X – Chapter 5 Sneak Peek, and Some 'Splainin · 9:25pm Dec 22nd, 2022
Psssst. You. Yeah, you! Wanna see something neat?
That's the next chapter of Chromatic Aberration, and it's pretty much done! All that's left is one last round of editing, and that'll be done when it's done. The final word count is going to be ~5,700, and if you read further, I'll reveal a few more details about what to expect next. Mostly because I'd like to explain why this took so long to get this done. Sorry for the lame preview, but you wont have to wait much longer!
If you don't want to know anything about the next chapter, stop reading here! There's no actual spoilers, but it might give away a few details.
The working title for this chapter was "Call and Response", mostly because it's split pretty evenly down the middle into two parts. Ironically, the "Response" was the easier part to write. Writing the "Call" is where I had trouble. From the outset, I knew this chapter in particular was going to be difficult, and I was right. There are several reasons for this.
The initial hurdle comes from one of the earliest setups in the story. One of the most common complaints I've heard while writing this story is that Rainbow Dash seems unreasonable and unlikable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about this – that's exactly how I want you to feel about her for now. I knew the way she acted was going to be a point of contention for some people, especially since some of it seems pretty out of character. That tells me I'm doing a good job with what I've done so far.
If you've been around in the comments of the last few chapters, you've probably seen me hint at a few things. More specifically, I've stated that this coming chapter reveals why (or at least part of why) Dash has been so abrasive to Sunset thus far. Naturally, if I'm going to reveal something like this, Dash's reasoning needs to be proportional to her attitude and treatment of Sunset. More importantly, Sunset's previous actions need to be kept proportional as well – bad enough to make Dash's reactions make sense, but not bad enough to make Sunset seem cartoonishly/irredeemably evil. On top of that, Sunset's actions have to fit within the tone of the story overall. I'm not even sure if all of this paragraph makes sense, but the main point I'm trying to make here is that there are a lot of moving parts here. Nudging something in one direction will nudge something else in another, and maintaining balance is a constant struggle.
Much of the first half of this chapter involves a lot of action (physical confrontation to be more specific), and this has presented a couple problems. Writing action has always been pretty tough for me. This is more than likely a symptom of the fact that, for the most part, a lot of what I read is drama/romance. Things like body language, actions during/between dialog, emotional descriptors – that's what (I feel) are things I'm good at. When it comes to physical actions and reactions, my writing gets pretty stilted and mechanical. So I ended up going through the first part of this chapter numerous times. I'm not exaggerating when I say the first half of this chapter went through thirteen different iterations before I was finally happy with it, and even that last iteration took a considerable amount of effort to make work.
Circling back to the previous point, keeping this action consistent with the tone of the story (and to a lesser extent the source material) has been challenging to say the least. This isn't helped by my aforementioned struggle with writing physical confrontation. I've read quite a few stories that get ridiculously violent, and more often than not, it makes things feel weird. I'm not a stickler for tonal consistency in other people's writing – if sudden violence, blood and guts is what floats your boat then you should absolutely sail that sea – but it helps me enjoy something more when things feel consistent, and it's something I try to pay close attention to in my own writing. This chapter requires edge, but I put a lot of care into not making it edgy.
Thankfully, I didn't have to overcome many of these struggles alone, and I feel the need to give credit where it's due. When all my initial ideas failed to make the cut, I reached out to EileenSaysHi for help with workshopping how things should happen. After a quick exchange, they really helped crack this open for me. Once I had a working rough draft, I was graciously assisted by my girlfriend NudistSquid, who did a lot of work to smooth out the chapter (especially the first half).
In the future, the next chapters shouldn't take this long to come out. As stated in the beginning, I knew this one was going to be tough. Hopefully, all the agonizing will have paid off, and you'll all enjoy the chapter when it drops sometime Soon™.
To round things off, I'm still working on my next short story as well. I've recently come up with a name for it – Closer – and I hope to have it all out sometime next month. Why do you think it's called Closer? Do you pronounce it like "to come closer" or "that was the closer"? Speculate! 
When that one is finished, I'll probably drop it all at once instead of one chapter at a time over time. All the roughs have been done for a bit, but I put it down for a bit so I could focus on this chapter out soon.
Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for reading, and happy holidays to all my wonderful readers and anyone else who's reading this! 
Damn, closers comin all at once??
N thank u for keepin us posted as always!!!!!
Hyyyype