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negrekI thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about the latest chapter of Salvage (right here!), and hopefully future chapters as well! Knowing me this'll be the only one that gets done, but hey, at least it'll be one! There's nothing particularly spoiler-y in this chapter that will be revealed as such, but if you're interested, it's probably better to read the chapter before reading this.
I wanted to call this chapter the shortest in a long time, and although that's true, Chapter 40 is only a tiny bit longer! So although my impression has been of a ton of 8k+ chapters in a row, I guess we have had a little respite in the not-too-distant past.
This chapter was originally part of a massive 20k chunk that represented what I might call the "find Nate" mini-arc. Although I really, really wanted to get it down to a reasonable size to publish as a single continuous chapter, I eventually had to accept that it probably wasn't going to fall below about 13-14k. It didn't work out quite as neatly as might be hoped, since we have this relatively short little chapter, and then the next's going to be about 10k and have the lion's share of my favorite stuff in it, but so it goes.
The section in Saffron City is probably my favorite part of the chapter, and also was the easiest to get through and had the fewest elements changed from the initial draft. This part of the story has always been here--Nate being separated from his pokémon and the child helping reunite them somehow--but the means of getting it done have changed a lot. A very, very early conception involved Togetic enlisting some other individuals of her kind and going trying to find a place where happiness wasn't. :P
The conversation with Absol and Raticate started out being two entirely separate scenes, but I felt like they were covering much of the same ground and ended up merging them. Something I definitely noticed through editing this section and some of the writing I did for NaNo is a tendency to have characters break out for private conversations away from a larger group, since I didn't really want everybody to be able to butt in on them all the time. I simply have too many characters and, for the rest of the story, often a lot of them all in the same place at once. Finding elegant ways to deal with this is definitely going to continue to be a challenge! There's still a bit of that in this chapter (and quite a lot in the next, sigh), but I think working Absol into part of the scene with Rats helped a little, at least, to keep the number of "characters go off into the woods to yell at each other" scenes down.
I was uncertain about leaving the child's idea at the end of the chapter ambiguous. Usually I don't like to do that, especially when we're in a character's POV, so there's no reason we wouldn't know exactly what they were thinking, but I think it'll be more fun for people to come to the realization of what it's going for over the course of the next chapter rather than be anticipating what's going to happen the whole time--and maybe even manage to forget about it during the early part of the chapter, which will make the payoff a more dramatic (but hopefully reasonable!) surprise.
All in all, this chapter still feels rather rough to me, but it's been in the shop long enough! I wanted to get something out before the end of 2020, and am very pleased that I managed. With two minutes to spare, even! Given my usual relationship with deadlines, that's actually very impressive.
Editing is already underway on Chapter 45. It's a pretty beefy chapter, but also a big favorite for me--which hasn't necessarily made editing easier, but I think I'm going to enjoy the finished product. Shooting to have it out in two weeks.
Happy new year! Here's to a happier 2021 for everyone.
I wanted to call this chapter the shortest in a long time, and although that's true, Chapter 40 is only a tiny bit longer! So although my impression has been of a ton of 8k+ chapters in a row, I guess we have had a little respite in the not-too-distant past.
This chapter was originally part of a massive 20k chunk that represented what I might call the "find Nate" mini-arc. Although I really, really wanted to get it down to a reasonable size to publish as a single continuous chapter, I eventually had to accept that it probably wasn't going to fall below about 13-14k. It didn't work out quite as neatly as might be hoped, since we have this relatively short little chapter, and then the next's going to be about 10k and have the lion's share of my favorite stuff in it, but so it goes.
The section in Saffron City is probably my favorite part of the chapter, and also was the easiest to get through and had the fewest elements changed from the initial draft. This part of the story has always been here--Nate being separated from his pokémon and the child helping reunite them somehow--but the means of getting it done have changed a lot. A very, very early conception involved Togetic enlisting some other individuals of her kind and going trying to find a place where happiness wasn't. :P
The conversation with Absol and Raticate started out being two entirely separate scenes, but I felt like they were covering much of the same ground and ended up merging them. Something I definitely noticed through editing this section and some of the writing I did for NaNo is a tendency to have characters break out for private conversations away from a larger group, since I didn't really want everybody to be able to butt in on them all the time. I simply have too many characters and, for the rest of the story, often a lot of them all in the same place at once. Finding elegant ways to deal with this is definitely going to continue to be a challenge! There's still a bit of that in this chapter (and quite a lot in the next, sigh), but I think working Absol into part of the scene with Rats helped a little, at least, to keep the number of "characters go off into the woods to yell at each other" scenes down.
I was uncertain about leaving the child's idea at the end of the chapter ambiguous. Usually I don't like to do that, especially when we're in a character's POV, so there's no reason we wouldn't know exactly what they were thinking, but I think it'll be more fun for people to come to the realization of what it's going for over the course of the next chapter rather than be anticipating what's going to happen the whole time--and maybe even manage to forget about it during the early part of the chapter, which will make the payoff a more dramatic (but hopefully reasonable!) surprise.
All in all, this chapter still feels rather rough to me, but it's been in the shop long enough! I wanted to get something out before the end of 2020, and am very pleased that I managed. With two minutes to spare, even! Given my usual relationship with deadlines, that's actually very impressive.
Editing is already underway on Chapter 45. It's a pretty beefy chapter, but also a big favorite for me--which hasn't necessarily made editing easier, but I think I'm going to enjoy the finished product. Shooting to have it out in two weeks.
Happy new year! Here's to a happier 2021 for everyone.
