No C&C release likely before end of the month... · 9:57pm Apr 18th, 2023
For two reasons. First, the combined chapter keeps growing—now 21.2k words—and I’m finding it very mentally taxing to write. And second, part of the reason it’s taxing is I don’t have much mental energy to spare right now. Work is very difficult and stressful at the moment due to a Saturday deadline (that might get pushed back a week), and I’m coming home most nights frazzled and in no mood to do anything creative. Or be social online a lot of the time.
As for why the chapter keeps growing, the main reason is the multiple perspectives I’m trying to incorporate. To this point, the entire story has been seen exclusively through Gilda’s eyes, but the use of shared memory replay means that for this one chapter, I can show Gilda—and in turn, the reader—the events of the past day through the eyes of Fortrakt, Giraldi and Tribune Cipio along with Karin Kazal and Obsidian Ire.
It’s the sheer number of new perspectives that is making this daunting. I’m considering dialing back the number of perspectives since that’s an awful lot of information not just for me to write, but readers to digest. But then I run into a roadblock where it doesn’t make sense for certain characters not to be there for one reason or another, or I simply want them there for planned actions or lines.
Another possibility would be altering the terms of the memory replay, which I find myself leaning towards. Coming up with some way that the Queen can exclude certain individuals from the replay even as they’re allowed to experience it. I’ll have to mull it over a bit more, but for the time being, I’m only able to work on this in dribbles because work is so bad right now.
After this, I’ll need a vacation. Any cheap tickets to the Equestria portal near the Philippines available? I’d also like to visit Arnau and see the Gryphon Kingdom’s Hall of Heroes.
I would only replay those memories which are integral to pushing the plot along. If it's a situation where you have an information feed coming into Gilda's mind, you can come up with some excuse to sever that connection once the plot-relevant details have been filled out -- the Pensive scene in Harry Potter book 5 comes to mind as an example. When Harry didn't need to see any more scenes, JKR just wrote in Dumbledore pulling Harry out of the replay machine.
Just a thought. Hang in there!
Tbh, you do really need a small vacations after this considering how much you push yourself for this story.
In regards to the multiple POVs part.
While having a lot of them does make the story more interesting, while also showing more personalities to some of the characters of the story. While you did so good so far with this,you should be careful how much you implement this.
One of my few complains of Firefly, especially on the second part,was the fact that the story had too many POVs of the characters, especially on the fact that in the most of them, you basically described the same thing /event without the need of it, while also sometimes cutting it on the progress of the story. That & suddenly cutting in while also having those mail discussions between the characters in the future saying 'how bad the war was' and 'while we where enemies, I can't but recognise your bravery' that tended to drag too much.
I know that that's not what you are planning with the next chapter of this story(plus with Firefly you where different authors writing different chapters etc) , but I just wanted to write it, just so I can let you know.
We will have to wait for more, it will be worth the waiting time since i have yet to read a chapter in this story that wasn't worth the waiting thanks to the awesome content
Stay healthy
👍
hey, just take care of yourself in the first place.
forcing yourself doing something you usually like when tired or stressed, only cause it to become a chore later down the road
Big thank you for the regular updates on your Progress.
I wouldn't mind if you take a vacation.
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Appreciate the advice. In the end, that’s exactly what I did, paring it to three non-Gilda perspectives, using various excuses to pull the others away. And I think they worked quite well.
I did. Appreciate your support and your prereading pass on the chapter.
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Coming back to this two weeks later, now that the chapter is finally released. Sorry for the delay in response.
Or not-so-small, as I’m planning my first real vacation of the year in three weeks.
Oh, believe me, I agree. This thing gave me fits while writing it, until I finally figured out whose perspective to keep and whose to ignore. Unfortunately, I’d already fully written one additional perspective (Fortrakt’s) and part of another’s (Obsidian Ire) by then. Who knows; maybe I’ll find a way to incorporate them later.
Sorry to hear.
I thought I was doing pretty well balancing it out, using the story-within-a-story format I’d already used for things like Five Star Service. I’ll try to be more cognizant of that if and when the story resumes.
Understood, and thanks. As the new chapter is out, you be the judge whether I incorporated the additional perspectives properly.
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Wait no longer! It’s out now, and thanks for the longpost you left on it. Always appreciated.
Doing my best despite heavy job and writing workloads.
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You’re right.
Thankfully, I finally found my way through this mess of a chapter and turned it into something good, settling on what to keep and what to exclude. But you be the judge.
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Appreciated. Planning a real one for myself in three weeks.
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Yeah the chapter was good, alright!
And Again, I hope you have a nice vac after you're done with it!