Jackal Among Snakes, Self-Critique

I think it’s somewhat unorthodox to critique your own work just after it’s finished, but I care more about becoming a better writer than I do acting like there’s nothing to improve on. JAS is my first completed series—hopefully the first of many—and I’d like it to be my worst, if only because each after is better than the last.

Length

Jackal Among Snakes was too long.

To exemplify this, I’ll talk about character arcs. Argrave’s character arc had essentially come to a close by the sixth volume. He had gone from being a reluctant hero losing himself in humor to cope with what was happening to a confident king, ready to tackle the calamity. From thereon, while Argrave had some moments of introspection, there wasn’t much for him to change or improve on. I didn’t want to reverse his character growth, so I had a somewhat static protagonist.

Elenore’s growth similarly stalled at some point, also coming to a close when she confronted the person who had been responsible for her maiming. The last couple volumes, a lot of the reasons I liked the character had faded to the background in wake of the ever-constant and ever-supportive sister. Anneliese was much the same way. I think it isn’t necessarily a problem to have characters who’ve reached the end of their growth, but it was magnified by a problem I’ll go into later on: character bloat.

I gave myself three years in-universe at the start of writing this story to have ample maneuverability, but ultimately, I think a lot of the story could’ve been compressed. Others, meanwhile, should’ve been expanded.

Romance

The romance between Argrave and Anneliese was an interesting experiment. Typically, romances conclude near the end of the story. I hated the trend of dragging a romance on forever. Thus, I concluded it at a time that I felt was natural, near the end of volume 3. As the story continued, I saw for myself why people drag it on—it’s a great deal more difficult to keep a happy, communicative couple interesting without going into straight-up slice of life cutesy stuff whose only purpose seems to be to warm the reader’s hearts. I hated the alternative, too—manufactured drama born of a misunderstanding that splits a couple up. Anneliese was an empath. They wouldn’t reasonably fight for very long.

Other romances filled the void, somewhat. Elenore and Durran, Nikoletta and Mina (kind of). Melanie and Dario were intended romance partners, but I couldn’t find a way to fit it organically due to character bloat. Raven and Lorena also filled that role, very minorly—in case it wasn’t obvious, Lorena’s daughter came from when she saved Raven after losing himself to the Smiling Raven. I really enjoy romance, and I’ll continue to include it in all of my stories. Part of me wishes that Argrave and Anneliese weren’t so immediately compatible. None of those mentioned had real rivals, either.

Character Bloat

I think that the ever-expanding cast proved to be more of a burden than it was a boon. While the introduction of new characters allowed me to explore a voice from different cultures and introduce different personalities, it ultimately took away screen time from the characters that had more development and were simply more interesting.

It also made it a little more difficult to keep track of all the moving parts and neatly wrap things up. I think I did a decent job concluding things, but I have no doubt a few people slipped through the cracks. I was also admittedly hesitant to kill characters off, because in my experience, people react poorly to character deaths. Even still, having deaths for the sake of deaths is just as bad. Going forward, I don’t want to feel the need to ‘trim’ characters. Garm’s death was planned long in advance. All character deaths should be planned that way, in my opinion.

World Expansions

Someone once called the tendency for Argrave to travel to a new region and solve its problems ‘MMO expansions.’ That always amused me, probably because it was largely true.

Rather than stick to one consistent setting and develop it and the characters contained within it, Argrave was always on the move. I stuck with this tradition to the very end, and while ultimately the plot reigns supreme, setting still plays an important role. I think I would’ve been better served containing the story within the Kingdom of Vasquer.

Poor World Building

The magic system was simple and easy-to-understand, which was largely to its benefit. It was also very restrictive in many ways, because it had a hard ceiling. A-rank ascensions opened it up to be more unique, but I think it should’ve been more unrestrained and vaguer from the beginning. The GameLit aspects of the story were gradually phased out, almost to the point where I wonder why I included them to begin with.

Deities were poorly done. I tried to straddle both ideas—them being comprehensible, almost mortal figures, and being entirely foreign and Lovecraftian. Having them descend directly was a drag on the story—it’s no coincidence readership began to drop hard in volume 7 when the gods were first introduced.

Antagonists like Induen, Felipe, Levin, and Ji Meng were infinitely more interesting than the gods. Orion was initially an antagonist, and now he seems to be a lot of people’s favorite character. I’m proud of that shift. The part where Erlebnis was humanized and declared blood vengeance on Argrave proved to be well-liked, further proving my theory that grounded antagonists are better—or at least, I write them better.

Maybe I’m off-base here, but I think the gods should’ve remained distant patrons providing blessings, not physically present in the world.

Missed Opportunity

Garm should’ve killed Durran in their soul-melding. I think that story would’ve been genuinely more interesting, but I was stuck to my notion of Garm’s sacrifice and decided against it. In hindsight, Garm’s presence would’ve improved the story. Ancient wizard, betrayed by his own son, kept as a head on a stake for half a millennium, and returned to a body? Yeah, that’s just more interesting. Sorry, Durran.

I also didn’t employ Argrave’s previous body inhabitant too much. It was prevalent initially quite strongly, but the fact that Argrave was a real bastard before Vincenzo took the wheel didn’t come up much after the first couple volumes. A part of it was because he’d proven himself, but another part of it was because I let threads die. Ruleo held a deep grudge against Argrave, but that sort of petered off into nothingness.

I think I could’ve done Dimocles better. He was meant to embody a typical RPG protagonist, funnily enough—the guy that gets every powerful relic, does every quest, has an overpowered build, and collects followers and artifacts like they’re objects to put on display. I still want to explore that idea in a future story; the driven sociopath that treats gaining power and risking his life as a fun game, and views everything as something to be collected and stored in his home. The embodiment of someone playing a game, rather than a person living life.

There should’ve been a lot more fantasy creatures. I didn’t include nearly enough fantasy elements that were outside of Gerechtigkeit’s control, and just natural elements of the dangerous world.

Loss of Tone

I think a reason a lot of people enjoyed Jackal Among Snakes was because of the injection of humor at points. The levity lessened a great deal as the story went on, both because Argrave himself became more serious as a character and less reliant on humor to cope, and because I thought the subject matter demanded a bit more seriousness.

In hindsight, I think I should’ve kept a tongue-in-cheek vibe throughout the whole story. A lot of the media that I enjoy—most prominently, The Sopranos—turn even the darkest stuff into a joke. I think laziness is partly to blame. Adding amusing incidents to stories that aren’t just ham-fisted punchlines requires a great deal more planning and editing than a lot of other writing. For me, at least.

Still, I like to think I’ve done dialogue pretty well all throughout. I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts on that.

Ending

The reception for the ending has been largely positive (I think), but I’m of the opinion that it’s only satisfactory rather than excellent. The message that I wanted to convey was about the pointlessness of looking for answers to unanswerable questions, while in the story, I wanted people to come to sympathize with Griffin a great deal more. It wasn’t as emotional as I had intended.

I’d always had the idea for an ending in my head. It came about after musing about how the explanations for how a supernatural phenomenon are always worse than the mysteries. Where did vampires come from? Why does magic exist? Why was the cycle of judgment set up? What do the Heralds want? What is the Shadowlands, and why do Shadowlanders exist?

I have answers to most of those, but I think they’re better left unanswered. That refrain is a lot more interesting than the tell-all. Contrasting explanations and unreliable narrators give a world realism, life. A lot of why Lovecraft is horrifying is because the majority of the horror is left to the reader’s imagination. I think that can be extrapolated beyond horror and to fantasy in general. I don't think I've done that idea justice with this ending.

Now, it’s your turn. Tear me to shreds, you little bastards. Pull my writing apart at the seams. Tell me what sucked and what didn’t. Give me a healthy dose of reality; lord only knows I need it. I intend to move on from Jackal Among Snakes permanently, but I'd like to walk away having ironed out errors I might've made during its runtime.