The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Volume 4, Issue 10 - Thursday, July 18th, 2019

Howdy, patrons!

It's been an interesting week here at the ranch. I've been working hard to build a strong productivity routine with limited success. I've been thinking about how to plot the next several episodes for "Crushing The Competition" with...limited success. And I've been looking for a new day job with...limited success, but it looks like things might be picking up on that front. Since I want to use this space to talk more about my writing process, though, let's go with that.

I haven't been very happy with the way "Crushing The Competition" has been unfolding, but I imagine every author is unhappy with their work. For me, though, the early episodes focus on worldbuilding more than character development and relationships, and I think that's a wasted opportunity. Now that I have a bit more time to work on the plot at a higher level, I've been trying to shift the characters towards relating with one another a bit more naturally and using dialogue to make them more distinct. Ralph, especially, feels a bit too squishy in personality and motivation, and I'm not entirely sure his main conflict comes across too well. 

It took some serious thinking to realize that Ralph is essentially a vehicle for me to work through a few things. One, I have unresolved feelings about what it's like to be a corporate drone in late-capitalist America and wanted to explore it through a hot and sexy metaphor. Two, I've always seen myself as a submissive/bottom but I'm also really picky about dominants -- I like to serve, but I also like to feel appreciated, which seems to be at odds with the way most D/s relationships work. I wanted to use Ralph to work through that a bit, see if I could glean more information about that. And three, I really wanted to build a world where size-tiering was kind of the norm. 

I mean, it worked in Zootopia, right? But it's a bit more difficult to build a world with a much more extreme difference, especially when the difference is a physical representation of wealth/status inequality. I'm not quite focusing on it in such direct political terms, but I do want it to be a theme that spaces are designed for the 'biggest' people they're meant for, with limited accommodations for smaller folks. That's why Ralph is pretty much always using a booster seat. In this and many other small ways, your size is presented as something of a disadvantage and the characters in this world are subtly conditioned to think that smaller = less important, even when they're basically good people.

Anyway, one of the things I realized was that Ralph doesn't really feel active in the story or specifically want anything. He's resisting the action and all he really wants is not to deal with any of that. While that can be a realistic way to handle things, it also makes for a pretty frustrating main character. With this next arc, I want to include the things that will hopefully make the story more dynamic -- concrete relationships between characters, a clear internal and external drive for Ralph, and a richly-seeded field of complications that could blossom at any one time. Learning what motivates Ralph has made him a lot more interesting for me, and coming up with barriers to those goals has actually produced some quite effective worldbuilding.

Hopefully the story just gets better from here. Episode 18 of "Crushing The Competition" will be posted a little later tonight. Let me know how you like it!

• Jakebe