Hatching a Heroine Restart... again... (Patreon)

I cannot believe I'm saying this, and I will bare you absolutely no ill will if this leads to anyone dropping the series, but yes. I'm restarting Hatching a Heroine... again...

To be honest, I really didn't want to do this. I like almost everything about the story as it currently exists. Most of the characters are wonderful and important to me and the setting feels right and I finally got to establish some lore recently that I'd been sitting on for literal years...

But honestly, from the very start, I've struggled to connect with Melissa as a character - which is sort of a problem seeing as how she's meant to be the MC and all. (Or at least one of them.) It's probably because her position was originally filled by a self-insert, back when I very first conceived these stories as a kid... I later took that self-insert out, and introduced Melissa, but I took too much out, and even after trying to put some back it just... wasn't enough.

So, I'm going to try again! For what I very much hope is the last time! There won't be too many changes to the story, really, but this time rather than just editing the story to be in first person (as I did on the last relaunch) I'm rewriting it line by line. The end result, so far, is a story that matches the prior version beat for beat, but which has a bit more personality to it in general in my opinion - as well as improved writing, and hopefully a version of Melissa I can actually get a proper grip on. (Mostly I'm just planning to make her a little less well-adjusted. I like my characters ridden with insecurity, anxiety and doubt! I love it when my main characters feel like worthless garbage and don't understand why everyone around them keeps insisting they're not!)

I finished my rewrite of the first chapter, as of a few minutes ago, so that'll be going up right after this! I hope you'll consider giving it a read, and maybe even giving this story another shot alongside me, but as I said before I won't mind if restarting is just Too Much...

Either way, by the time you've finished reading this, I'll probably have the first chapter up!