Update: Am Slow, Not Dead · 10:09pm March 3rd
I probably should have said this a few weeks ago, but I took an unintended break from rewriting things.
Translation: I burned myself out writing close to 50,000 words of mostly-original narrative over the span of two and a half months.
I’m still working on Chapter 7, just slowly. I wasn’t able to focus on writing for most of February, so any progress at all feels good right now, even if only 50-100 words at a time. Chapter 7 was one of the most difficult for me to write originally, and although I know it will go much faster this time around, it’s still difficult. I have to completely redo a character introduction, I have to make the chapter shorter, and I have to dramatically change that character’s, ya know, characterization.
For those of you who remember Argent Nimbus’s original debut, suffice to say that he will be much less irritating and bombastic this time around, and his actions will be more grounded and logical. He really was only ever a plot device, a means to show what is going on, which means, unfortunately, that his ultimate role in the story needs to be more practical. He isn’t the antagonist, just a messenger. He is there to provide exposition, really; I just need to make it worth your reading time.
That means, somewhat counterintuitively, that I need to cut out most of the exposition originally in the chapter, most especially that which Night Cloud provided. There is no reason for Night Cloud to be the expositor. I had that same problem with her in Chapter 5: I used her storytelling/bonding time with Crystal as a means to dump lore down the reader’s throat—and not just lore, but ill-conceived lore. I tried to frame it as Night Cloud wanting to teach Crystal things, which I sincerely believe can work as a way to frame things narratively, but the attempt was clumsy at best.
Let that be a lesson to any prospective writers: Yes, it is completely okay to have exposition in your story, but you must keep it organic and brief, lest you ruin the pacing and cause your reader to want to skip ahead. Even if you put the exposition in a literal aside from the narrator, and never try to conceal it or frame it as anything but what it is, you still need to keep it short and sweet.
Also, I’ve been playing Helldivers 2 for two weeks. I haven’t had as much fun in an online game in years. It’s fantastic, and it runs remarkably well, given I have the exact CPU specified as the minimum required. Yes, my PC is ancient.
