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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/24qaj47:
Iiii went to bed at a normal human hour [TMI: so I could get epically laid], and did not finish the chapter last night. [Clearly my life is just one unrelenting hellscape, right? Poor me!]
I’ve taken it from a too-skimpy 4,000ish words up to *checks* a, hm. Oh. Over 10k words, so, I have two choices.
#1 spent the rest of the day finishing the scene where Poe is having a slumber party in a hangar with a bunch of cadets and BB-8
or #2 cut the two Poe and cadets scenes and publish the chapter as-is, closer to 8k in length.
Either scenario nets us a chapter update today, but #2 would have it probably be at lunch and #1 more likely in the evening.
I don’t have any method of doing polls or anything so I’m going to just do what seems right to me. (The Poe-and-cadets scenes are kind of low-impact compared to the rest, and may not actually serve much to advance the plot. I thought I’d have more character revelations but I haven’t. They’re actually the kind of thing I’d rather do several refining passes on. But! They wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the story, I don’t think, because of timeline, so they’re a side-story I’ll either tell now or not at all within the context of the story. They’d make excellent cut scene material, but so far I haven’t uncovered any of the information i would need them to convey to advance the story. I need to take a long look at where else that information can get conveyed. So far all the scenes are telling the reader is that cadets are cute and poe is having some troubles but is generally a decent guy. Like, … duh?)
It’s a dilemma. So– chapter 7 is forthcoming but what good is life without a little drama. The delay and writing everything in this order means you get to meet the Outer Rim gang Kes used to hang with [Frontera; I never came up with a better name, but this is a universe wherein starfighter pilots are named for Beastie Boys albums so I could do worse than a random word], and Kes’s old friend Etto. (Because what this story needed, clearly, was more middle-aged Iberican gangsters with facial tattoos. What this tells you, though, is that Etto is a very-young Iberican gangster with facial tattoos in the prequel story of Kes and Shara, and you should look forward to that because he is adorable.)
“I lost everyone on Hosnia!” Etto shouted. “My wife! My daughter! My grandson! Hundreds of my friends, my colleagues, my clan! You are not the only one, Kes. If even one of my family had been spared to me I would not quarrel with them!”
Rage or not, Kes had been Etto’s friend for his entire adult life, and he stared at Etto’s ravaged face, through the mask of tattooed markings, and finally recognized some of the fresh ones as bereavement markings, and said, “I’m sorry, Etto.”
“My grandson was born sick,” Etto said, quiet and sad. “They moved to Hosnia to be nearer to the hospital. He was better and was doing well and they said he would be perfect in another few months, and he’d be able to live anywhere, so we could go home. But Hosnia is gone and everyone who was on it. Including him. Before he ever got to live.”
“I’m sorry,” Kes said. He’d known about the grandson, he remembered. Norasol had sent a care package. He’d included booze. “I had been afraid you were dead too, Etto. It was a relief to see your name on the manifest.”
“I wish I had been with them,” Etto said.
Iiii went to bed at a normal human hour [TMI: so I could get epically laid], and did not finish the chapter last night. [Clearly my life is just one unrelenting hellscape, right? Poor me!]
I’ve taken it from a too-skimpy 4,000ish words up to *checks* a, hm. Oh. Over 10k words, so, I have two choices.
#1 spent the rest of the day finishing the scene where Poe is having a slumber party in a hangar with a bunch of cadets and BB-8
or #2 cut the two Poe and cadets scenes and publish the chapter as-is, closer to 8k in length.
Either scenario nets us a chapter update today, but #2 would have it probably be at lunch and #1 more likely in the evening.
I don’t have any method of doing polls or anything so I’m going to just do what seems right to me. (The Poe-and-cadets scenes are kind of low-impact compared to the rest, and may not actually serve much to advance the plot. I thought I’d have more character revelations but I haven’t. They’re actually the kind of thing I’d rather do several refining passes on. But! They wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the story, I don’t think, because of timeline, so they’re a side-story I’ll either tell now or not at all within the context of the story. They’d make excellent cut scene material, but so far I haven’t uncovered any of the information i would need them to convey to advance the story. I need to take a long look at where else that information can get conveyed. So far all the scenes are telling the reader is that cadets are cute and poe is having some troubles but is generally a decent guy. Like, … duh?)
It’s a dilemma. So– chapter 7 is forthcoming but what good is life without a little drama. The delay and writing everything in this order means you get to meet the Outer Rim gang Kes used to hang with [Frontera; I never came up with a better name, but this is a universe wherein starfighter pilots are named for Beastie Boys albums so I could do worse than a random word], and Kes’s old friend Etto. (Because what this story needed, clearly, was more middle-aged Iberican gangsters with facial tattoos. What this tells you, though, is that Etto is a very-young Iberican gangster with facial tattoos in the prequel story of Kes and Shara, and you should look forward to that because he is adorable.)
“I lost everyone on Hosnia!” Etto shouted. “My wife! My daughter! My grandson! Hundreds of my friends, my colleagues, my clan! You are not the only one, Kes. If even one of my family had been spared to me I would not quarrel with them!”
Rage or not, Kes had been Etto’s friend for his entire adult life, and he stared at Etto’s ravaged face, through the mask of tattooed markings, and finally recognized some of the fresh ones as bereavement markings, and said, “I’m sorry, Etto.”
“My grandson was born sick,” Etto said, quiet and sad. “They moved to Hosnia to be nearer to the hospital. He was better and was doing well and they said he would be perfect in another few months, and he’d be able to live anywhere, so we could go home. But Hosnia is gone and everyone who was on it. Including him. Before he ever got to live.”
“I’m sorry,” Kes said. He’d known about the grandson, he remembered. Norasol had sent a care package. He’d included booze. “I had been afraid you were dead too, Etto. It was a relief to see your name on the manifest.”
“I wish I had been with them,” Etto said.
