Letters to Cozy Glow: A few explanations and clarifications about the nature of the story · 8:39pm May 17th, 2019
I think I need to share a few more infos about "Letters to Cozy Glow". In the two weeks that passed since the last chapter, I noticed that the views on the story essentially froze. And the overall views grow much slower than I expected it for this story, so I'm thinking a lot of my readers might go into it with wrong expectations.
Seeing this, I figured it would be a good idea to clarify a bit what kind of story it is.
"Letters to Cozy Glow" is not supposed to tell a huge, thrilling story. At least, not in the way you might expect it to. It's an exploration and examination of Cozy Glow's mind and psyche via letter exchanges, with the letters and their content serving the purpose of a therapeutic method to heal Cozy from whatever is ailing her mind. And, as such, it is a purely experimental story. I thought this would be obvious to everyone who goes into the story but, judging by the rapidly dropping views, it seems I was wrong so I am adding clarification now.
"Letters to Cozy Glow" is not a conventional story. There are a lot of things in it that you will not expect. The pacing is slow, almost nerve-wrackingly so. The progression with each chapter will be minimal. The letters are very short. Some will get longer down the line, when more and more of Cozy's psyche gets revealed, but most letters will be of a very short length, especially at the start of the fic. Because each letter writer has only so much to say and will stop writing a letter once everything they wanted to say is said.
This story is also barely pre-planned. I have a basic idea of what happened to Cozy and caused her to become a villain, which I will flesh out more as the story progresses, and I know how it will end. But other than that, nothing is planned here. Even the order in which the members of the team write their letters is, currently, for the most part decided by a random number generator. This is because Starlight and the others have no clues on Cozy's exact issues yet and, therefore, can't develop a specific strategy to get through to her. This is different for the first letter from Starlight and it will be different for the third letter Cozy receives. But overall, there is no set order right now and the letters are mostly sent by random team members.
The development of this story depends entirely on Cozy's reactions to the individual letters she gets. Even I don't know what will happen, what Cozy could do during all of this, because I constantly assess and re-assess everything after each letter, before each new letter and also during writing a letter.
There can be slow to no progress with Cozy's condition. There can be setbacks. And relapses. There can be an entire heap of progress that gets undone because of something in Cozy's mind, or maybe a mistake someone in the team made, requiring to start over from a certain point with a new and different approach. Just like you would expect it with a patient who has severe mental issues. Which also makes the total length of this story and the number of letters needed completely unknown, even to me. It all depends on Cozy's development and on her reactions.
And all of this is intentional. These might be bad choices for a conventional story but, again, "Letters to Cozy Glow" is not a conventional story. The goal here is to write a very realistic therapy of Cozy Glow, with everything that comes with that. Some chapters might be downright boring to read because of that, just like some therapy sessions are boring.
So, in a strange sense, if certain chapters bore you, then I have succeeded with this story. Because the goal here is, at least to the best of my abilities and knowledge and with what I can find out via research, absolute realism and not a story that follows the typical rules for writing a good story.
The rules for this kind of story are very different, so please keep this in mind before you start (or continue) reading and before you judge it.
I find it nice and interesting regardless. Some stories need just time to gain attention.
5060060
Nice and interesting is still a goal, within the constraints of this type of storytelling. I just wanted to make sure that, from now on, everyone knows what they can expect from the story.
5060062
And I like that idea of yours very much!
5060063
Thanks!^^
5060086
You're welcome!
I'm going to still keep reading.
5072817
Excellent, thank you! It makes me happy that some appreciate such a different type of story!