That sounds like a super cool project though. I'm not very familiar with Arthurian legends. Retelling would be a cool way to get into them.
Taking it piece by piece is kind of the fun of it though, right? I'm more of a pantser than a planner. I like to play in the sandbox and try to make something out of the crumbling castles
Oh! Sorry, I didn't know that you replied until I stumbled back here! 😅
Yeah, that's one of the reasons that I want to do a retelling in the form of short stories.
There have been a LOT of retellings over the years, of course. But the "definitive" ones (like Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur) were written hundreds of years ago, and can be very hard to get into with the way that they were written.
And a lot of modern adaptations tend to either be tomes (like T. H. White's "The Once and Future King"), be incomplete and assume prior knowledge, and/or really change things up.
So, a goal of mine would be to have a more accessible version that gives an overview of the important characters and stories; and then if readers are interested, then they can look up the REALLY in-depth stuff. 😆
Of course, that's probably years and many, many hours of research away from completion right now... 😅
I'm actually more of a planner than a panster myself, haha.
I have all these outlines that continually get refined over and over again before I start writing the actual stories themselves. 😆
But I think I do know what you mean about taking it piece by piece and that being part of the fun. Even with the general outlines, I still find out new things about the characters and the plot as I'm writing them, and that's where the pantsing comes in - cause now I have to fit all the new elements into the story! Talk about crumbling castles... 🤣
I'll have to read this when I finally catch up, but I find myself in a similar predicament as you do in regards to telling a story out of order.
When I was doing my Retelling Myths series, I had included several retellings of various stories from the Arthurian Legends (King Arthur and co.). Since I kinda just picked stories by the month to retell, there wasn't any real order to them - they were all meant to be one-offs.
By the end of it, it turns out that I had, through seven or so short stories, unwittingly told an overview of the events of Camelot's rise and fall... BACKWARDS! 😆
I'm still very proud of them, and they work very well backwards... but only if you already have a familiarity with the Arthurian Legends... 😅
So, like you, I'm planning on reordering those stories that's more friendly to newcomers, so that the tension isn't already lost at the very beginning... 😆
Oh! I finally made it to the end of the first season!
I enjoyed this story - was really hoping for a happy ending (or, at least, a more optimistic one)!
I liked how the story explored Edwin and Annie's relationship, as well as his relationship with the clones as the story progressed!
However, I felt that it ended a bit too abrupt AND too neatly at same time? The abrupt part is from the sudden killing of the clones, of course. The neat part came from how it felt like the story sort of... has no real lingering threads?
Let me try to explain.
Yes, Edwin will have to deal with the police, and he'll probably attempt to explain about the two dead clones and how there's a shady corporation doing shady cloning things. But, because the story ends with the shady corporation having succeeded in killing the clones, and then just... running off - it feels like they've basically carried out their goals, and that whatever happens afterwards is well within their plans.
So, it feels like the world will just "go back to normal" afterwards, and that Edwin's ordeal and discovery of the clones won't matter in the long run.
Of course, that may have been what you were going for... 😆
But, in that sense, it feels a bit anti-climatic as the ending of the first season.
The framing story also feels anti-climatic as well. Yes, Carla's calls are failing and she's getting creepy messages and being threatened by her boss, but the last thing that we see of her doing is downloading the short story to read while the train seem to be stuck?
(I do see the parallel between the framing story and the short story where the main characters of both are trying to escape a shady corporation - that is cool! 😄)
For the first season overall, there were a long of strong short stories that I enjoyed!
However, the way that the framing story was presented felt scattered and detached to me. It felt more like I was getting random tidbits of information, rather than really following along with Carla's story - which I did find interesting, but also didn't really feel like its own story.
Sorry, I hope that this is useful feedback, and not just me being negative!
I did enjoy many of the short stories in this series, which you've seen with some of my comments on the past stories - so I do feel that, overall, the first season was good! 🙂
Oops!! Haha.
That sounds like a super cool project though. I'm not very familiar with Arthurian legends. Retelling would be a cool way to get into them.
Taking it piece by piece is kind of the fun of it though, right? I'm more of a pantser than a planner. I like to play in the sandbox and try to make something out of the crumbling castles
Oh! Sorry, I didn't know that you replied until I stumbled back here! 😅
Yeah, that's one of the reasons that I want to do a retelling in the form of short stories.
There have been a LOT of retellings over the years, of course. But the "definitive" ones (like Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur) were written hundreds of years ago, and can be very hard to get into with the way that they were written.
And a lot of modern adaptations tend to either be tomes (like T. H. White's "The Once and Future King"), be incomplete and assume prior knowledge, and/or really change things up.
So, a goal of mine would be to have a more accessible version that gives an overview of the important characters and stories; and then if readers are interested, then they can look up the REALLY in-depth stuff. 😆
Of course, that's probably years and many, many hours of research away from completion right now... 😅
I'm actually more of a planner than a panster myself, haha.
I have all these outlines that continually get refined over and over again before I start writing the actual stories themselves. 😆
But I think I do know what you mean about taking it piece by piece and that being part of the fun. Even with the general outlines, I still find out new things about the characters and the plot as I'm writing them, and that's where the pantsing comes in - cause now I have to fit all the new elements into the story! Talk about crumbling castles... 🤣
Lol. Crumbling castles is perfect!
Good luck. Looking forward to reading it
Thank you!
Glad to hear that you had a good Christmas! 😄
I'll have to read this when I finally catch up, but I find myself in a similar predicament as you do in regards to telling a story out of order.
When I was doing my Retelling Myths series, I had included several retellings of various stories from the Arthurian Legends (King Arthur and co.). Since I kinda just picked stories by the month to retell, there wasn't any real order to them - they were all meant to be one-offs.
By the end of it, it turns out that I had, through seven or so short stories, unwittingly told an overview of the events of Camelot's rise and fall... BACKWARDS! 😆
I'm still very proud of them, and they work very well backwards... but only if you already have a familiarity with the Arthurian Legends... 😅
So, like you, I'm planning on reordering those stories that's more friendly to newcomers, so that the tension isn't already lost at the very beginning... 😆
Oh! I finally made it to the end of the first season!
I enjoyed this story - was really hoping for a happy ending (or, at least, a more optimistic one)!
I liked how the story explored Edwin and Annie's relationship, as well as his relationship with the clones as the story progressed!
However, I felt that it ended a bit too abrupt AND too neatly at same time? The abrupt part is from the sudden killing of the clones, of course. The neat part came from how it felt like the story sort of... has no real lingering threads?
Let me try to explain.
Yes, Edwin will have to deal with the police, and he'll probably attempt to explain about the two dead clones and how there's a shady corporation doing shady cloning things. But, because the story ends with the shady corporation having succeeded in killing the clones, and then just... running off - it feels like they've basically carried out their goals, and that whatever happens afterwards is well within their plans.
So, it feels like the world will just "go back to normal" afterwards, and that Edwin's ordeal and discovery of the clones won't matter in the long run.
Of course, that may have been what you were going for... 😆
But, in that sense, it feels a bit anti-climatic as the ending of the first season.
The framing story also feels anti-climatic as well. Yes, Carla's calls are failing and she's getting creepy messages and being threatened by her boss, but the last thing that we see of her doing is downloading the short story to read while the train seem to be stuck?
(I do see the parallel between the framing story and the short story where the main characters of both are trying to escape a shady corporation - that is cool! 😄)
For the first season overall, there were a long of strong short stories that I enjoyed!
However, the way that the framing story was presented felt scattered and detached to me. It felt more like I was getting random tidbits of information, rather than really following along with Carla's story - which I did find interesting, but also didn't really feel like its own story.
Sorry, I hope that this is useful feedback, and not just me being negative!
I did enjoy many of the short stories in this series, which you've seen with some of my comments on the past stories - so I do feel that, overall, the first season was good! 🙂