Flip The Script

I wrote Hara-Kiri Nonfeasance as a deep, thought provoking, well-researched novel. I mean I really went all out. It's really only half done. I finished 'Book 1' but there is a whole second half of the story for it to be complete that I have yet to finish and when done, it'll push 500k words in size. It is full of layers of meaning and depth and it is, in my opinion, fantastic.

Flip the script was something I would work on when I was having writers block. I'd just write whatever popped into my head and I bet, in total, I spent 10 times as much effort on HKN as FTS.

HKN updates slower than FTS, but I started FTS later and today, the two caught up with one another at 15 chapters each.

HKN: About 30k words
FTS: About 20k words

HKN is a higher quality with vastly superior... well... everything.

So it should come as absolutely no shock to anyone that:

HKN Favorites: 31
FTS Favorites: 113

HKN Views: 756
FTS Views: 3787

FTS has over double the readers.

Hrmmm...

It is when something like this happens, where the half-assed story absolutely crushes the 'supposedly' superior story that an author needs to step back and reflect upon what the fuck is going on. I suppose one could do some sort of 'Pearls Before Swine!' comment, but let's be honest here, that's not what is going on. No, I suspect it is something much different.

HKN has a protagonist, Ryan, where I just lay into him. I mean I am making his life difficult. I believe if you are going to be a great hero, the hero MUST SUFFER. So I lash the wind into Ryan's back and I make sure that he will EARN everything he gets. I have a story to tell along with themes and allusions and so much stuff I want to cram in. I have a POINT to my story.

FTS has Toshi, who is some guy. He's got his quirks, but he's just a normal guy in a strange situation with very little control over his life, but there is no Eldritch God who seeks to make him suffer. Crap happens and he makes choices and there is no point. This is a story about Toshi and his whacky misadventures as he tries to do the right thing while resisting temptation. He screws up, tries to fix things, and in general wants to be a better person today than he was yesterday.

HKN has a metric ton of baggage.
FTS has a normal amount of baggage.

And so it becomes obvious in hindsight, why the stats are so different.

However, FTS is... uh... bad. I mean, bad. I mean I really need to fix everything. I have been scrambling to go back and fix the chapters before they publish and I'm still missing basic shit. FTS needs work.

HKN does as well, but I'm thinking that, well... I got like 80 chapters stored up, I'll just let that one ride for a while and start putting in the work into FTS. Which means, Well, HKN is now on the back burner and FTS is getting 95% of my attention in order to bring the quality of the story up to what I would call, 'A basic level of competence'.

This is just an FYI. I figured since I'm refocusing my time and attention, I should let people know. I'm not giving up on HKN. I love the story, it's just, well, people like FTS more. I have a RL job so I only have so much time to devote to fixing things. So if I'm going to post it, I'm going to post it right, and that means something has to give.

Figured you might want to know.

- T.E.G.