TLDR: REWRITE 7/26/2022 Chapter's 1, 2 and 3 up now (ish). One new chapter per day until chapter 40, then one every two days with possible bonus chapters.

Hello Everyone,

My apologies for the delay. Things have taken a bit longer than expected to get back to normal, but I'm back now, and I brought changed!

At it's core, Sovereign was always supposed to be a story I'd like to read and something that I'd hope others would enjoy as well, and for the most part, it is.

But, it has several glaring issues that made continuing the story problematic, such as missing details, lack of character interactions, poor explanations, etc. While I could have continued to press on and retroactively try to resolve these issues as the story progressed, I felt the story would be better off if I just resolved the problems from the start rather than slapping a band-aid on the problems.

The current version of Sovereign aka v2 (not the one I'm posing after this) is pretty much an in-depth edit of the train wreck that was Sovereign v1 rather than a rewrite, and it really, really shows. Version 3, however, is sort of half-and-half. I've opted to rewrite sections of the story that were either poorly written, just plain terrible, or no longer fits with the stories new direction. (Yes, I know, the entire thing is terrible, but I digress :| ) In some cases like Chapters 1,2, and 3, the chapters are more or less similar to their previous versions except with more character interaction and a focus on showing rather than telling (At least that's what I tried to do anyway. Feel free to let me know if I didn't.) and in other cases, entire chapters have just been straight up deleted.

Plot wise, the first few chapters are more or less the same as v2 except with more detail, however after that, it diverges pretty quick. In version one and version two I had more or less a rough outline of where I wanted the story to go and how we'd get there, however with version three, I've decided to actually map out events in Scrapple rather than just keeping a general idea of what's going on in my head.

Moving on, grammar wise, you'll likely notice past tense and present tense getting switched around often and for the most part, this is intentional as I'm trying to keep things from getting "samey" if you will. Obviously, some people might not be happy with this change, and I'm not entirely opposed to ditching it, but I wanted to at least give it a shot.

Anyway, I know this was kind of long, but I had to hit the word count somehow! Chapters 1, 2, and 3 will be released shortly. I wanted to launch these three at the same time to give y'all an example of what I've been working on. I'll be removing the previous versions of 1, 2, and 3 on Tuesday of next week. My current plan to remove the old version 1 week after the new version has been released to allow those who'd like to compare the two time to do so.

Editing wise, I've moved on from Nimble Writer and finally bit the bullet and purchased a Scrivener license along with a Scapple license, and I have to say despite the high upfront cost, I'm liking them so far. I've also purchased a premium subscription for LanguageTool and ProWritingAid to hopefully catch some of the more blatant issues with the chapters before I post them here.

My current workflow is Scapple > Scrivener > Google Docs (spellcheck etc) > LanguageTool > ProWritingAid > Google Docs (again) > RoyalRoad.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how to improve the story going forward, please let me know!

Thank you all for your time,

Aria