Jul
20th
2013
Start of Part 3 · 5:15pm Jul 20th, 2013
So, last week I posted chapter 29 of The Book of Friendship, starting on part 3.
That was a difficult chapter to write, for a number of reasons. I actually had to make a lot of changes in response to editor criticism. Believe it or not, the original draft was even more mopey than the version that went up, and had a lot less of Brother White in it. In general, some scenes were trimmed, some were removed, and some were revamped to lighten the tone.
Still, I'm afraid it wasn't quite as funny as I would've liked it to be. But I've started on chapter 30, and I can confidently say that this one is much funnier. Pinkie Promise.
The strength of the Book of friendship has always been the contrast between the humorous situations the Brothers manage to get themselves in, or their positive stance despite the hostile dark world they're now a part of.
29 gave a good insight into the Brothers apart and the workings of the Unicorn Floating fortress. It was also rather nice to finally see some of their attempts pay off in the soldiers intending to restart the meetings. It had it's endearing moments with Clip. Overall it continued the same level of quality that the readers are used to and I personally enjoyed it. I'll be looking forward to chapter 30, though knowing the series so far things either get worse first or afterwards and brother Scroll did warn of an incoming attack.
Do your chapters really change that much from initial pitch to final version? How do you determine which criticism from your editors to follow up on and where to simply follow your original idea instead?
1222860
Usually I don't do big revamps of chapters unless there's something really wrong. Usually, the editors more or less like what they see, as long as it's decently funny and advances the plot.
Chapter 29's changes were not particularly huge revamps. It covers more or less the same plot points, though I did make alterations. While the story can take a dark turn, an entire chapter of Scroll and Tap moping after all the stuff in chapter 28 would just be a turn-off. The chapter in its final form is still fairly serious, but believe me when I say I cut out a lot of pointless angst. For example, the original draft had another scene between Quake and Tap that I decided to cut, mainly because the story already has plenty of creepy scenes between the two of them. The scene itself contributed nothing to the plot and just felt like cheap exploitation.
The biggest revamp of a chapter I ever did was with chapter 22. The original version of that chapter had pretty much nothing happening. My editors pointed this out to me, and so I rewrote the entire thing from scratch. And I'm glad I did, too; I feel that chapter 22 is one of the strongest in the fic, on both the serious and silly sides.