The Lost Dragon

A MULTIMEDIA NOVEL
At present, the book is about 90k with 60+ comic pages that visually depict flashbacks. Both are in draft form. I hope to receive completed beta reader feedback before the end of the summer so I can revise, edit, and complete the book by the end of the year. The comic pages, however, are a beast: it's a lot of drawing, so this might be too ambitious. TBD.

THIS THREAD
This thread will be used to map out notes and thoughts for revisions. It will also be a place for all of my inevitable crashouts as I fluctuate between enjoying my story, loathing it, and questioning the point of writing altogether. I will log my progress for LMS, but not exclusively.

When will I finish this book? I don't know. I hope I do. Eventually.

REVISION NOTES
These will be a work in progress, but I'm going to note things to consider here. Obligatory spoiler warning.

Immersion
- Remove modern terminology (ex: supermoon, opioid, dissertation)
- Add an exposition comic depicting a flashback to the start of The Resurgence (war): create clarity on the nature of the draft (it was required), how the war started, how it interrupted/impacted James’s life + his friends' lives
- Add another exposition comic (TBD where) on the Calamity and The Great War (need to rename because irl WW1 correlation is unwanted)

The Military
What I intend it the Military Academy be:

- a literal academy w/actual education that goes up to collegiate level
- also a pipeline into the military

I might make it so it's a “everyone’s required 2yrs of service after graduation” (as a rule for all MK citizens that are 18-19yrs old). But the draft pulled people out of their last year of school before they finished. That said, I might just need to make James Older -- push him into his mid-to-late 20's.

Explain more why he and his friends were drafted / nuance of their economic status / lack of exemptions.

The Translation Process:

- Explain reasons for the exclusivity of the project... reasons for King trusting James? The secrecy? I don't have clear questions here yet.
- Consider keeping the coffin somewhere else/in a different location. They can just have a copy of what's written on it: they don't have to have access to it. (This makes it harder for me <3 I hate this)

James's Backstory
Polyglot/Education:

- Need to make this more believable. How can this be shown? How can it be integrated more into the story/his inner monologues?
- Explain how he got to learn so many languages > grew up in a bilingual home, learned other languages in school. Maybe even make friends an integral part of the learning process (Kirk in particular).
- If he studied Nazene for a dissertation, he would be an expert in the field. Just commit to this; it makes him more essential to the translation project.
- Make his family bg foreshadowed sooner. Mention his sister sooner > could be implemented best with flashbacks.

Religion:

- Make dragons more involved/relevant as early on as possible
- Create more impact for the discovery of the dragons' fates by having him visit a local temple (or something like it) to show his relationship to religion and the world's views. This could be merged with grieving moments.

Other:
- Consider including less specific numerical values (timelines) in the narrative.

Spoiler

- James knows he is causing the Ansels more grief by dragging them into the problems in the palace. This is a complex character flaw: reaching out for help to the people he's caused the most trouble, to use them. He's aware of this and hates himself for it, but I could make that clearer.

GOALS

LMS Weekly Goal: 1 of the 2
- Plan revisions for the book. Any progress hits the mark. When that's done, the following bullet.
- Revise 1 chapter a week and finish the comic pages for it. The latter will take the most time.

Practical Needs:
- CHARACTER REFERENCE SHEETS: For color guides and consistency between pages.
- TEST PAGES W/POTENTIAL COLORIST: To be determined if a friend will help with flats and cell shading of pages. Have to land on a style as well.

Long Term Goals:

- REVISE + EDIT: Restructure book chapters/re-outline what to keep/change (not quite measurable)
- COMPLETE COMIC PAGES: Full line + color, plus potential B+W version for print.
- SELF PUBLISH: Online (website) and possibly a physical release (need to research/seek help).
- WEB DESIGN: This will be a whole list of its own, but some things that will be needed include visual elements - a background, an "about" tab, a "characters" tab w/character portraits, and a site header. The header will have a moon that changes based on what Act of TLD you are reading, progressing from a Supermoon to an Eclipse to a Blood Moon. I also will need to buy a domain, code the website or hire someone, and... all that. Sigh.

Personal Goals:

Spoiler

- Try not to hate myself and the story.
- You have to finish this. I don't know why.
- You just have to. Prove to yourself that you can.

Everyone jokes about how writing a first draft is all fun, but finishing a book is gruelling.

With every draft I write, I understand it more. I don't know if I have what it takes to be published - the resilience to finish and polish something is, I think, what separates the hobbyists from the professionals. I doubt my qualifications for the latter every time I feel like I'm starting from square one again. Professionals have a team behind them, ensuring their concept and prose are seamless. Sorting it out on my own, I have more control, but that amount of control is daunting and limiting.

I fight between "I just want to finish it" and "If I finish it, it has to be as good as it can be" because the latter is not strictly measurable, and the former feels like the bare minimum. I worry constantly about how it will be received. Most of all, what people who know me will think of me if they read it. But I know I care too much about what others think to the point of exhaustion.

On weekly updates: try not to hate beta reader who wants everything in my book to work like the real world challenge.

Qualifier: I don’t hate her, but it’s becoming tiresome seeing a lot of “I’m having trouble believing x,y,z because it doesn’t mirror real life.” Some of the comments make sense in that it’s more of a human dynamic/structural thing that could be clarified or improved with characters and the world. Other things are just “Why this” and I’m like… I don’t think all that HAS to be explained… explicitly OR implicity, even.

Fighting to figure out how and what to implement and what to just… leave.

Sigh.

Sitting in corner staring at wall gif.

Feeling very “thank you for chewing my story to pieces but also now I’m pissed off and need to tear apart the carpet like a restless dog in a cage so that the energy goes somewhere productive.” (Because dogs ruining carpet is productive. To the dog.)

Current status:

- Unlikely to start TLD2/TLS for LMS. Sorry, to @Messenger who dared me to.
- The feedback is killing me. I want to use it to improve even if some of it feels heavily biased by the reader’s personal preference, beliefs, and interpretation. I might need to edit/revise chapters pretty heavily even if it’s just to make sure I’m communicating what I want as clearly as I want.

The main thing she keeps coming back to:

Spoiler

She doesn’t understand why the first war — that killed the dragons, many mages, and outlawed magic — happened. And it’s coloring her whole view of the story. She sees the king as a cartoonish evil villain with too-simple motivations, wants more nuance, and more reasoning. She wants to know why magic is hated in the first place.

This is something that I could lean into and tease out more for clarity. That said, she might still not like the answer, personally, and the layers to it won’t be fully unpacked until book two (at least, RE: Blackfield’s personal motivations).

Ultimately it’s always been about a power struggle, but I do want to add more foreshadowing/hints…

She doesn’t seem to like James, which I might just need to accept. He’s not a perfect character. I wonder, if, for her, his flaws don’t make him as likeable of a hero because of her preferences. She’s complained that he’s presumptuous, contradictory, and seems annoyed by his self-hatred (without saying so directly). I could always “tone it down,” but it never really tones down for him, so there’s always that wrestle narratively. He also has some priveliged takes! Which… yeah. He does.

A note that does feel fair: include press release information on James way earlier, and an interview, make it a fluff piece meant to make the kingdom look good by using his face/story.

Forced to exposit for those who hate my bread crumb trails. Or at least forced to try. Mad about it though

Fine. I’m going to heavily revise the whole draft again.

Nobody fight me on this. I have to make it better.

(This is why writers are miserable)

So let me expound on this. To all the friends who've come to my aid to let me vent and complain, you're real ones. I love you.

At the same time, I'm refusing to throw away everything -- my story and the feedback -- and I'm determined to make this story better. Some of the invaluable things this beta reader brings to me are:

1. Fresh eyes that know nothing about Nye/the story (apart from prev draft)
2. An understanding of academia and a limited understanding of IRL military dynamics
3. Time/devotion to ask hard questions

One of the big things I'm noticing (from both drafts she's read) as a recurring issue is that I haven't provided enough context for the core conflict between humans with and without magic to be believable. I think adding in context will actually not be that difficult, but it will still require heavy revisions, and I think it will also require some exposition to set the scene for the world, the setting, and why it is the way it is. Because one of the things I keep hearing is: "I still don't understand why magic is being rejected entirely instead of commodified -- isn't it about power?"

I'm working with James's limited information and understanding, so until book two there's some nuance I won't be able to communicate, but I want to see how much I can fit in by maybe adding more layers to characters or showing a few more things to show that the "sides" of the conflict are not so clean-cut.

This is where it gets into politics mostly being about resources and power, and "magic" is a resource -- but it's one the kingdoms want to control. The means for that is the Defense Against Magic Guild, but somehow that isn't clicking. I think I may have gotten a little lost in the sauce.

I don't think I'm going to do a full rewrite, but I do think now that I've streamlined the plot immensely from the previous draft (from 120k to 95k), I can begin to streamline the story itself. Communicate it better.

Going to make a list of things for revisions.

The Great Calamity, The Mage War*, The Resurgence**

Spoiler

*Formerly named "The Great War," but Mage War is simple enough.
**The 3-year war James serves in, roughly 100 years after the Mage War.
Note to self: I would like to NOT have to do ALL of this in exposition/narration... but I'm considering a prologue with some of it. I don't know.

Testing some James POV Narration:

In all the Nye: one thing is true. The guild controls the fates of those born with magic. All mages are required to register with the guild, and are given four choices:

1. Swear off magic use for life, forever spent under the guild’s eyes.
2. Swear fealty to the guild as a guard in exchange for monitored magic use, forever controlled by the guild's permissions
3. Refuse their terms of regulation or restriction peacefully, and face a life sentence in prison.
4. Die, for any further lack of cooperation.

The status quo was penned after the Mage War, 100 years ago, when the Red Death was the first of many tragedies in The Great Calamity, which brought all magic into question. The Red Death was the first lethal disease on record that healing magic couldn't heal. The disasters that followed -- poisoned waters, acrid skies, volcanic eruptions, and famine -- were equally unstoppable, leaving humankind in a crisis magic couldn't fix.

It gave birth to a theory that gave birth to an army: the Red Death was divine punishment for humans using magic, and the calamitous disasters thereafter were from the core itself, where magic originates, at the heart of the Nye. Somewhere along the way, humankind corrupted the gift, and this was punishment where even the Dragons couldn't intervene. Or maybe magic was corrupted all along.

The more empathetic minority saw mages as victims, like everyone else. But amidst a chaotic, dying world, humankind sought a reason, a scapegoat, and a savior.

Richard Blackfield spearheaded an idea: gripping the temples' reverence for dragons and magic like a weapon, he popularized the narrative that magic itself had to be purged from the world if it were ever to find peace again. Because, if things continued at this rate, with magic's efforts at intervention being fruitless, there would be no Nye left to save.

Unfortunately, Richard's extremism caught fire among an angry, grieving world. If magic was going to be purged from The Nye, then mages had to die.

Richard's forces struck first, and humans with and without magic waged war against each other, seeking to control one another in a world that was falling apart. Lumshade, the magic-nullifying sedative, allowed humans without magic to subdue the people who should’ve crushed them.

When did the war end? When "enough mages died..." the calamities came to an end, and the last records of the Red Death died out. For many, that was the proof necessary for Blackfield's worldview: magic was the problem. So they forged the Defense Against Magic Guild to ensure it never became a problem again.

The "peace" they secured lasted one generation.

As a child, I heard whispers of discontent, behind the backs of Peace Guards, or in the shadows of guild towers. But most guild members were received with gratitude. My grandparents’ generation still remembers a day when the scales were balanced the other way, and magic-bearers loomed — always, inherently, wielding the power to kill and destroy through supernatural means.

It was the history books' way of painting every mage as a killer.

But I know full well it doesn't take magic to make a murderer.

I think that a lot of this will address the complaints of believability re:magic+mages and why they're treated how they are


---<>---



Three years ago, rogue mages began attacking guild headquarters: showing strength, spreading fear, and demanding freedoms, while proving to be the threat the guild painted them to be. The guild pulled on kingdom armier when attacks hit civilians, with public escalations of violence.

Soldiers joined guild members in swaths, but the rebellion cropped up everywhere in alarming numbers, so the king commanded a draft that halted the lives of every young adult in the Moonlight Kingdom.

For those who’d hoped to live a peaceful life or, like me, hoped to use their remaining years at the military academy for personal study… war was no longer optional.

The Resurgence, as the war was soon called, demanded my enlistment, my loyalty and my expertise. Any progress I'd made studying the dead language of the dragons (Nazene) was frozen in time, because translators were needed beyond our borders.

James's Relationship with Ingrid isn't Landing

Spoiler

MANY readers have said that James and Ingrid don't seem like a couple. They lack warmth -- or James, more particularly, does not prioritize or think about her. They have trouble buying their relationship, which has made me take a step back and think about it a different way, asking myself why it doesn't land.

I've found that, from the start, Ingrid and James were never going to work.

From the start of the book, James is emotionally distancing himself as he slowly and subconsciously realizes he and Ingrid are not on the same page. They had intimacy. In the weeks leading up to the book's starting point, James has been drifting and becoming less and less invested before he's even aware of it.

The main reason: he knows, but later confirms in the narrative that he and Ingrid have gone different directions RE: belief systems, and knows in his heart that it's doomed. Unfortunately, it takes him a long time to realize this and come to terms with it -- but I think I could hint at it earlier on by having him question what feels wrong, why he's not feeling connected to her, and why he actually feels better when he's not around her/doesn't even think of her that much anymore. It'd make it more impactful when they (as anyone could guess) don't work out. This actually isn't that hard to edit/revise because it's mostly pivoting/adding in some inner monologue or subtly changing the nuance to some moments.

I think it would also help for James to reflect on his birth parents' relationship -- Jane and Allen -- as a way to give more family backstory. He would remember their affection, trust, and happiness and wonder why that isn't something he's finding with Ingrid. In that, he'll realize... where he used to imagine a life with her, now he can't.

Other things I'm thinking about:

Spoiler

[list]- To Add Nuance to the Resistance: I wanted to show Bo and Ewen arguing over means and ends RE: the resistance, and show how Ewen firmly believes violence isn't necessary, and cooperation is better in the long-run. Bo says he wishes it were that simple, but the guild has been enabling so much darkness (namely human trafficking) he can't look away and had to intervene. Malcolm was the lynchpin. I have NO idea how to bring this in when James is just an observer. I have to think about it.
- I need to tease out the Blue Suns' role (at least, on paper), but I also want to keep them mysterious until Book 2 when I pull the wool off of James's eyes.
- I think it would be really interesting if Malcolm was a mage, but I don't know how to make this relevant, since he becomes a token dead guy pretty fast.
- It's fair that the coffin would be kept somewhere secure (NOT the library) while the translating team would work on stuff IN the library. Makes the heist More Complicated, though. (That's fine, I guess. Hurts me, though.)
- Was asked if MK operates under Martial Law b/c of how much the military has influence. Need to research the parameters of that to know if that's true. Dread.
- Change the discussion/reveals from Malcolm's death investigation so that it's all communicated by the investigator. Would make more sense.

Part of the problem of having friends I love dearly read the story is that they're a little too familiar with the lore and fill in the blanks without meaning to. Fresh eyes, though? Asking me what the heck is going on.

TBF not all readers are that critical, but I'd like it to leave less gaps when it comes to understanding the world, and at least the things I've drafted above are things I do care about getting communicated clearly (even if not all EXPLICITLY) in the narrative.

I think if I revised the book over the next month or two ... I could do it. June/July. If I finished a chapter a week, and lumped finishing pages in there, too... it's ambitious, but I've done crazier. The pages might not get DONE, done, but I desperately need to finish the written part for my sanity this summer. I know that sounds like it's not contributing to my sanity but I'm hitting the point with this story where I do not want to lay it down until it's finished and publishable. I know I keep saying "this is it" every time. (literally praying) GOD, please let this last revision be the last... and just... edits from then on.

I think I'll need to sit down and hit the outline again hard but I might construct it backwards and then revisit certain beats and how things can be done better, how convos can get tighter, and how moments can hit harder.

Another thing:

Spoiler

I think I should make James more sassy with Carter and Eliza, so that when he's sassy with Rita, it makes more sense. The only context he holds back is w/the king around.

THAT, or I need to make him more reliably silver-tongued despite his inner monologue being a lot of panic. Not sure if I can/should do both? Maybe write the schoozing, make him crash out after. (Geez. Sounds like me.)

I have to turn my anger and annoyance (natural human response to feedback lmao) into acceptance and motivation or I will become someone no one wants to be around. Will this consume all of my freetime pretty soon? Probably. Yes. Unfortunately.

I don’t know why I’m currently biting off so much creatively… running 2 D&D campaigns, writing a novel, running a storybook, writing in two more, starting the blitz in July, and artfight then.

But if I can get a huge head start PLANNING revisions/outlining this month, I know the writing itself will be so much easier. Especially when my outlines are all the information just minus the “making it sound good.”

Feeling massively better about this overall but still like… MAN.

Not sure about the ending, still. Also I’m insane doing all this while waiting on feedback still but I literally cannot not work on it at this point. I have to put progress in motion or I’ll just explode. And an outline can always be tweaked.

LMS IS COMING

This must be how professional writers feel. Looking down the barrel of a gun (weeks of revisions) but I'm strangely just a little excited. I feel on the edge of being done and having something I'd be proud enough to share with even my more judgemental friends. Which maybe sounds weird to say, but it's honest.

My LMS Pad: The Lost Dragon

This pad will be for my personal use, but for those who feel like peeking in and cheering me on (or you're just nosy, I guess), it exists. The link is going here for my own access.

I've learned and accepted at this point that for whatever reason, I trick my brain into writing better when I'm in a Riseup pad, so I'm going to be doing revisions in here. I will transfer them to Scrivener (as opposed to Google Docs for now) until the 5th draft is complete.

Then, I think I'll ask a friend or two to help with edits. Then, I'll look at building a website to publish it on... and eventually look at the possibility of a self-published physical book.

I don't think this will be the "best" work I've ever done... but that's okay. The best is always yet to come. This story is precious to me, and I want it to exist in a finished, polished form. That, and I want to write the second book, so I can give these characters a satisfying end.

And, I'll admit, despite how much I love writing, for some reason I've been envisioning a future where I make all of book 2 a webcomic (hosted on the same website)... or, it's just a very similar mish-mash of comic and writing.

All Former Iterations of The Lost Dragon

I put this together for myself because I realized I have been awful at keeping track of time/how long I've been working on this project off and on. So, I sat down and figured out how many actual drafts I've done of The Lost Dragon. All of the ones listed here were complete rewrites.

- First: 2018-2020, LMS IV-V + | Completed - 150k
- Second: 2022-2023, LMS VI | Incomplete - ≈ 50-60k
- Third: 2025, Camp Novmo | Completed - 120k / 30 comics
- Fourth: 2026, Camp Novmo | Completed - 95k / 65 comics

So, that makes this one the fifth. I've been calling it the third, like someone hit me in the head with a hammer and caused me to forget two of them or something. To be fair, the first two start at very different points in the story, and huge changes have been made between the drafts, because I went back to the drawing board every time.

Part of me needed to make this list so that I can give myself some perspective for how far I've come, how much I've grown, and where I'm going. It's motivating and encouraging! Man, I've written a lot. It's also proof that I've stuck with the same project for a long time.

So, with certainty, I can now say I'm embarking on the fifth draft.