Lessons learned from Doors of the Dreamer
Closure for a story that will never see an ending
Plotters and pantsers
I’m beginning to think pantsers are not real people. By “pantser” I of course mean one who writes “by the seat of his pants,” as opposed to a plotter who actually plans out his novel. When I first heard these terms, I quickly identified with the latter. I love plotting. Plotting is fun. Actually writing is hard. In 2021 and 2022 I spent untold hours planning for a creative endeavor that never left the outlining phase. I’ve been dreaming up endless story ideas since I was young, and now I have a graveyard of rotting brainstorming documents.
Doors of the Dreamer was an attempt to cure myself of this disease. I challenged myself to write and post one chapter every day for the month, came up with the general plot a few days before, and launched right into it on July 1st and attempted to channel my inner pantser. Four days in I realized I had bit off way more than I could chew and amended the challenge to one chapter every two days, targeting 1000 words a day. I surprised myself and managed to stick with it, at least until I stalled out a bit near the end. I had made a blind guess that the plot (the outline of which was only a vague ordering of ideas that never left the confines of my brain) would require something like 20-30 chapters to complete. With 15 chapters done by the end of July, my estimate still seemed accurate, but because I had halved my output speed I would need more time to complete the remaining 10-15 chapters. I told myself I’d be able to write them at a much more leisurely pace in August and September and took a much-needed break. This was the furthest I had made it on a novel before, after all.
It is now October, and I have not written a word since July 31st. You might assume that this is because of laziness or burnout. There is probably truth in that. But let me be clear—Doors of the Dreamer does have an ending. 10-15 chapters is not a blind guess. It would’ve gone something like this:
David and Lance take on the raid, called “Cathedral of the Profane,” and face their toughest battles yet.
During the battle with the boss, a giant snake I probably would’ve called Jörmungandr or something, Lance would be forced to use a power he had kept secret from David. It would later be revealed that Lance obtained this power from the fiend he calls Faust in exchange for some of his lifespan every time he uses it, which is why he is in such a hurry to get home.
After clearing the raid, celebration would turn to despair as our protagonists realized that all they got out of it was some cool loot. No clues as to how to get home.
After some depression and suicidal thoughts from Lance, David would eventually discover the detailed lore section in the Doors of the Dreamer app. This was added to the game after Lance entered the alternate world, so only David has access to this information.
The lore mentions “heroes of legend” who “faced their demons” in a place known as the Pit. Basically, this is the dark sun/black hole thing in the sky. Once our protagonists figure this out, they decide to try going into it because they have no other ideas.
To do so, they decide to go to a aerospace musuem and hope they can find materials to use the game’s systems to craft a vehicle capable of flight. This involves returning to their world via the doors and using a car to travel a few hours away. I had a few fun ideas here involving a monster/police chase on the highway.
They eventually get to the museum and use model rockets to craft jetpacks, then fly into the Pit. The Pit was going to consist of three layers—essentially three tests. A dullahan or two would show up, Lance would get pushed to the limit and be forced to use his “demonic form” again, the protagonists would get split up in the second layer, and finally David would face off with the Dreamer, who would disguise himself as Lance.
The whole idea for the Dreamer was a malevolent, eldritch entity trapped in this world trying to get into our world. He would attempt to trick David into letting him out through the white door, and David, scared out of his wits, would invoke the name of Christ and essentially exorcise the thing.
Through some plot contrivance I never worked out, Lance would end up here as well, fighting off a huge Lovecraftian monstrosity (another form of the Dreamer, perhaps his true body). To prevent the monster from exiting through the door into our world, Lance would have to stay behind to allow David to escape. Faust would show up one more time to try to tempt David with an offer that would allow Lance to live. David escapes, finally home. Alive, but traumatized. He still has faith that his friend will somehow survive.
Some months later, David gets a call from a hospital. Lance is alive, and just woke up from a coma. According to him, he fought against the monster for thirty days without using his demonic ability. When he was about to die of exhaustion, something like an angelic host descended and saved him. Emotional reunion, catharsis. The end.
Not a terrible ending, by any means. The problem is what came before it. The foundations were bad. I found myself unmotivated to write this ending because I found the first fifteen chapters boring. I wouldn’t have described them as such while I was writing, but that’s because I was up to my eyeballs just trying to get a chapter out the door every other day. By skipping most of the planning in an attempt to force myself to write, I had completely neglected the middle of my story’s beginning-middle-end structure. I hadn’t properly justified or built up to the ending I conceived. Anyway, that’s how I came to the conclusion that pantsers aren’t real people.
Lesson learned: Plan your story, but plan it smart. Problem is, you have no idea what or how to plan if you’ve never written a long-form story before. It’s one of those “entry-level job, requires five years of experience” sort of situations. It wasn’t until I got past the first few chapters of Doors of the Dreamer that I finally understood what a scene was and how to structure one. Planning my next story is going to be so much easier.
Character arcs are not composed of vibes
When I say boring, I’m not referring to the ideas that drove me to write Doors of the Dreamer in the first place. If I had found those ideas boring, I would have written something different. So why did the story turn out so much worse than how I conceived of it? Story ideas often correlate to points on a graph—moments, not even scenes. Refer to the bulleted list above; notice how I included very little detail about the raid? That’s because I had no idea what would or should happen during those scenes, or even how many scenes I needed. I only had a point A and B. But a story is not two points, it’s the line between them. The substance was lacking, and I tried to fill it in as best I could as I went along, but it wasn’t enough.
This shows up most clearly in David and Lance’s character arcs. Before I started writing, I could tell you what a character arc was. I could draw the shape and explain the basic concepts. I thought that as long as I gave my characters flaws and continuously escalated conflict until they overcome their weaknesses, everything else would fall into place.
David’s arc is supposed to be about turning weakness to strength. His flaw is that he doesn’t take relationships seriously. Despite this, he is optimistic and good-natured and searching for a “truly selfless act.” It’s a bit scatterbrained, but a skilled author could probably make it work. The arc these traits imply would involve some sort of sacrifice from David at the end—putting his life on the line for a friend would be a reversal of his flaw and a fulfillment of his desire in a transcendent display of strength. But that’s not the ending I wrote the first fifteen chapters for. In fact, I was working toward the exact opposite. Lance makes the sacrifice play, and David leaves his friend behind. The original intent was to show that David’s pure heart had allowed him to pass through hell (symbolically) and come out unscathed, while Lance would be unable to defeat the demons of his own making. What a mess.
Lance’s arc is even more of a mess. His character was less defined than David’s when I started writing, and it shows. Lance is a being of pure reason who has cut himself off from his emotions. He solves every problem with logic and rules. He is a foil to David in that he takes things too seriously. I think I got this part right. If anything, I needed to have more conflict between these two. Without the presence of an obvious antagonist, David and Lance’s relationship and disagreements needed to be the driving force in the plot. The other problem with Lance was I had no idea what to do with him once he hit his limit. What happens when logic and rules cannot solve the problem in front of him? It was a question that obviously needed answered in his arc, and what I came up with was “David has access to a piece of information that Lance doesn’t that can solve the problem.” How does that fit into either of their arcs?
Lesson learned: Actually plan your character arcs. Even if you skip outlining, you need to have a clear path of conflict and growth for each of your characters that fit together into the bigger picture. Don’t get too attached to ideas during the brainstorming process and throw things together haphazardly.
Web novels and readership
The readership for Doors of the Dreamer was approximately zero. I’m not too torn up about that, considering a) I did almost nothing to promote its existence and b) I wrote it primarily as a challenge to myself. Still, the reason I’m able to pull the plug so easily is because I don’t think anyone is sitting around waiting for chapter sixteen, for better or worse.
I’ve been thinking about novels and the internet as a medium recently. I don’t think limiting my fiction to posts on a personal blog is a good idea if I actually want to reach an audience. But there’s also the question of the physical (or non-physical) dimension. There seems to be a preference for physical writing over digital, which I understand, but that’s not really an option for me at the moment. One angle I haven’t explored is audio, which is apparently a popular medium for consuming fiction these days. I’ve considered even less traditional storytelling mediums like interactive fiction and visual novels.
Lesson learned: If I want someone to actually find and read my work (which is not exactly my primary goal but it is important) I need to change something that I’m doing. Maybe I just need to stop being a chronic lurker.
Anyway, I wrote all this because I have two ideas for potential new projects I want to explore, and I don’t want Doors of the Dreamer hanging around in limbo any longer. I’m feeling confident that my next work will blow everything I’ve done before out of the water. I just hope I actually finish it.