Hello everyone, Saga of the Jewels is now about halfway through Season One. (By the way, Season Two is well into production, with about 35,000 words written so far :) ) I’ve noticed that my reading stats have taken a small dip lately, probably because everyone is super busy and exhausted as bleak November arrives (except in some cases—some people are still faithfully reading every week—I’m glad you’re enjoying it!), so I’m going to pause this Season for a little while (exact date TBC) to allow people to catch up.
Hi Luke. Full disclosure: I am only at the end of Episode 6, so very glad of a chance to catch up on this. I'm enjoying the saga a lot, although I was definitely surprised at discovering there are twelve jewels scattered across the world (suggesting this might be a longer ride than I thought).
I can see the influence of the Final Fantasy games in this, but that's not a limitation: your world building unfolds gradually and in sync with the core narrative, so it's rarely if ever felt like information overload.
My only concern is about the level of setup here, if there are twelve jewels to be found - each of these instalments has centred around introducing a new character, and if that continues then I wonder whether you'll keep sufficient momentum in the core narrative. It's not felt like a problem so far but with a swelling cast of characters, I start wondering about payoff and whether you can bring this all together in a satisfying fashion.
But I have faith in you based on what I've read so far!
Thanks so much TC; really helpful! I was just logging on to post the first comment (if there's another thing I've learned as a teacher, it's that if you want others to share then you have to be prepared to share yourself!) but you've beaten me to it, so I will write in reply to yours.
I think Saga of the Jewels is pretty good. Obviously it's not high literature or anything, but it has been a lot of fun to write, so I hope it's fun to read too. Here's the story of how it came about, which will respond to some of your points, TC:
In Summer 2020 I had just finished my creative writing mentorship with The Literary Consultancy, having been doing that and working part-time, and I was aware that I was going back into a very intense full-time teaching job at a private school so I was going to be losing a lot of my writing time.
Then, in addition to that, while I had got lots of extremely positive feedback on the novel I had written for the mentorship (which, incidentally, I am going to be indie-publishing this December), and although I had *almost* managed to snag one agent with it, ultimately I failed to land a literary agent at that time.
So I thought 'Sod it, I'm just going to write something purely for fun, for myself, in what little time I can carve out from now on. I'm going to write something purely for me, in response to what I've been reading lately (millions-word long 'web novels') and in my favourite comfort-food genre. I'm going to write a videogame-influenced million-word young-adult fantasy novel.'
So that is what I started doing. I wrote in my car in the car park for 30 minutes before school started, so my colleagues wouldn't interrupt me. When I realised I could do the same thing in the library, I wrote there. I wrote in cafes on Saturday mornings. I wrote in the holidays.
Then in Summer of this year we moved back to Oxford and I switched back to working part-time and looking after [our daughter] part-time as Jo was beginning a six-day-a-week full-time job. Suddenly some writing time came back, and I thought, 'Oh wow! Some more writing time has come back! Now I can work on something more seriously again!' But I found that I had grown attached to SOTJ, so I decided to just carry on with it, and start sharing it with people, and indie-publish it on Kindle as I finish each installment (guessing that it is probably un-publishable by the traditional route). Like I say, I had been reading a lot of these online 'web novels' around this time--where the form involves writing these massive, sprawling narratives in episodic serials which sometimes pick up fan Patreon support, and I thought I would have a go at one of those.
And that's how Saga of the Jewels came to be. So, extremely perceptive of you, TC: this, if I finish it, is going to be looooong. In a few episodes' time from where you are now, the cast list will stabilise (for the moment), but there are still twelve Jewels in total to find. The idea is an ongoing serial, rather than a single, highly polished, tight novel. Each Jewel will have its own 'season' (book), so if I manage to finish it then it should clock in at around a million words.
The first draft document is currently at 140,000 words, so who knows, I may just manage it!
And well spotted on the videogame references. The first place I started posting the first draft of SOTJ was actually FanFiction.net, under the 'Final Fantasy I-VI fanfiction' section, as it's heavily inspired by them. The idea is basically for it to be like a novelisation of an original Final Fantasy game that doesn't actually exist. But hopefully the videogame references are unobtrusive enough that they don't get in the way for people who don't know about them, and at the same time clear enough that those who can enjoy them do!
Anyway, thanks for reading. What does anyone else think? Are you enjoying it? Hating it? What's good? What's not so good? What would you like to see more of? Less of?
Hi Luke. Full disclosure: I am only at the end of Episode 6, so very glad of a chance to catch up on this. I'm enjoying the saga a lot, although I was definitely surprised at discovering there are twelve jewels scattered across the world (suggesting this might be a longer ride than I thought).
I can see the influence of the Final Fantasy games in this, but that's not a limitation: your world building unfolds gradually and in sync with the core narrative, so it's rarely if ever felt like information overload.
My only concern is about the level of setup here, if there are twelve jewels to be found - each of these instalments has centred around introducing a new character, and if that continues then I wonder whether you'll keep sufficient momentum in the core narrative. It's not felt like a problem so far but with a swelling cast of characters, I start wondering about payoff and whether you can bring this all together in a satisfying fashion.
But I have faith in you based on what I've read so far!
Thanks so much TC; really helpful! I was just logging on to post the first comment (if there's another thing I've learned as a teacher, it's that if you want others to share then you have to be prepared to share yourself!) but you've beaten me to it, so I will write in reply to yours.
I think Saga of the Jewels is pretty good. Obviously it's not high literature or anything, but it has been a lot of fun to write, so I hope it's fun to read too. Here's the story of how it came about, which will respond to some of your points, TC:
In Summer 2020 I had just finished my creative writing mentorship with The Literary Consultancy, having been doing that and working part-time, and I was aware that I was going back into a very intense full-time teaching job at a private school so I was going to be losing a lot of my writing time.
Then, in addition to that, while I had got lots of extremely positive feedback on the novel I had written for the mentorship (which, incidentally, I am going to be indie-publishing this December), and although I had *almost* managed to snag one agent with it, ultimately I failed to land a literary agent at that time.
So I thought 'Sod it, I'm just going to write something purely for fun, for myself, in what little time I can carve out from now on. I'm going to write something purely for me, in response to what I've been reading lately (millions-word long 'web novels') and in my favourite comfort-food genre. I'm going to write a videogame-influenced million-word young-adult fantasy novel.'
So that is what I started doing. I wrote in my car in the car park for 30 minutes before school started, so my colleagues wouldn't interrupt me. When I realised I could do the same thing in the library, I wrote there. I wrote in cafes on Saturday mornings. I wrote in the holidays.
Then in Summer of this year we moved back to Oxford and I switched back to working part-time and looking after [our daughter] part-time as Jo was beginning a six-day-a-week full-time job. Suddenly some writing time came back, and I thought, 'Oh wow! Some more writing time has come back! Now I can work on something more seriously again!' But I found that I had grown attached to SOTJ, so I decided to just carry on with it, and start sharing it with people, and indie-publish it on Kindle as I finish each installment (guessing that it is probably un-publishable by the traditional route). Like I say, I had been reading a lot of these online 'web novels' around this time--where the form involves writing these massive, sprawling narratives in episodic serials which sometimes pick up fan Patreon support, and I thought I would have a go at one of those.
And that's how Saga of the Jewels came to be. So, extremely perceptive of you, TC: this, if I finish it, is going to be looooong. In a few episodes' time from where you are now, the cast list will stabilise (for the moment), but there are still twelve Jewels in total to find. The idea is an ongoing serial, rather than a single, highly polished, tight novel. Each Jewel will have its own 'season' (book), so if I manage to finish it then it should clock in at around a million words.
The first draft document is currently at 140,000 words, so who knows, I may just manage it!
And well spotted on the videogame references. The first place I started posting the first draft of SOTJ was actually FanFiction.net, under the 'Final Fantasy I-VI fanfiction' section, as it's heavily inspired by them. The idea is basically for it to be like a novelisation of an original Final Fantasy game that doesn't actually exist. But hopefully the videogame references are unobtrusive enough that they don't get in the way for people who don't know about them, and at the same time clear enough that those who can enjoy them do!
Anyway, thanks for reading. What does anyone else think? Are you enjoying it? Hating it? What's good? What's not so good? What would you like to see more of? Less of?
Please hit reply and let me know!
Testing if it possible to post a reply here without having a substack account. If you are reading this, it is!