To think that the web novel that started on this site would finish. It was a strange journey. Only 31 chapters were published here but all 205 chapters were published elsewhere.
If you haven’t read it then please check it out. There will be a link right here:
https://www.webnovel.com/book/13779118605197705/Continuous-School
I will probably spoil parts of it so if you haven’t read it then I recommend it. Unless you don’t want to read it and just care about whatever ramblings I’m about to talk about.
Basically, what I wanted to do was share some stuff about it. I wanted to give my final thoughts, behind the scenes, unreleased chapter ideas and whatnot. I’ve briefly mentioned stuff about it before on twitter but I’ll also say it here and more.
First off, thank you, everyone, for supporting me and sticking with me. It was a strange journey but was a lot of fun.
Continuous School was my first attempt at writing a novel (if you exclude the failed attempts on this blog). Although it’s not the best, I do believe that I saw improvement in my writing as time went on. As a first go, I’m proud of it. It’s not really a novel that needs heavy descriptions as I felt that it worked best with minimal information so it can be related to the reader’s school experience. But then again, I’m just a novice so I could have failed to get that across.
Autobiographical:
To say Continuous school was semi-autobiographical is kinda right but I wouldn’t call it that myself.
The original plan was for it to be somewhat autobiographical but by around chapter 20 the characters already felt too different and now most of it is fiction.
There are some real-life events that I adapted into chapters but I’ll get onto that.
To start there are two characters “based” on real people, those being Owen (based off myself) and Ethan (based on my friend who I met at university). Although I never knew Ethan in secondary school I often shared my writing with him back when I was doing the short stories and wanted to have him as a character.
He did design the character of Kaylee including her subjects and such but as more was written his initial concept is somewhat lost.
As for the main character, Owen, he was based on me. Not only do we share the same name but also in looks (somewhat). At first, I thought it was weird but got over it and started seeing him as his own character. I would refer to him as Owen in my head and not as myself.
I’d describe Continuous School as my “Perfect” secondary school life. My real secondary school life was nothing like this novel shows. But as I mentioned, some events are similar.
Stalking people’s love lives was a common one for me. We were always interested in the relationships in the friendship group as I feel most people are.
But let’s get started with other stuff…
Chapter count:
Starting off, originally it was meant to be 300 chapters. I cut it down to 250 somewhere around chapter 50. And then around November 2019 decided to cut it down to 205. To put that into perspective, chapter 100 came out at the end of October so it wasn’t that far in (All final chapters were published in 1 year, staring from May 2019)
When I say ‘cut’ I didn’t actually remove any chapters. I had planned all 205 chapters before chapter 100 was even written. All I did was leave gaps in between them for other chapter ideas but squished it all together to make it 205.
It may be why time passes so quickly in the last 20 or so chapters.
Chapter design:
With each chapter, you’ll probably notice the lesson that it takes place in. I did create a timetable for each student. The timetables are based on 6 lessons a day (which is what my school was like) and you might be able to work out the full timetable for each student. Although, there are some difficulties that you might encounter as some people have Maths when others have English. And their 3 chosen subjects are different but maybe someone will be able to work it out.
Same goes for the exam results. I did create exam results and the averages said are based off those results that I made at the start of the project.
The chapters that involved random pair (Chapter 74/172/173) were actually randomly decided. I put all the names into a random generator and came up with the pairs and wrote it based on that. Although it may seem as if the pairs in chapter 172/173 are not random they were in fact random. And if the pairs came out differently then these chapters would be different. It was a fun challenge to make them random, and I think worked out well.
Chapter similarities:
The chapters that take place in the science room were similar. I was in a class with some really close friends but we were sat at opposite ends of the room. We didn’t try and communicate but as they were all together and I was left alone I often overheard their antics and watched from afar. (it’s not as sad as it sounds)
Chapter 64 – presentation pitch: was based on an actual presentation I had to do with a friend in Year 11. Although we didn’t do what is said in the novel, we instead designed a health-based smartwatch that would take a blood sample and give you live blood test results.
Chapter 83 – Danish Longball: was the last thing we played in PE. It’s still some of my favourite memories to this day and my friend did swipe my legs, tripping me up, to get passed me whilst I was trying to catch him out (even now I’m impressed he did it).
Chapters 99/100 – end of year prom: my prom experience isn’t like described. Although my friends did have dates for the prom, I didn’t. Instead, I sat downstairs helping out another friend who was upset that his ex-girlfriend was going with another guy to prom. (I was friends with both of these people and it was slightly awkward)
Chapters 128/129 – The ones who rule the school: Head boys and girls were a real thing in my school. I personally didn’t care about it at all and hated it just as much as described.
Chapter 132 – Let the dice decide: Me and a friend did this every now and then. We would create a simple situation like a zombie apocalypse and make decisions. A simple D6 decided the outcome and it was just a small two-man D&D.
Chapter 146 – The school’s treasure: This was an actual rumour at my school. For some reason, people believed there was a swimming pool under it and to this day I don’t know if it was true or not.
Chapter 199/200/201 – How they came to be: The trip in chapter 199 was an actual trip I went on. I hated it. It was camping and I wasn’t with my friends but I was with nice people. Nothing eventful happened on that trip but I remember being really happy to go home.
Chapter 202/203/204 – We’ll always be friends. The party actually happened but not to that extent. It was, as described, with Pizza and non-alcoholic drinks but it was organised by the head students and teachers. There also were awards which were questionable as to who should have won. Also going to the park in chapter 204 did happen. A semi-large group of us left and went to the park where (although we weren’t supposed to) we had a few drinks. It was fun and awkward for some…
That’s all for the chapters. Moving on, I’ll talk more about the characters.
Characters:
It was always going to be a happy ending. There was always going to be a partner for each main character and the main 6 were all designed really early on.
The last person to be designed was Claire as she was added to give Simon someone to end up with but I think she ended up being one of my favourite characters.
Simon was never meant to have a large part as he did. But making him join the main cast was a great addition.
I knew I wanted a character like Lily. I wanted to also talk about bullying and how school isn’t always fun for everyone.
Ruby was made (as cringe as it sounds) as my “perfect partner”. I say that in quotes cause who can describe ‘perfect’? It’s more like that if I had met a girl like her at school then I would probably end up falling for her.
Owen, as mentioned he is based on me but there are some massive gaps in personality. I do play the piano but nowhere near as good as Owen can in the novel. Owen is grade 8 level in the novel and I gave up (although I do regret it). He’s much much smarter than I am in terms of grades. My grades were terrible and I never received an A grade in secondary school (from what I remember).
Ethan also is different from my real friend of the same name. The novel Ethan is more outgoing. But they both have strange love lives.
Sean is nothing like how he was meant to be. In the early chapters, he’s described as being dumb and can talk to girls. But I guess those early descriptions mean nothing thanks to character development.
Bella and Matt were added to spice up the story.
Charley was never meant to be a character. She was going to stay unnamed the whole time and only show up for two chapters but I ended up liking the character so much that I had to keep her. She ended up being one of my favourite character to write.
To rank the characters in terms of favourite to write:
1.Owen (obviously)
2.Charley
3.Ethan
4.Ruby
5.Lily
6.Sean
7.Kaylee
8.Claire
9.Simon
10.Bella
11.Matt
This list means nothing as each character has their challenges when writing and I love them all equally.
(and before you question me saying that Claire was my favourite, she’s one of my favourites in terms of characteristics, not how hard or easy she was to write)
This is getting a little long and I do have tons more to say. I’ll come back next week with even more information such as chapters that never saw release and the creation of backstories and the longer based chapters.
Thanks for reading. This blog is still getting going with the new structure so I hope you’ll understand it’s a rocky process.
If you want, make sure to follow so you get notified when a new post goes live.
If you have any questions or things you want me to talk about. Either about the novel or just things for later posts on the blog then let me know in the comments.
Once again, thanks for reading.
SlippyfopTV's Random Ramblings 