Grading Phase 3

Measuring my course corrections! I’ll be updating this post as new stories are written.

With Buccaneers of the Beyond wrapped, I can say that shifting POVs was immensely helpful. Just having Bodark and Vermillion ask questions they’d ask gave me a whole new dimension to the story - “if the Eigendrakes are fleeing, what are they fleeing from?” - and changed the course of Midnight for the better. Beyond that, I’ve split the party. This is a no-no for TTRPGs but just fine for writing, and it’s going to force me to give everyone some screen time.

The two things I’ve done in Planet of Dread so far address these points:

  • Introduce the Planet of Dread - a whole planet locked out of space-time, with a devil born of fear being birthed at its heart. This is going bigger, and I’m not going to stop here.
  • Introducing the Void Keys - tools that let the whole crew teleport around without needing Adam or the Love Bug. This lets my ensemble go where they want, return to Earth instantly, and so on.

The Golden Dragon is in the can and I feel like it’s very positive progress on the MIA book. We have foes that can challenge our team of hypergenius weirdos, we saw a lot of interpersonal reactions (some positive, some negative), and I got to weave in some domestics that played to the larger theme of the story (setting up a home is hard when you can’t trust people). Jason is respectfully deferring to Alycia but is still contributing without overwhelming the action, and with the Matrix cosplayers vs. John Black, we’re starting to give individual team members their own outside relationships. The next story is bringing in Emma’s old mentor as an antagonist. This is exactly where I want MIA to be.

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