Origins for Tales of Toxic Manor
So a while back I mentioned that I was gonna make an animated series for Toxic Manor. It was only after I started drawing the beginning panels when I realized an obvious problem; I can't draw people, like, at all. So with that huge issue and a heavy heart, I decided to cancel the animations, despite positive feedback from seeing the intro. However, despite this setback, there was one good thing from that. See, the original stories were a bit too short for Toxic Manor: The Animation. Like, if I didn't extend some of the stories, these episodes would be like less than five minutes, since most of the stories' length comes from description. I had begun to read back some on the older stories, and realized that in my haste to just get to the good old gory death, I skipped out on a lot of things like character development and setting the mood. As a result, I found myself disliking the original stories I posted on pedia. The script I had written for the first TM: TA episode was much better on the on those fronts. When looking over and comparing them, I came up with a brilliant solution! Sure, I can't draw people. But I could update the stories, make them longer and such, and release a short story collection. This is an idea I've had floating around in my head for a while, but I never gave it much thought. Now though, I've decided that it's the best way to spread Toxic Manor to new people.
Estimated date for completion
Now today's the first day of my final year of high school. I'm a bit of a lazy person, so admittedly it's hard to motivate me to do something, especially if it's something that can't be done quick. Soooo I decided to challenege myself. By the end of the last school day, I want to have the compilation ready to be sent to a publisher. This is for a few reasons.
1.) I'm gonna be busy with college, so I probably won't have time to work on it. Senior year of high school is fairly lax, so this will be the best time to write the book.
2.) I'll be starting off going to a local community college before transferring to a university to get into a specific program I want. This program requires you to have a portfolio of previous creative works like commissioned art, movies you made, or more importantly for my purposes, published articles or books. This will help boost my portfolio.
3.) Short story collections are hard to get published. Publishers are more interested in novels, and tend to only consider short story collections if individual works from the collection have been in notable magazines or won notable contests. Once I get the book written, I'll spend my freshman year entering them in contests and trying to get some notable magazines or websites to run my story. This process will arguably be longer than actually writing the damn thing, so I have to make sure that I don't waste more time than necessary to get the book published.
Overview of what I'll be working on this year
So assuming all goes as planned, I will be working on:
1.) Rewriting and editing existing stories. In most cases, this means completely rewriting for the sake of lengthening them and making sure that the story itself doesn't feel rushed or reads like fanfic.
2.) Editing the stories. Again, I don't want it to read like a fanfic, so I will be proofreading them and getting others to proof read them.
3.) Adding new stories. I plan to have at least 25 stories on hand for the collection by the end of the year. Currently there are only 9 stories, 2 of which aren't even by me, 1 of which isn't even finished. Getting ideas, writing them, and getting them to the standard I want for the book will be extremely time consuming.
4.) Working on getting artwork. I said before that I can't draw. I need art for the covers of the book, as well as possibly some pictures of scenes in some stories for the beginning of each chapter, a la to what Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark or Harry Potter have. This isn't a necessity though.
Closing thoughts
So yea, I'll be working on that. Hopefully all goes well. As you might imagine, this means no new Toxic Manors on pedia. I might upload some stories for a limited time to get some feedback, but that hasn't been decided yet. Oh, and I said this before, but I'll say it again; THE FINAL VERSION OF THIS WILL NOT HAVE THE PEDIAN NAMES IN IT, OR ANY REFERENCE TO PEDIA. Look, as sad as this might be to some, you have to admit, if you were reading a horror story, and the character had a stupid name like Derp, CDBSora, or MysticFantasy, you would immedately stop taking the story seriously and wonder why the hell they have such weird names. Not to mention, I don't want to deal with any morons complaining that I stole their username or whatever and have them try to sue me. It'd be a pain, and it wouldn't enhance the story in any meaningful way, so I'm removing them and replacing them with normal names, like Andre, Carlos, and Eightcoins
jk jk. Anyways, I think that's everything for now.
So a while back I mentioned that I was gonna make an animated series for Toxic Manor. It was only after I started drawing the beginning panels when I realized an obvious problem; I can't draw people, like, at all. So with that huge issue and a heavy heart, I decided to cancel the animations, despite positive feedback from seeing the intro. However, despite this setback, there was one good thing from that. See, the original stories were a bit too short for Toxic Manor: The Animation. Like, if I didn't extend some of the stories, these episodes would be like less than five minutes, since most of the stories' length comes from description. I had begun to read back some on the older stories, and realized that in my haste to just get to the good old gory death, I skipped out on a lot of things like character development and setting the mood. As a result, I found myself disliking the original stories I posted on pedia. The script I had written for the first TM: TA episode was much better on the on those fronts. When looking over and comparing them, I came up with a brilliant solution! Sure, I can't draw people. But I could update the stories, make them longer and such, and release a short story collection. This is an idea I've had floating around in my head for a while, but I never gave it much thought. Now though, I've decided that it's the best way to spread Toxic Manor to new people.
Estimated date for completion
Now today's the first day of my final year of high school. I'm a bit of a lazy person, so admittedly it's hard to motivate me to do something, especially if it's something that can't be done quick. Soooo I decided to challenege myself. By the end of the last school day, I want to have the compilation ready to be sent to a publisher. This is for a few reasons.
1.) I'm gonna be busy with college, so I probably won't have time to work on it. Senior year of high school is fairly lax, so this will be the best time to write the book.
2.) I'll be starting off going to a local community college before transferring to a university to get into a specific program I want. This program requires you to have a portfolio of previous creative works like commissioned art, movies you made, or more importantly for my purposes, published articles or books. This will help boost my portfolio.
3.) Short story collections are hard to get published. Publishers are more interested in novels, and tend to only consider short story collections if individual works from the collection have been in notable magazines or won notable contests. Once I get the book written, I'll spend my freshman year entering them in contests and trying to get some notable magazines or websites to run my story. This process will arguably be longer than actually writing the damn thing, so I have to make sure that I don't waste more time than necessary to get the book published.
Overview of what I'll be working on this year
So assuming all goes as planned, I will be working on:
1.) Rewriting and editing existing stories. In most cases, this means completely rewriting for the sake of lengthening them and making sure that the story itself doesn't feel rushed or reads like fanfic.
2.) Editing the stories. Again, I don't want it to read like a fanfic, so I will be proofreading them and getting others to proof read them.
3.) Adding new stories. I plan to have at least 25 stories on hand for the collection by the end of the year. Currently there are only 9 stories, 2 of which aren't even by me, 1 of which isn't even finished. Getting ideas, writing them, and getting them to the standard I want for the book will be extremely time consuming.
4.) Working on getting artwork. I said before that I can't draw. I need art for the covers of the book, as well as possibly some pictures of scenes in some stories for the beginning of each chapter, a la to what Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark or Harry Potter have. This isn't a necessity though.
Closing thoughts
So yea, I'll be working on that. Hopefully all goes well. As you might imagine, this means no new Toxic Manors on pedia. I might upload some stories for a limited time to get some feedback, but that hasn't been decided yet. Oh, and I said this before, but I'll say it again; THE FINAL VERSION OF THIS WILL NOT HAVE THE PEDIAN NAMES IN IT, OR ANY REFERENCE TO PEDIA. Look, as sad as this might be to some, you have to admit, if you were reading a horror story, and the character had a stupid name like Derp, CDBSora, or MysticFantasy, you would immedately stop taking the story seriously and wonder why the hell they have such weird names. Not to mention, I don't want to deal with any morons complaining that I stole their username or whatever and have them try to sue me. It'd be a pain, and it wouldn't enhance the story in any meaningful way, so I'm removing them and replacing them with normal names, like Andre, Carlos, and Eightcoins
jk jk. Anyways, I think that's everything for now.
