Two-and-a-half-years. Monthly deadlines. Thirty stories. 183,426 words. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the character side stories I’ve written up over on my patreon! If you want insights into the characters and world of Hyuga, you’ll find no better source. This isn’t interactive fiction: there’s no words hidden by an *if statement here. What you see is what you get, and what you get is…

The Work I’m Most Proud Of
While writing a 180,000-word novel is a hell of an undertaking, it becomes something even greater when each of its ‘chapters’ is a fully-outlined, self-contained story. Dedicating the first week of every month to outlining, writing, editing and finishing a complete story wasn’t easy. It took discipline, focus, and a lot of hours in a short amount of time.

But in the process, I grew as a writer. I had gone from starting and finishing three stories to thirty-three, becoming that much greater at designing premise lines and building beat sheets to focus down on the stories I wanted to tell. I improved because I didn’t have the time not to!

And it’s that improvement combined with how fun it was to tell different stories with distinct characters that I’m so proud. I’ll be re-reading these stories for years to come!

Keeping It Tight
Both a short story and a lengthy novel are exactly one story long. They just take a vastly different amount of words to get from the set-up, to the finale, and all points in-between. You can almost think of it like this: every paragraph in a short story matters twenty times more. If a sentence doesn’t serve your plot, if it doesn’t move your story, if it’s glorified fluff…then it’s fat that you as a writer will have to skim off!

Being able to identify such sentences is the first step. The second is being willing to delete them. The third and final step is to not write them in the first place, because you’re so aware of where you’re going that no detours are necessary. Short stories are terrific exercises for authors who have a habit of going off the rails or losing focus midway through a novel.

Keeping the Deadline
I skipped one month of writing the side stories to focus on finishing Book 4 and getting it sent to my publisher as soon as I could. Also, in the later stories, I just wasn’t able to get them done by my self-imposed deadline on the 7th of every month. There’s a good reason for that.

Side Stories 1-10: 38,895 words
Side Stories 11-20: 63,533 words
Side Stories 21-30: 80,998 words

I know there’s a contradiction here, considering I just preached about how important it was to keep stories tight, but the side stories became increasingly grand as character arcs wrapped up and as future, yet-to-be-explored main-story elements were introduced. These stories forced me to hammer down details on Books 5 & 6 well before they’d be introduced to our favorite ronin.

Prior to these short stories, the last time I wrote under any significant time crunch was probably during the essay portion of my SAT exam. That was fifteen years ago. So my experience with time management was lacking to say the least. What I found was that I didn’t write any worse under pressure, only that it took much more out of me.

I only take one day off a month, excluding holidays and family gatherings. That day, for the past two-and-a-half years, was always the day after a short story release. It’s important, no matter how dedicated you are to anything, to give yourself time to recharge!

Episodic Storytelling vs Serial Storytelling
Absorbing an entire story in a short sitting is what most people do every day in front of their TVs when they watch cable or a streaming service. There’s something inherently satisfying with watching the set-up through the finale of a story, even if the viewer doesn’t know anything about the structure beneath. When a story stands on its own and doesn’t need to be watched in a sequence, it’s called episodic.

Serial storytelling, on the other hand, requires the viewer to watch in a set sequence as overarching, main story arcs are the primary focus. What I’ve come to learn is that the Episodic-Serial metric is a very fluid scale, with every short story having a different rating. This variance is probably best illustrated by the Toshie/Toshio side stories:

Side Story 3: Toshie/Toshio’s Dancing Bear
Side Story 8: Toshie/Toshio’s Survival Test
-Demon Investigation Arc Starts-
Side Story 12: Toshie/Toshio’s Guard Duty
Side Story 16: Toshie/Toshio’s Cruise
Side Story 21: Toshie/Toshio’s Matchmaking Service
-Demon Investigation Arc Ends-
Side Story 25: Toshie/Toshio’s Trial

Stories 12, 16, and 21, while all complete stories in their own right, have an overarching arc in which our cunning ninja attempts to uncover the truth behind one of the demons in the Emperor’s dreams. Where one ends, the other begins, with not much time taken out in-between.

That said, even for the more episodic stories, characters are introduced and places are established in the earlier ones and expanded upon later. Tosh’s northern counterpart, Tamaki, is one such example. It’s always recommended that you start from the beginning!

World-Building
Did you know Momoko had a clinic before being employed by the yakuza to make opium? I did, but I didn’t know it was called ‘Fisheye Hospital’ until I had to sit down and write about it in the fifth side story. Matsuyo Fujii, her mentor, was just a name to me until I had to get in there and figure out how he talked, what he looked like, and so on. This is world-building.

I’d be the first to tell you that I’m not a world-building sort of writer. I’m no Tolkein or Robert Jordan. Unless my story takes me somewhere that requires fleshing out, I’m not going to write essays of lore or connect family trees or anything at that level of detail. Samurai of Hyuga is like a Dungeons & Dragons game written from a player’s perspective, not a dungeon master’s.

What does that mean? It means there’s a lot of features in Hyuga that are vague or unknown–both to myself and the readers. But, through writing these thirty stories, places like the shugenja Academy, the White Peach kabuki theater, and the ranches of the Westlands really got a chance to come to life!

These stories forced me to think about and explore things I never thought I’d have to, but I can safely say Samurai of Hyuga is far better for it!

Answering Questions
To help me brainstorm the scenes I wanted to write for each of these stories, I decided what questions in regards to the main story were going to get answered. These questions usually involved elements that were little more than vague ideas or alluded-to details in the main series.

The following is a list of every side story and some of the questions they answer. Warning: some spoilers for Books 1-4 ahead!

Side Story 1: Hatch’s Harem
· What happened to General Shatao’s harem after Hatch assumed his identity?
Side Story 2: Masami/Masashi’s First Day
· What’s the shugenja Academy like?
· How did Sadao get the mind-reading rings to win all his shogi matches?
Side Story 3: Toshie/Toshio’s Dancing Bear
· What was Tosh like while working as the Emperor’s ninja in Yamato?
· How are Kondo-Hyugan relationships viewed?
Side Story 4: Kohaku’s Ranch (Female/Male Version)
· What’s the Westlands like?
· Why did Kohaku leave the Westlands to become a samurai for General Shatao?
Side Story 5: Momoko’s Clinic
· What’s the clinic Momoko worked in like?
· What’s Momoko’s relationship with her mentor Matsuyo Fujii?
· Has Momoko encountered MC before?
Side Story 6: Masami/Masashi’s Extracurricular Activity
· What are Masa’s friends at school like?
· What other function could shugenja serve besides casting spells?
Side Story 7: Satsuma’s Farewell
· What is the Emperor’s relationship with his father?
· Why did the Emperor have to flee to the Westlands when he was young?
Side Story 8: Toshie/Toshio’s Survival Test
· What are some unexplored areas of expertise a ninja would have?
· How would Tosh act in a situation similar to MC in Book 3, teaching students?
Side Story 9: Tanjiro’s Big Break
· What happened to Hatch’s friend who died of an opium overdose?
· Who is the announcer guy that we see pop up in the story from time-to-time?
Side Story 10: Kohaku’s Rodeo (Female/Male Version)
· What’s the Westlands town of Ojita like?
· What’s a way to demonstrate Kohaku’s bond with their horse?

Side Story 11: Masami/Masashi’s Field Trip
· What’s the spirit world like for Masa, and how is it different from MC’s?
Side Story 12: Toshie/Toshio’s Guard Duty
· What plots did Shiroyama hatch against the Emperor?
· How was Tosh aware of the demon, knowing MC would find them in Jijinto?
Side Story 13: Nishi’s Family
· What was Nishi’s family like?
· How did Nishi come to know Daisuke, Keiko, and the rest of the yakuza?
Side Story 14: Hatch’s Tournament
· What was Hatch’s grandpa like, and what happened to his parents?
· How did the Baron and Shiroyama know each other, and how did a foreigner move about in Hyuga unnoticed?
Side Story 15: Keiko’s Kabuki Act
· How was theater life with Ige and the Headmistress?
· How did Keiko end up becoming a maid for the Baron?
Side Story 16: Toshie/Toshio’s Cruise
· What interesting role could Tosh adopt to gather information about the dealings of a demon in secret?
· What unseen weakness does Tosh have?
Side Story 17: Satsuma’s Friend (Toshie/Toshio Version)
· How did the Emperor and Tosh meet?
· What was Tosh and their family like?
Side Story 18: Basho’s Poem
· Why did Basho become a poet?
· Why does Basho hate the Emperor?
· How did Basho come into contact with the Baron?
Side Story 19: Masami/Masashi’s Flowers
· What’s Masa’s relationship with their spirit animal Pan-kun?
· Where are the secrets being hidden in the Academy?
Side Story 20: Isamu’s Horse (Male/Female Kohaku Version)
· What was General Shatao’s son like?
· What was his relationship with Kohaku?

Side Story 21: Toshie/Toshio’s Matchmaking Service
· What role did Tosh adopt to get into contact with Shiroyama?
· How can we demonstrate how little Tosh knows about romance?
Side Story 22: Momoko’s Funeral
· How did Matsuyo Fujii die?
· How did Momoko come to join Shiroyama and the yakuza?
Side Story 23: Kohaku’s Plantation (Female/Male Version)
· What’s farming like in the Westlands?
· How can we force Kohaku into the uncomfortable role of a gentleman/lady?
Side Story 24: Ige’s Apprenticeship
· What was Ige’s relationship with Sadao like?
· What were the events in Book 2 like from the “enemy team”?
Side Story 25: Toshie/Toshio’s Trial
· Why did Tosh act so strangely during the investigation and trial sequence in Book 3?
· Why is their relationship with MC kinda weird?
Side Story 26: Gensai’s Golden Era
· What was Gensai like, as a samurai in an army?
· What was the Golden Era like, and what were the politics of the time?
Side Story 27: Masami/Masashi’s Graduation
· What dark secrets are being hidden in the Academy?
· How did Masa come to leave the Academy so suddenly?
Side Story 28: Satsuma’s Necklace (Toshie/Toshio Version)
· What’s the purpose of the necklace belonging to the Emperor’s mother?
· How can we put the Emperor’s prophetic dreams on display?
Side Story 29: Nishi’s Eulogy (Masami/Masashi Version)
· How did Nishi end up getting captured by General Shatao?
· How did Nishi come to forgive MC for killing her fellow yakuza?
· What was Ige’s funeral like?
Side Story 30: Junko/Jun’s Promise (Female/Male MC Version)
· What was Sensei like in his final days?
· What gave MC the idea to become an assassin-for-hire?
· Why was Ichiro already aware of a samurai with golden eyes in Book 4?
· How did Junko/Jun get seeds for the orchard?

Why Stop At 30?
When it comes down to it, there’s only so much juice you can squeeze out of your characters. Aside from the word counts becoming monstrous, I was running out of unexplored territory that I wanted to expand upon. While I could’ve forced out a few more, they would’ve had less connections with the main story and would’ve been much more generic plot-wise. While that itself isn’t terrible, as most fanfiction is like this, they wouldn’t have been as rewarding for me to write.

The only thread left undone is the Kohaku Westlands arc, which encompasses all of her/his side stories. Our intrepid samurai-rancher still has to recover that racehorse to save Nanbu Ranch! Sometime after I’m finished with Book 5, I’ll write that story.

And doing so will be nostalgic and remedial at the same time. No matter what kind of writer you are, short stories can take you a long way. I can’t recommend them enough!