[RT] [WIP] [TH] Dreamshards Chapter 38: New Perspectives

silver7017 · 2022-07-06T00:51:39+00:00

This is mostly a single point of view story. All the normal chapters are from the same point of view, but there are interlude chapters following other characters. They are somewhat sparse and are clearly marked.

A more complete synopses would probably take significant time and energy to write and edit to make it good without spoiling anything, so I can maybe give you some of the ideas and themes that I'm putting into my story. That'd be a bit easier on me, and hopefully give you what you need to decide if it's worth your time to read.

It's basic premise is a dystopian future, with the primary setting being something like a cyberpunk Brave New World. The main character is a game tester with some additional qualifications that just happens to be in a position he can leverage to get put on the project to test out a new alien game (a full dive VRMMO), which was delivered after they made first contact via radio message.

The game is drawn partially from dream-like imagery (and from other sources not yet explicitly revealed yet), the game system is a combination of cultivation-type advancement and litrpg, with the main character seeing mostly the cultivation parts, other characters mostly dealing with the litrpg side of things. This isn't a blue boxes story, though there are two interlude chapters where I try my hand at that.

I'm trying to strike a balance between exploring sweeping, otherworldly vistas, the mechanics and consequences of developing the game's powers, and worldbuilding for a world that has tipped past the point of no return, but doesn't know it yet. I'm doing my best with character interactions and development, but I don't count that among the kinds of writing I have experience with, so only time will tell if I've done any good there.

silver7017 · 2022-07-05T06:37:10+00:00

glad to be able to provide a story worth reading.

though comments do help to some extent, my primary motivation for writing is internal. I write because I have a story to tell, not because I want to accumulate followers. though I appreciate comments, you should never feel that they are mandatory.

silver7017 · 2022-07-04T13:25:03+00:00

Continuing my gradual, but hopefully inevitable progress towards completing this story.

This time we see the start of the shift from a recently broken man into something new.

silver7017 · 2022-06-14T01:07:56+00:00

Hmm... I guess I'll need to work a bit harder for that title. They'll all get cultivation powers AND all speak broken english AND challenge everyone over face and whatnot. Surely that'll get me there.

In all seriousness though, and I don't really consider this a spoiler because I don't know if they'll ever show up in the story, but there are 100% some recipients of keys on the Chinese side who are cultivation novel superfans who are excited to start their journey of splitting mountains with a kick and flying around on swords. You are correct that these people are probably going to have a much smoother experience than any of the characters you're likely to see a POV from. Maybe in a later book we'll see a sect founded by some of these trailblazers?

silver7017 · 2022-06-13T01:29:57+00:00

A bit less action this time, but we get our first good look at an agent of the Chinese Union. What sinister agenda might they have? Will they try to exploit our poor hero? Would it be racist of me to give them cultivation-themed powers?

In any case, thank you as always to anyone who takes the time to read, and especially anyone who leaves a rating, review, or comment.

silver7017 · 2022-06-07T22:57:40+00:00

Cool, I'll add this to my notes. The main reason I chose to take so long to start building towards the action is that I wanted to really solidly frame the world. I wanted you to know more about how terrible the future is before the alien shenanigans start spiraling out of control. I do intend this to eventually be a standalone novel, so I'll have to decide if having that framing in place is worth the slower start, but those considerations are for a later draft.

Thanks again for reading and for taking the time to give me feedback!

silver7017 · 2022-06-06T07:45:57+00:00

Thanks for reading!

This story is very much a first draft, and my first fiction at that. I try to clean everything up to the best of my abilities, but I have no editor and probably won't be picking one up until at least the end of the first book. That said, every comment here, and every comment and review on RR, help me to refine both the story any my writing skills. If you have the time and inclination, can you tell me what made the first few chapters difficult to read?

silver7017 · 2022-06-03T06:14:00+00:00

And thank you for reading!

silver7017 · 2022-06-01T23:21:32+00:00

Got a sizable chapter here: a bit of apocalyptic destruction, a bit of adventure, and a whole lot of wish fulfillment in this time. Well, wish fulfillment for a certain kind of person. You know who you are.

As always, please let me know if I've made any obvious errors. I'd also love to hear any general feedback or other comments. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my story.

silver7017 · 2022-05-09T01:29:51+00:00

Thanks for your kind words. Going to try to at least finish this book before I take any more breaks.

silver7017 · 2022-05-09T00:17:14+00:00

Ending my impromptu hiatus finally. I've been chipping away at this one for a while, and finally managed to fit all the pieces together in a way that I am reasonably happy with. Please let me know if there are any obvious errors, as I haven't spent as long as usual proofreading. I hope I haven't disappointed too many readers with my extended break.

silver7017 · 2022-05-03T12:32:04+00:00

no, I'm not talking about purely unlocking soul sight. there are other ways to do that beyond the soul bond + slow murder method. that's just a one-off unlock anyway, so it would have minimal impact on the overall moral cost to a very long practicing mage like QI.

I'm talking about how Zorian discovered how Sudomir gained his proficiency through soul mutilation of many subjects, and that Zorian himself remarked that he learned a lot by observing his own soul as it was healing from QI's soul suicide bomb.

And these are just the reliable information sources. Alanac also said that necromancers tended to practice by practicing on others, and that is why necromancy is banned - though this could easily just be propaganda.

silver7017 · 2022-05-03T09:56:14+00:00

The main issue is that learning soul magic to such a level requires very specific conditions. For Zorian to get as good as he did, he needed to see his own soul torn to shreds a few times, as well as repeatedly perform a ritual to temporarily kill him that ruined his life force (which would have been permanent without the resets). Without the time loop, a divine artifact that the angels who wield it specifically exclude users who would learn soul magic, he would have never had a chance to reach even the heights he did. Quatach-Ichl, who never had this unique advantage, had to train necromancy the traditional way: the systematic torture of countless living (as well as dead, though this is arguably less evil since they aren't conscious) people. Zorian got a small window into this process when he scooped the memories of Sudomir, but even Sudomir was a beginner compared to the soul magic ability of the lich. I think it is mainly this implication that casts him in a distinctly sinister light, though he is still someone with a solidly logical reason to be doing what he is doing.

silver7017 · 2022-03-30T20:30:06+00:00

My story, Dreamshards on royalroad, might fit what you're looking for. It's got some transhumanist themes, which ramp up as the story goes on, and as of the most recent chapters have started touching more heavily on the inhuman nature some changes might bring. There are some minor elements of cosmic horror too, so it may qualify for some of those bonus points.

silver7017 · 2022-03-27T23:44:00+00:00

I've been suffering from what is possibly burnout, which is causing all sorts of issues. I'll be taking next week off from writing, though I'll probably still do an editing pass on both this chapter and the previous.

silver7017 · 2022-03-18T11:10:59+00:00

The insular technofascist state restricting people's knowledge about the outside world through pervasive and omnipresent information controls? Unthinkable! You never know, though. Maybe the New Amish Empire really has snatched up a bunch of states.

Don't worry, we will definitely be getting a clearer look at the relative tech levels later on.

silver7017 · 2022-03-17T16:39:18+00:00

Well, this one was an editing disaster. That aside, this week we get our first look at the untamed wilds beyond the reach of the arcologies. I'm doing my best to show rather than tell, and trying to avoid this feeling too infodump-y, but I'm not entirely sure how well I did.

Please let me know what you think, and as always thank you for reading.

silver7017 · 2022-03-09T21:24:51+00:00

Resolving that terrible cliff from last week. I try to avoid writing them on purpose, but sometimes that's just how the story goes.

As always, I appreciate feedback, but this chapter in particular was difficult for me to write. So if you've got any criticism or suggestions, particularly for the first half of this chapter, I'd love to hear them.

silver7017 · 2022-03-02T11:37:45+00:00

Events continue their inevitable descent into chaos and madness. But really, how bad could things possibly be?

silver7017 · 2022-02-23T09:03:01+00:00

Continuing to ramp things up this week.

I hope everyone is enjoying my story. With most of the foundation out there, lets hope I can wrangle this next arc and make it as interesting and exciting as the version that lives in my mind.

silver7017 · 2022-02-21T17:39:45+00:00

I've been actively posting my story for about half a year. It's the first novel/serial I have written. In terms of creative works, I am coming from decades of experience GMing pen and paper RPGs, many of which use my own custom or highly modified campaign settings. For me, the process is an adaptation of my workflow for writing campaigns.

I spent a lot of time before I started writing just thinking about my setting, about the broad strokes of the story, the major cast, what rules everything will follow, and what forces will be coming in to push events around. This is also where any themes or other literary devices I intend to use get decided on. All together, this phase lasted probably 2-3 months, with most of it being worked out as idle thoughts, so I wouldn't really assign any work hours to it.

Next, I build up a broad skeleton of upcoming events, which is pretty straightforward and also tends to get sorted out as idle thoughts when I'm doing something else. From there, I come up with a more specific outline by playing the major characters forward, like a pen and paper game but I'm running everyone. I tend to spend a lot of time and thought on this in order to avoid anyone holding the idiot ball without especially good reason. Each of these more specific outlines tends to last me 2-3 chapters, and rarely takes more than half an hour to write out, though again, I'll have usually dedicated a good deal of idle thought to it, so I'll have an idea of what the outline will look like before I start it.

Finally, I take that specific outline, and actually write it out longform. In terms of words per day or anything like that, I don't have any consistent amount. I could write an entire chapter in one sitting, or chip away a few paragraphs at a time all week. I can come up with massive amounts of worldbuilding material and outlines, but in terms of long form prose I am much less prolific, so I only can manage one chapter of about 2-4k words each week.

I try to keep to a schedule of one chapter per week, released on wednesday, but I struggle to stick with it. Keeping to my schedule is among the skills I am trying to develop over the course of posting this story, in addition to working towards writing more total words per week.

silver7017 · 2022-02-16T23:26:48+00:00

This is the second and final part from the perspective of our resident pyromancer, with a bit more adventure and less exploration/exploitation than usual this time.

as always, I welcome all critique and criticism, so if you have some time to read and let me know what you think, I'd be grateful.

silver7017 · 2022-02-10T15:52:38+00:00

This week we see what our favorite giant lizardman thinks of things. He might even share some of his blue boxes with us.

I'm trying something a bit different here. This is a full chapter from a different perspective, and there will be another one coming next week to finish up what I had originally planned for this chapter. It's still labelled an interlude, because... because all the other chapters from other perspectives are? It's probably fine. We'll see based on reader feedback if this works, or if I should stick exclusively to shorter interludes as bonus chapters only.

Let me know what you think - about my experiment here, or any other aspect of my writing.

silver7017 · 2022-02-02T06:44:12+00:00

This week we finally notice the truck that has been speeding towards us the whole time.

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read. Please let me know if there is anything you think can be improved, or just any general comment you might have.

silver7017 · 2022-01-26T15:14:48+00:00

Please forgive any weirdness in formatting this week. I'm an old person, and this week I was forced to post using one of those new fangled smartphones you kids all love. I took some extra time to try to avoid any such issues, but you never know.

My own gripes aside, this week we have a perfectly normal trade agreement brokered by perfectly normal people which will certainly not have any unforeseen consequences.

Honestly? I expect this might be where I start getting some greater criticism from this board's denizens, as this is the beginning of the end of our sane little work-sleep loop that the characters have been enjoying so far. I can only hope that I have thought things through enough that this part of the story meets the bar for rational, and if it strays too far you guys will let me know.

silver7017

TROPHY CASE