Hi, so this is the part where I talk a lot about the book, namely the screw-ups, plotholes, and other errors.
So, to start off, I will begin by writing the reasons why I started writing this book in the first place. I think I did say something about this in the AN on chapter 2 for and the AN chapter on Wattpad, but to repeat it:
One, I don't like the many unoriginal stories that plague both sites. A huge offender is the Pertemis ship, wherein the plot is usually as follows: Annabeth either dies or, more commonly, cheats on Percy. A broken Percy is then either directly becomes the Guardian of the Hunt or wins Chaos' favour. Obviously copying the two top stories on the archive for , Everlasting Promises and in some way, The Queen's Champion, though that includes Hera in the mix. Add or subtract some things like Hestia and Hades' favour, whether Percy's parents are living, or whether Artemis somehow was already madly in love with Percy (the worse kind). So it's just sad to see so many people copying an overused plot. If I'm not wrong, the author of Everlasting Promises, Starblade176 (i think?) even put in his/her AN that he/she didn't like other people "borrowing" his/her idea.
Now, I have nothing against Pertemis. It's honestly a nice ship and cool to see authors take a goddess who has sworn off men and apparently the best man in the whole universe and put them together. Frankly, it was one of the reasons I checked out more often. But as I got deeper, I realised the horrors that is unoriginality.
Therefore, I wrote this story to give a fresh idea on both communities. Inspire some new ships and stuff. Plus, I will admit, due to the lack of Perstia, I figured it was a good opportunity to start off since it was a ship that was nice but uncommon.
Two, I wrote this to convey my own thoughts on relationships. On the latter, I have no experience in them T_T, but it was just my personal opinion regarding the matter which I expressed through words. 2.5, I was also tired of seeing people get the characters all OOC and make them super jealous the minute Percy/Annabeth do something wrong.
I can hear the pitchforks already, but my opinions on love is not what I'm going to discuss now, so for now, just deal with my teenage, immature mind, alright? Thanks.
Three, I like Perstia. This may be borrowing a subpoint from no. 1, but I do like Perstia. It is not very common in the community or the fandom in general, and I have seen some which are nice, but I wanted to put my own spin on it.
Alright, so those are my reasons. Next, I'll talk about the plot. Here's what I wanted to happen, before I deviated so many times, and ended up with a mish mash of a thing called a story.
Firstly, Titan war ends. Hestia and Hades made Olympians. Hestia and Aphrodite disappear along with Ares campers. New demigod, Aelia, shows up and thought to be Aphrodite inside. Meanwhile, Percy starts to feel distant from Annabeth, where he feels like he can't keep her safe/lack of trust.
Percy then realises who Aelia is, both Hestia and Aphrodite, but others only see Aphrodite. He grows closer with Hestia. Until he is forced to leave with her. Around the same time, Olympus has gone quiet. No communication in or out.
When Aelia leaves, the spell that the whole camp is under disappears. Everyone immediately relapses, entering another cycle of shock of finding the Ares campers gone, but this time, they notice Percy is gone too, as well as Aelia, though that memory is faint.
Percy is tricked into leaving Hestia to find the fennel stalk, the same quest that Annabeth, upon receiving a prophecy, is doing as well. Hestia is then held captive for a while.
Here's the prophecy, by the way, I never ended up following it 100%, but it would be crucial in this plot.
"Wisdom's daughter walks alone,
Son of the sea, hunted by his own.
To save him, she must find the fire,
But whether he saves her, is his desire.
By the summer solstice's conclusion,
She must break everyone from their illusions.
Or the giants shall claim the death of all,
And hence, Olympus will fall."
Okay, ignore all obvious errors. I will address them. Anyways, Percy dies, while Annabeth finds the fennel stalk, wanting to save Percy, since he has gone missing. She does find it in the end and returns home. However, upon returning, she finds out Percy is dead, as Hestia was released to tell the camp.
Okay, here's the part even I'm not sure about. If memory serves, I wanted to make a plot twist where Hestia was thought to be the person in the prophecy, yet it turned out to be Annabeth that would somehow, through unknown and unplanned means, would "break everyone from their illusions", wherein instead of Aphrodite removing the charms from Gaia's orders in ch18, Annabeth would save them.
Another thing is how Annabeth and Hestia would be captured, which was what happened, though not through the way I did. When they were, Percy would have to make a choice on who to save: Hestia or Annabeth. Also, I believe that I originally had an alternative ending to the one you see, where the Ancient Laws were broken and gods and Giants and primordials could literally do anything. You can probably tell that was surreal.
Right, another thing I wanted to do was reveal to everyone that Aphrodite knew somehow Hestia and Percy would click, which would then spark a civil war on Zeus' part. I know it sort of did at the end, but I wanted it to be more serious than just angry looks.
Also, more boss battles. Fights with the Giants and stuff. And the last enemy of the Empowered Five shouldn't have been so lame. Really should not have. I felt awful putting that in.
Sigh...honestly the plot is a mess. Even I'm not sure what I was thinking. It seriously was unplanned and I went with whatever came into my mind. In my edited version, I will seriously rethink and plan every bit out properly.
Alright, plot time is over. Let's move onto something I can talk more about.
Two, the main mistakes.
The plot was messy. I already said a lot about this but it's worth mentioning. I kept changing the plot due to me either not reading the previous chapters or simply forgetting about the plot.
Updates were slow. I put some of the blame for this on actual writer's block, where I honestly was not sure how to continue, but I'll admit 90% of the times I claimed to have writer's block, or told myself as such, it was just procrastination. I've found that when I sit down and write a few hundred words I end up not being able to stop, but somehow I never found the motivation to continue for much longer.
This led to me messing up the plot because I either forgot what happened in the previous chapters and never reread them.
I read a bunch of writing tips and one of them jumped out to me, where a common mistake for amateur writers is that they make the characters sound the same: they don't have distinct personalities and voices. As I've said before, I wrote this story partly to convey my own thoughts, so as such I made all the characters all nice and kind and such, which is pretty boring and simply terrible. Each character should have a unique personality.
I think there may have been times where I overcomplicated, or wasn't clear enough, in my writing and the overall storyline.
Last but not least, editing was crappy, if not non-existent. I constantly found myself churning out chapters and releasing them immediately since my updates were slow. Rereading my book, I saw quite a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes. Sure, it happens a lot, and compared to a substantial amount of stories on the community, I daresay my one is not as bad. Still, it's undesirable.
Three, things to learn.
Every story, unfinished or finished, always has some things here and there that one can learn, so here are mine.
One, do proper planning. Contrary to the popular piece of writing advice which I followed, I feel that "just write it" isn't that great. Sure, you can write whatever you feel is right and may end up with a 50k word story or better, but somewhere you may lose track and end up with a plothole, or many of them. Mind you, the advice isn't bad. It's a starter for amateur writers like me, where we may lose motivation and the only way to continue is to just write something. Afterwards, as the advice states, do your editing on your first draft, which is what I am doing. However, I feel that one should still have some story notes, which I never had throughout the whole time I was writing this. I think that would help you a lot in the long run, especially if you're planning a continuation or a very very long novel. As for me, I think I'll start doing some proper planning: building a universe, having loads of notes of every intricate detail. And no, it will not be perfect; somewhere down the line, I would have realised I forgot to write stuff like "Hey what's Hestia's favourite colour?", but I place my faith in preparation before you pick up your metaphorical pen.
Two, don't lose hope. If you're planning to do a long project, chances are you'll meet a roadblock. Everyone does, even if you're writing an ironically dubbed one-shot. My advice? Ignore it. That's what the "just write it" tip is for. Plan or no plan, just keep writing. If you don't have planning, it's easier to just keep churning out words. If you do, then look over your notes and write based on what you have planned out. Maybe it won't work. I've yet to test this personal theory of mine. Unless you're super enthusiastic and that zeal can prolong over a massive duration, you'll probably get bored, and start to see this as a chore than a hobby, and hence start to not write. Procrastination will haunt you every step of the way, and you'll start getting distracted. For that, I have three things: One, "just write it". Two, write something else in the future: maybe you have a scene you are super excited about to write, but haven't gotten there. Are you bound by an invisible law forcing you to follow a chronological order in your book? No. As long as you can write something everyday, or whatever your personal schedule is, it's good. Three, write another piece of work. I've heard some people who write one-shots in between their main story. I've done that. It works pretty alright.
TLDR: so as long as you can maintain your motivation for writing, do whatever it takes.
Three, bow down to no one. As much as I wouldn't like to admit it, part of the reasons why I didn't do my editing properly was because I was anxious to publish a new chapter. I wouldn't recommend doing that. That is the downfall of many Youtube channels, where the creator simply wants to upload something he or she starts putting out semi-decent content with 75% effort. That's not good. Take your time with your writing. Be patient, and don't be a slave to your readers. This also applies to your haters (if any) or those people who say "update please!". Don't be pressurized by them. You're the one with the story, not them. You're not getting paid either. It's your hobby you're sharing with others.
Four, don't follow my advice.
Wait, what?
Yeah, you heard me correctly. If you feel that my advice is not good, don't take it. Many of us assume professional writers' tips should be followed 100% of the time. I can say that is false. Here's a quote:
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
W Somerset Maugham
Basically, do whatever you feel is fit. For me, I think planning might suit me better, but for you, maybe you just like to imagine and put it down in words. Maybe I like to write at a certain time of the day, but you want to just pull out Google Docs or Microsoft Word on your phone whenever and wherever and start typing. Maybe you think you would rather write chronologically, or you would rather focus wholeheartedly on one piece of writing to finish, before moving on to the next. Whatever the case may be, it is your way. All of these above pointers are my thoughts on it.
Four, Thank You.
I hope these people are still reading my book.
Death Fury:
Hey, you've been giving a review for three consecutive chapters, and don't think it's gone unnoticed. Even though it's not a 1000 word report on every detail of each chapter, I appreciate the support you've given me. Even though I haven't followed that suggestion of blessing of Hestia and Hades, which, if you've read the first few paragraphs of this huge AN, you now understand, but nevertheless your ceaseless excitement gave me the boost to finish this whole story, and I'm deeply grateful for it.
Also, a sequel? I'll get this story done for the last time first, but it's not something I'm not considering.
CheshireLoki
Hi, thanks for the two reviews you've wrote (both not an update pls? That's already better than 50% of the archive), and for assuring me that the mistakes I made weren't gargantuan (though they kinda were,) but even so, it's really helped me. Also, I do hope you weren't too disappointed that it didn't fulfil your Perstia needs, but maybe after I'm done editing, it'll be sufficient for everyone. Thank you once again!
Rikr
Alright, special shoutout to this nerd here. We're IRL friends in school, and this guy managed to stalk me till he found my book when I didn't tell him. Apparently when you cross out PercyXArtemis pairings and put in the word count which I accidentally leaked to him, my book appears in a decent position. My embarrassment ensues. He only found it after I was done with the last chapter though.
Alright, I guess that's it for me. It's been a wild ride, but I'm only half done. I still have a lot to do, and maybe you guys can see the final version by the end of the year. I will be uploading a new story, so yes, I will lose my fave, following, view and review count, but hopefully the newer version will garner more than this one, which I will still leave on the archive just because it's the first story I've written that's gotten this much attention.
Oh right, the epilogue. Hmm, give me a few days. It'll be out by then. Promise.
Thanks for reading this!
-Ignatius
