Yet Another Clover Progress Update

I keep saying how many chapters are left, and I keep being wrong.

A few days ago I finally finished the first draft of the final chapter. As it crossed the finish line it stood at a staggering 22k words. And yes, it's still likely to continue growing as I edit it.

Since then I've been pondering exactly what work it needs to be completely finished. Since it's so big, the short answer is quite a lot. It has some major questions that still need to be properly thought out before I can even know exactly what the end should be. I've showed it to some of my prereaders to get their opinion. But before we even get to the questions the consensus opinion seems to be that this is really too long to post as a single chapter, very difficult to wrap one's head around, and that it should be split up into smaller parts.

Of course, taking a whole and splitting it up in a functional manner is its own challenge, so I've had to ponder how to do that. The most traditional option is to make three acts, but this chapter does not really divide into three very well. It has four acts and an epilogue, so at the furthest extreme it could be split into five, but that is rather much (and would result in some very small chapters). Right now the likely result seems to be to cut it into two, separated at the end of the second act, making each about 11k words.

I'm still not going to post any of it until the whole thing is completely finished, mind you. Then, when the time comes, they will be posted fairly close together, maybe one week apart.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

An apparently simple task, one you've been working up to for quite some time, has exploded in unexpected complexity.

I can think of no more fitting experience when it cones to finishing Clover's story.

[Daedalus Aegle]

4607218
The story knows what it wants to be, and it will not compromise. Thankfully I have excellent collaborators to work with.

[SIGAWESOME]

As it crossed the finish line it stood at a staggering 22k words. And yes, it's still likely to continue growing as I edit it.

You say as if this was a bad thing

4607218

I can think of no more fitting experience when it cones to finishing Clover's story.

Have the last Author's Notes encoded like Star Swirl's lecture back in chapter 1 perhaps?

Actually, scratch that. Clover needs to finally break out that alembic and make a few litres of applejack with Starswirl and share a pint together before we fade to black...