The thing about being a creator is that you’re always learning, not matter what age you are or how long you have been creating. In my instance, I decided to take a foray into writing long-form supernatural horror-mystery-romance for the first time, and… ran into a brick wall, resulting in having to junk 250 pages of layouts from “The Dreaming” v4.

The story is quite long, as you can read below.

What happened in March 2025: I submitted 2 short stories to the publisher Viz, after “The Mystery Cases of Sister Holmes” was published in Jan 2025. While both were accepted, the editor thought one had better potential, so that’s what I’m working on doing the storyboards for right now–a fantasy action-romance. The problem is the other story, which was actually a simplified version of “The Dreaming” v4-5.

Doing this simplification process was a huge challenge for more than one reason, because after I submitted it and was accepted (if not approved, since I’m doing the other story), I went back and re-read all the layouts I did for “The Dreaming” v4-5 and realised… they weren’t good.

One thing about turning a 500 page story into a 50page one is that you’re forced to cut off all the boring bits and focus on the most exciting and emotional parts. It was something I struggled with immensely for the one-shot summary, but after I finally figured it out after 2 weeks of bashing my head against the wall, I was extremely happy with the outcome. After that, with some trepidation, I went back and read the original layouts for “The Dreaming” v4-5, and… found that it was dull, and full of talking and exposition. It simply was a drag to read.

The thing is, it’s not a problem with the PLOT. The plot is fine, the mystery is still intriguing, and the character dynamics are still compelling. The problem is with the EXECUTION–how the story unfolds, and where the twists occur. In other words, the story was good, but the the WAY it was being told was NOT. A major problem is where in the story the biggest revelations involving the characters occur. In the current version, the story sets up a mystery, but the biggest and most shocking emotional revelations happen at the end of the story, which is too late (ending comes right after). More importantly, it doesn’t give the audience a chance to react to the shocking revelation. This revelation, for it to be at its most effective, should come at the mid-point–that is, the end of the first 250 pages.

This means that the first 250 pages of the story needs to be completely redone, and the entirety of the story needs to be rewritten. Right now, the first 250 is slow and talky rather than fast-paced and emotionally-engrossing, which is what a romance story should be. The female lead also lacks agency–she is trying to solve the mystery, but it involves her going around and talking to people, while something in the story that appeared to be a source of danger ultimately doesn’t become one. This doesn’t work. The danger has to be real, or it wouldn’t have stakes, and the revelations must come much faster. That means the story has be re-written, NOT in terms of backstory (remains the same), but in terms of pacing and introduction.

I’ve already storyboarded 250 pages of it, but it needs to be completely junked and started over. So I’m back to square one on “The Dreaming” v4-5–on writing paragraph summaries for a plot outline (might as well iron-out the backstory for v6-8, the proper sequel to v1-3. It might be better if I do that first). Which is a bummer, but that’s the price you have to pay for doing good work. However, I’m concentrating on the approved short story first since that needs to be finished and tweaked.

When stuff like this happens, it means that finished artwork needs to be junked. All this beautiful artwork that I’ve done for “The Dreaming” v4, like these and the ones below… I guess it’s getting binned.

I’m now Dr Queenie Chan! You can read my PhD on Capitalism & Webtoons here: http://www.queeniechan.com/phd

Some art for School Magazine, this one from he play “The Case of the Disappearing Socks” by Emily S. Smith, for TouchDown in March 2025.