Becoming a Booktuber and Shifting My Focus
Introduction
Odds are that, if you're here on this post, you've probably been with me for a while, now. You've seen me start over a few times here and there and you've watched as I improve and grow as a writer and content producer. Well, here I am again, starting over (somewhat). This is less a reboot and more of a revival as I strive for more consistency than what I've had in the past. Far more consistency than I've had in the past, actually.
For those of you who are new: hi there, I’m T. L. Bainter. I live in Kansas City with my cat. I’ve written a few short stories and one novel. Two of my short stories have received Honorable Mentions from the Writers of the Future competition. I love stories, whether I’m telling them or experiencing them in any medium, be that physical books, audiobooks, movies, games… as long as it’s a great story, I’ll take it. My love for stories is what has brought me to this point and to writing this post. Your own love for stories may be what brought you here, too. Welcome!
If you'd like, you can check out a video version of this same post over on my new YouTube channel! I'll embed that here.
My Channel
As you may have already noticed, I'm starting--or rather, I have started--a YouTube channel. In fact, my first video on the channel is a counterpart to this post, which I'll link below. You can subscribe to the channel by clicking here or just keep reading my posts. I'll be releasing similar content in both mediums, so you can choose the consumption method that's right for you (and, if you want to get the content in both video and post forms, you're probably my favorite supporter, so thank you)!
The channel is part of my foray onto the Internet. I have always had an Internet presence, as unfortunate as that is--I definitely shouldn’t have been spewing my thoughts on here fifteen years ago. However, I’ve never really given much care or attention to that presence. I haven’t focused on building a brand or an audience, I’ve just put myself out there and allowed myself to be found by anyone who happens to look. My website has changed consistently over the last few years and there has always been a sharp drop in the amount of content that I produce, often going several months without an update.
I want to change that.
My methodology thus far has not been a great way to build myself up, especially in an era when authors need a resonating presence on the Internet in order to find success. Because I am creating the channel specifically to find like-minded people I can interact with and receive feedback from as a community, I am focusing it largely on those things that matter most to me: stories.
So, this channel (and my website) will have three focuses: Advice and Discussion around stories, reviews of stories, and finally my own stories, which is a category this video falls under. I’d like to talk about each focus, but first, I need to dive into what I’ve been doing and why I’m suddenly starting this channel, and why I'm working so hard to produce consistent content here on the website.
Also, the video form of this post can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sRgRCGJ-vA
Why Now?
I was working on determining where I want to go with my dream of being supported by my stories. In looking at all I’ve accomplished in recent years, I found that I hadn’t actually done all that much. I’d written some short stories, released one of them, and had been focusing a lot on the Dungeons and Dragons campaign I run as well as game development. So while I was busy, my accomplishments were minimal. I had to face a rather unfortunate truth: I was spreading myself thin and not actually reaching any of my goals.
So, I took a few days to sit down and map out what I’ve been doing, how I’m spending my time, and what I can do to refocus my goals on what I find to be most important. Obviously, the biggest thing eating my time and keeping me from my goal of living off my stories is a full-time job. That’s not really something I can just throw away, so it has to be factored in as a necessary time investment. Next, I found that I was spending most of my time on art, game development, and learning things that I would eventually forget a few weeks later because I couldn’t do it consistently. Game development is a huge time investment. It’s worth it and I love it, but unless I can do it consistently, most of my time spent developing games is going to be invested in reacquainting myself with systems and even the project itself. It isn’t a valuable use of time.
Piling onto that, I was also working on a few different books, some music composition, and several miscellaneous activities, including things I do to relax like playing games.
I grouped all of these things together and started looking at things to nix. The most obvious one (though most challenging) was giving up game development. My brother and I have made quite a bit of progress on our game so far, but simultaneously, there are often big lulls in progress due to our jobs that require me to step away for an extended period of time. When I come back, things have changed within the systems or I’ve forgotten how many of them work. There’s a lot of software to relearn and I find myself spending most of my game development time rewatching tutorials I’ve already seen. My decision ultimately was that I would put game development (and all that accompanies it, like art) on hold until I can quit my job and focus on game development at least part-time, or four hours per day, five days per week.
I also found I could easily cut out my music composition. I don’t have a great studio for that right now and most of my instruments are in storage. It doesn’t make sense to dedicate any significant amount of time to that. So, apart from making music specifically for the background in this channel, like you’re hearing right now, I’ve put that aside, too. This one was easier than surrendering game development.
I cut a few other miscellaneous things out, too. Gaming, television binges, that sort of thing. With all of the extraneous mess cut out of my life, I found large blocks of my day that I could dedicate solely to my three new priorities: writing books, reading books, and building a community.
That’s why this is happening now. I’ve refocused myself to ensure that everything I’m doing is working toward my ultimate goal of being a storyteller. As part of that, I’ve decided to be more actively engaged online. This will help me find and build a community, which is an important part of doing what I want. I want to interact with like-minded people who can encourage me to stay the course and drive me to pursue my passions. What better place to find these individuals than the Booktube community?
The New Focuses
So, what are these new focuses that I mentioned? I said that there will be three core focuses on this channel: discussions/advice surrounding stories, story reviews, and personal stories. Here, I’ll clarify what I mean by those three focuses and what you can expect from them. My current intent is to release one piece of content (in two forms: video and blog) three days a week. Each piece will hit on one of the three core focuses I am listing below. Even if all three of these don't necessarily appeal to you, I hope that one of them is something you'll be eager to see in the future.
Discussions and Advice
My first focus is going to be centered around offering advice that I have gained from several years of doing things like writing and telling stories. I used to be falsely under the impression that I didn’t have anything to offer in this regard, but I’m trying to be better about not diminishing my own accomplishments. I’m far from perfect, I don’t know everything, but I have gained some insight into the world of storytelling that could keep someone else from needing to learn the hard way. Why not share what I’ve found?
I’ll be kicking off my video and blog posts about this on Monday, October 4th, with a series about constructing a homebrew campaign for tabletop roleplaying games. It’s written with Dungeons and Dragons in mind since that’s what I have the most experience with in this regard, but I believe the principles I discuss will be applicable to any tabletop roleplaying game that’s made for building your own settings and quests.
Story Reviews
I’m specific about calling this story reviews and not book reviews because I’m leaving myself open to review multiple sorts of stories, not just those found written on pages. Books will be my primary focus, but every once in a while there will likely be a movie, game, or television show that I’d like to take time to review. You can expect the majority of the reviews on this channel to be focused on books, but there will be other mediums I review from time to time.
My standard for reviewing will be a five-star format, like what you would find on Amazon or the widely-loathed Good Reads. I’ll reiterate this a few times, maybe even before many of my reviews, but three stars means average. If you think that average is bad, that’s a personal opinion. I think an average story is fine, it doesn’t disappoint me greatly and it doesn’t blow me away, but it’s still fine.
I’ll break down why I’m assigning particular star values to each story in each review and will discuss--without spoilers--my thoughts on the book as a whole. I have a few specific points that I will touch on and discuss with each review. They are World-Building (how well the author builds the world), The World (referring to my thoughts on the world the author built), Pacing, Characters, Plot, Writing, and finally my Overall Thoughts.
Personal Stories
The "Personal Stories" focus could really be referred to as a miscellaneous area. These videos are going to be about things I do, places I go, and random thoughts or ideas I have. I’ll talk about trips I take, the progress I’ve made on my current book or other projects, and other various topics. I have plans to do things like rank video games in a series, read some of my old writing, and even be transparent about the progress I’m making with building an online presence. The Personal Stories content, which will be released on Fridays, is always going to be content that gives you more insight into who I am than anything else I produce.
Consistency
My intention is to record videos and write posts well in advance so that I can manage consistent uploads while still allowing for plenty of recovery and rest. I’m currently working on developing that collection of videos and posts. I even have a tentative schedule planned for what content I’ll be reviewing in the coming months! Right now, my intention is to upload my discussion/advice videos on Mondays, my reviews on Wednesdays, and my more personal content on Fridays. This post falls under personal content, which is why I'm putting it out on a Friday.
Conclusion
Thanks so very much for taking the time to check out this content and learn what my channel and website will be focused on from here on out. My first real upload is going to be coming on Monday. It’ll be an introduction and overview to the upcoming homebrew campaign creation series I’m workshopping, which I’m really excited about. Following that will be my first book review, focused on The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter. If either of those interests you or if you just want to support me, you can subscribe and obliterate the like button (or just gently click on it) for the video version of this content over on my channel. You can also find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram with the handle TLBainter. I’m most active on Instagram. Those links are at the bottom of this post!
Whatever form it comes in, I appreciate your support and I look forward to seeing where this goes!