The Book of Dungeons is live on Royal Road! Anyone wishing to see what I’ve been working on for four years can read it for free, although my anxiety levels are making me sick.
Royal Road is, unfortunately, an all-or-nothing platform. Authors either a land enough readers to earn a living or they’re buried by thousands of other titles releasing chapters the same day. I hope it’s a meritocracy and not a one governed by chance. If I strike out, it relegates me to polishing my ebooks by myself. While I’m not above this, I’ve been doing so for four years and really wanted a more collaborative effort.
I’m release three chapters a day of books 1 and 2 to boost my followers. I’m only a few chapters into book 3 of my final edit, giving me 36 days of material. I’ll know by then whether to give it up and get a job.
Final Edits: Taking out the Verbiage
I planned to launch in early January, but I didn’t like some of my sentences and resolved to elevate my work to a higher standard.
By removing 99 percent of my use of passive voice, I removed a writing pitfall plaguing many authors. Over the years, I’ve developed an eye and an ear for it, and avoid it subconsciously. But still I had weak sentences from overusing the lazy verbs was and were and replacing it with something more active and visual. What does this mean? Check it out.
We were in the living room.
We stood in the living room.
The second sentence paints a more visual picture. It’s more active and visceral. Like passive voice, unless someone points it out, new writers don’t know it’s a problem.
After launching strategic airstrikes against was and were, I identified and improved my weakest sentences. I achieved this goal in a two-wave attack. First, I examined every paragraph in reverse, order to avoid losing myself in the story. This focused me on the language and gave me a very important perspective on my prose. This pass removed about half of my weak action words. I cleaned up the rest by searching the document for instances of was, replacing it with a stronger verb if possible, then repeating the process with were, eliminating 95 percent of the offending verbs.