to think up somewhat romantic images when we hear the phrase "the Fall of Rome", like barbarians showing up overnight and burning down cities for good, it was such a long historical process in reality that most of the actual Romans might have not sensed that the empire was falling. After all, Sauron had to work for centuries against Gondor too.
The names: absolutely. Vulso was a literal Roman name, while Garro was an invention meant to mimic the linguistics. Plus, the architecture I describe (and the image I used) was very much inspired by Roman frontier circa AD 50 - 150 (before they became stone structures in the 3rd-4th centuries). Anyway, my comment wasn't meant as a correction of your intuition, more as a confirmation. I'm not hiding where the inspiration for this story is coming from :)
This was your first draft? It was well written.
It was a perfect description of a sudden attack after months of peace and boredom.
It shows what happens when discipline fails and people get too comfortable.
Thanks, Joseph. I'm glad you picked up on the complacency theme. I wanted the reader to be as surprised as the characters.
Cheers! And good job on delivering this on a short time frame, that is always very impressive
I don't know if I'll do it again 😅 but I did what I set out to do
I really like how you shifted the perspective (from something Vulso-centric to a more distant third-person view) in the same breath as you shifted forward in time. It was well done and made palpable the severity of his injury.
Thanks, W. I like the more distant narrator, generally, but each time I tried to tell this story I found myself starting in that closer view. I'm glad the eventual zoom-out felt smooth. Thanks for reading!
Your piece has a lot of movement. I can relate to the pressure you describe, so I’m several chapters ahead of posting one each week. There will probably be occasional weeks when I only have time to write my short non-fiction sidebar so I don’t leave a hole for the week.
Thanks. I'm not sure I'd recommend getting things out just for the sake of it, but that's what I did here as an experiment for myself. Try different things and see what works!