Voice

by SeamitarCross

Death has followed Othello everywhere. He's lost his parents and been a victim of more tragedies than he can remember. It gets to the point where even his uncle, his one caretaker, wants him dead. Everything changes when he receives an invitation to a prestigious academy seeking to conduct an experiment in exchange for a free education...and when he discovers he can talk to ghosts.

20. UPDATE

Hi everyone! I know it's been a while since Voice has had a new chapter, and that makes what I'm about to say even more difficult, but I've already led you on long enough.

Unfortunately, Voice in its current iteration is being discontinued.

This decision stems from my dissatisfaction with the way I wrote the beginning. I have had these very grandiose ideas for the story, and this has caused me to disregard letting the plot progression occur authentically and naturally. For example, Othello's backstory and introduction are very rushed as it is now. The first chapter very quickly brushes over his history with his relatives, hospitalizations, and how death has "followed him everywhere." This resulted in him becoming more like Harry Potter (something I REALLY wanted to avoid), and, in turn, becoming a lot more of a John Doe than I wanted; this has really hampered my motivation to write. Another example is Othello's lack of socialization. He hasn't been integrated into society very well and I wanted to use that and all his other experiences to accurately depict these struggles and how they can affect someone, but, again, I rushed the connections he made to try and get to the overarching plot and "mystery" that I had planned for the story. Instead, in this version, Othello is already Mr. Popular (which I feel actually hurts the mystery I wanted, ironically weakening the thing I was trying to reach by rushing the pacing). I feel it would make more sense for him to have 2 or 3 tethers that allow the story to progress with actual character interaction, while letting Othello's relationships with his peers form as a result of the outcomes of scenarios rather than as a result of him being thrust into them.

I could go on for a long time about my disappointment with the ways in which I wrote these first few chapters, but this is an update, not a therapy session for me to just vent. So, we'll move on to the other part of the update.

Wait...the other part? Yep. There's another part to this update. As I'm sure you were able to tell from my wording of "in its current iteration" I do have a strong desire to continue writing Voice. As they say, "where there's a will, there's a way," and I've got a lot of will left in me. This means that Voice will continue! But wait, I'm sure some of you are thinking how that's possible when I said it was going to be discontinued. Well...it should be obvious now. I'll be re-writing Voice to better match the vision I have/had for it. unfortunately, I can't make any promises about when this will be done, when I'll be uploading chapters, or anything else. Reason 1 for this is that I already tried to make promises about uploading chapters and failed to deliver and I really don't want to lead you all on again. Reason 2 is that I don't know how long this will take. I don't want to go through another instance of this where I'm disappointed in the final product. Instead, I'll start posting when I feel I'm at a good point for it (which may not be until next year, 2025).

I will be keeping this version of Voice uploaded, but I will be changing the name to accurately reflect its status as "non-canonical" so to speak. I hope you all are looking forward to the new Voice and thank you for bearing with me!