Hello everyone! It is the last update for this game this year. It has been a surprisingly busy month for When Stars Collide so let's jump into it!

Ramble

The current word count is 468,000 words. This is just over the target word count I had for myself to reach by the end of the year.

Not the *original*, original target because that was 300,000 (*maybe* 350,000) words and I blew past that a long time ago. No, this was the second target word count. Which I've now also passed.

So let us break it down.

Since I pushed WSC from the back burner to the front burner in mid August, I've written 166,000 words. That comes out to about 1200 words per day on average, which isn't really a huge amount, honestly. Some days I didn't write that much, other days I wrote three times that amount.

It's just a 'slow and steady wins the race' sort of thing.

But let's get into the details.

Writing

So my main goal for a while has been to hit 466,000 words by the end of the year. 

Now 466,000 words as a goal was based on the unedited length of Asher's route (route being the collection of all the individual scenarios and scenes related to Asher specifically as a character) + the 'common' route (or all the content the player will encounter no matter who they are pursuing).*

Asher's rough draft reached 60k so that was kind of my loose target for the other routes. (The 466k was, I think, also based on the assumption Kav's route would probably be a little shorter than the others because he gets introduced so late.) So I somehow came up with the number 466,000.

I've known for a while I was going to go past that word count in the final version of the project. I've added additional chapters, it's been clear that Kav's route actually is not going to be shorter than the others, etc, etc. 

But I've not known by...how much I would pass 466k, so I didn't adjust my goal because it's an unknown and my goal can't be an unknown number. I need something specific for my spreadsheet to function. Because it has to be able to math.

Now if you've been following updates, you know that when I got to the 3 final chapters of the 4 remaining LIs...I decided to pause and edit Asher's path (common + Asher's route) to fix some plot issues in order to make it easier to finish the remaining routes. Which sounds really confusing when I phrase it that way but makes total sense in my head, I promise.

That's what I've been doing the last couple of weeks - editing, fleshing things out, and cutting stuff too, some. But then mostly just adding more than what I cut.

My final word count has begun to crystallise in my mind, and it's going to be quite a bit higher than I originally thought - even keeping in mind that I already thought it was going to be longer than planned. But it's going to be longer than even the longer length I thought it was going to be...
Anyway.

I'll probably finish up Asher's edit before I start talking about where the word count is likely to land because I will have a more solid idea when I see just how long his route ends up being. I try to keep the routes in the same ballpark word count wise.

NOW - how is the edit going?

Well!

I finished editing Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8.  (So that's all common route scenes + all Asher-specific scenes in those chapters)

These chapters have a lot of the plot-related things I wanted to fix/change (basically the reason why I paused to edit was...these chapters). And I have managed to do that.

The edit is going quite well in my opinion. I have 1.5 more chapters that involve common content + Asher content and then it's just Asher's ending sequence to edit. And I have a lot more freedom with how that goes and what I can do with it.

I am expecting Asher's route to end up at around 75,000 words by the end of the edit but we'll see!

* The reason Asher is the benchmark is just that I tend to work on things alphabetically and his name starts with "A" so his was the first route to be completed. Much like Ari in Gilded Shadows and Corvin in Changeling.

Artwork

So moving on to artwork...I think that, like last month, I received 3 new BGs + 1 new sketch. BGs are coming along well.

There have been a few other small art-related things but suffice it to say that art is not the focus at the moment aside from the BGs which have been outsourced.

I'm not particularly focused on art and if I do work on art, it's generally small things. I modified one of Kav's alternate hairstyles and have been adding details here and there on some of the characters - just small tweaks and nothing really worth making a fuss over.

Upcoming month(s)

So I did not finish editing Asher's route but in fairness....it's because I added a 30,000 word new chapter...unexpectedly.

I did meet end my year-end word count goal of 466,000 words. So there's that. But I didn't finish the draft. Because it's bigger now.

This is why word count goals like this are always a bit of a squishy thing. Project scopes change and it's proven impossible for me to estimate the word count of anything I write.

We're three projects in and I have not been close on even one of these things. I always overestimate my ability to...write...less?

Which feels kind of...backwards somehow. 

In the upcoming month, my goal is to finish editing Asher's route and to start drafting the ending scenarios for the four remaining routes - which should be easier now. 

I'm already more than half done editing Asher's route so hopefully that won't take too much longer.

I really want the drafting to be done. That is such a huge part of the process that when its done, it's a huge mental load off. And really, I am nearly done with the draft so hopefully I can wrap that up in due time.

That is all for this huge update. and I will see you all towards the end of January 2024....!