"Where should I start rereading Summer Days and Evening Flames?" · 5:30am Jan 18th, 2013
I've been getting this question a few times recently, and... yeah, it's kind of a valid question. To answer it, I figured I'd take a few moments to abuse my forum explain some of the statistics of my rewrite process:
For starters, I split Summer Days and Evening Flames into two separate stories, and for good reasons. During this rewrite process (and I'm not forgetting that Garnot did some work, but I reworded almost the entire story after his preliminary revisions, so I have no qualms in claiming full ownership at this stage), I shortened a lot of scenes that were basically "Gilda sitting around her cave" (girl needs a hobby, I swear. Next story: Gilda enters a knitting competition). At the same time I did this, I cut and rejoined scenes into a new logical fashion, and I also added about eight or so new scenes, averaging at least one per chapter. So, while the final word count of Summer Days lies at around 70k words, I'd estimate that at least 10k of that is new, never-before-seen material*.
*Excludes my pre readers.
After Summer Days will come Evening Flames, which is... basically, over 80% new material. If you've been following the story since it was originally posted, I rewrote 80% of Chapter 8, split Chapter 9 up into four chapters, halved those segments (cutting old), then doubled them (adding new). Then, I added a completely new chapter (9.5?) before I rewrote half of chapter 10... and then, finally, I split chapter 11 into two halves, said "Fuck it" at that point, and rewrote them from scratch.
Confused yet? Here's a chart:
Anyhow, the short answer to this question is, "Chapter 7 of Summer Days. Chapter 7 is the last chapter of the story that remains mostly intact, and while you're missing out on a lot of cool stuff in Chapter 6, Chapter 7 is where you'll best be able to start re-reading and not be left behind as to why new scenes and actions are unfolding the way they are.
I'mma say fuck it and re-read the whole thing. 'tis too good a story for any other option.
I been rereading the whole thing, and I have not regretted a single second of it.
Wait what?
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People keep asking "when is this story going to catch up to where it was on Equestria Daily." This is as simple an answer as I can produce. It involves alternate timelines, author insanity, and a knitting competition.
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I think people ask this because they assume that these chapters have basically been already mostly written (since you're basically republishing what you've already written) but don't take into account things like the editing process. Since you're re-writing a lot.
Thank you!!
I don't want to think about the details, i'll just re-read it all
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Yeah, I mean... it's a valid question. I just don't think there's really a simple answer to it other than. *Points up at that clusterfuck*
Try to avoid spawning Yarnthulu please.
...
I'm guessing you've seen this long-dead story before given you comment, but just in case.
Gilda Versus Knitting.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/3562/gilda-versus-knitting
I was wondering why the story said "Complete" at the bottom, despite missing what seemed like most of its content. Good to see the rest is on its way in a new, updated form.
As a side note, this was one of the first long-format fics I really enjoyed. I'm glad to see it getting a conclusion.