One more rewritten chapter · 8:34am Nov 30th, 2023
Hey everyone.
Well, that last chapter took 3 weeks of hard work, mostly design, but nobody has commented on it so I can't tell how anyone feels about the story so far. I'm hoping people can share their thoughts because it helps me to know how the story is being received.
At the end, I spontaneously decided to have Daisy initiate a sparring session. I was on the fence about whether to do this, but I decided what the heck let's go for it. Then the chapter started getting too long and I realized I'd have to split before the sparring rather than after like I had planned. I didn't want to drag the chapter out to four weeks. But then, I can't really tell if people care about the release schedule. Still, I'm glad it's out and now I've got chapter fourteen to write.
But since then, I realized I had no idea how to write a sparring session. I can write combat pretty well (see Flurry in Time, as all the combat scenes are mine). But sparring... that's another thing entirely because the participants are not actually trying to kill one another. This means the goals are something other than survival.
A bigger problem was the fact that Daisy is an earth pony, which means she doesn't have a sword. But Nyx has a sword and it's TK wielded. I was thinking... how the hell is Daisy supposed to defend against that? I think I've got it figured out now. I spent a couple hours yesterday in voice chat with Duvet, talking about ideas. We studied my existing fights as well as one from Fallout: Equestria, where Littlepip is put in an arena with a zebra. Sadly, that story really didn't do much to make the fight interesting. There was no choreography at all. So ultimately, I'm going to have to do this the hard way and come up with the sparring text in what hopefully ends up being engaging to read.
During this discussion, we were talking about how it's difficult to show the reader anything going on in the bayou at this point because Razor and his nefarious schemes are really not in a state that can be shown to the reader without spoiling the reveal of things as our ponies come across them later. But there is one thing I can show, which I think I can put at the chapter's start in order to break up the scenes some. The story has solely focused on the platoon since chapter eleven, so I do think it's time to reveal something new to the reader that's going on away from our ponies' awareness. I just hope I can do it in a way that doesn't disrupt the later reveals.
Once this next chapter is done, I've got ten chapters coming up that will need only minimal editing to include Dinky as well as update to any general changes I've made to the overall story. All in all, those ten chapters should be very quick to get ready for publishing.
But after that, we're back to the rewrites for the rest of the story. I've got a lot of old drafts that I can use parts of, but for the most part, we'll be in new territory as we wrap up the story.
Not sure how long I'll spend writing chapter 14. My priority is on quality rather than speed. I'm very happy with the quality of the entire story so far, and I don't want any of the chapters dragging that down. So it will take however long it takes in order to write it well.
Still, your work is apprechiated
Thanks for that.
5757255
Youre welcome
I also wonder how is Daisy going to fare dueling an alicorn. It will be interesting to see.
You shoud take enough time you need in order to keep the quality high. I will wait.
5757728
Hehe thanks! I've got my outline done so hopefully that will translate to a good chapter layout.