Chapter 13 vs Chapter 1

I've just done a little skipping ahead, and have written the last chapter of The Shift and the first chapter of The Battle. I have had it planned this way since the beginning of this project, and so ages ago (last July?), I scripted the confrontation scene (primarily the dialogue) between Lin and Legolas. It's a crucial scene, and it is important for the reader to witness both points of view.

I hope they are different enough, and as there should be quite a gap between posting the two chapters, I hope readers don't get bored or anything. Tomorrow I think I will share it with someone and see their reaction.

Although it might be clear in my head, here are two excerpts from the chapter, just so y'all know what I am talking about!

From Chapter 13 of The Shift:

“What are you doing?” I asked, knowing that a confrontation was coming. There had been several of them over the years, but I had to be clear to him that this was the last warning I would give. I did not think I had anything else left in me to fight for him after this.

From Chapter 1 of The Battle:

“What are you doing?” she asked, and I could hear the weariness in her voice. It was the same question she had asked over and over, thousands if not millions of times throughout my lifetime.

I am so happy with the way that this scene came out! It was exactly how I wanted it to be, and while it's not the exact vision of what I had in the beginning (some three odd years ago) they never turn out to be exactly what I first envisioned.

I finished chapter 11 (I think? It's kind of short. We shall see) and I don't yet know how to tackle chapter 12, so that is why I wrote chapter 13 tonight. That said, it is now 1am and I am le tired! More tomorrow, I suppose?

April Challenges, an Update

I have posted TWO of April's five challenge fics up right now! Here are the links!

The Right Words

A Letter to Arwen, Love, the Fellowship

AND, Ally and I have been writing a completely ridiculously (hilarious) collab story together under our joint account, Shrewspeare. It is called The Remedial Fanfiction Academy, and hopefully it will be a beautiful thing when all is said and done! Here is the linky to that!

The Remedial Fanfiction Academy

Do hop over, review, and love on the stories.

I have found myself at a bit of a standstill with chapter 11, BUT, I have found a great deal of inspiration for the beginnings of the next story, which I should start soon. The only problem is, I have to finish this one first!

Recovering

Hoo boy, wow. Last night, I typed up the rest of chapter 9 and all of chapter 10, as well as a one-shot for the April challenge thing that Ally and I are doing, AND I rewrote something which I definitely want to include somewhere in the story, but was originally the prologue for my first draft. 6514 words went down last night. (I finally passed out around 2am.) Who knew typing things was so exhausting?

I think it had something to do with the editing I was doing simultaneously. Of course, the first draft of anything is never the best, so I was rearranging, rewriting, and striking things while I was typing... It requires a lot of brain power, I guess.

A goal of mine for this story is to write chapters that are somewhere around 5 pages long (around 2500 words). I've been going through a brief spat of writing much shorter chapters the last few years (Never Realizing and Upon Earth's Opening averaged 1100 and 1300 words per chapter, respectively).

I feel like 5 pages is a solid chapter, without been too short or too long. Siobhan would disagree with me, as she will throw chapters at me that are roughly the same length as some one shots I've done. (15-20 pages). When the time comes to edit her monster of a story (soon? Hopefully soon?) I will need to really buckle down and devote hours to it.

Chapter 10 is 9 pages long. I have no idea how it happened, it all just fell out of me over the last three weeks. It's 3700 words long right now, before Siobhan even gets to attack it with any of her various and sundry revisions, and so I am thinking of breaking it into two. There is a good mid-point to the chapter, in any case.

That is enough for tonight's update, I think. I have come to a little bit of a stump in the next chapter (11? 12?) and I'm not entirely sure how to get over it yet. We shall see...

The end is nigh!

The end! The end is near! Ahhhhh!

Not like THAT, you know, but like, the end of The Shift. It's, like, SOON. And it's like, WITHIN SIGHT.

In the last month I've written chapter 8, 9, and 10 and begun writing 11. And that's, like, WAY MORE than I've done in the last six months. Or, so it seems. I always get this way when I get to the end of the story. I furiously write and write and write until I literally burn out all of my little writing wheels in my head. I've written something between 11,000-12,000 words in less than 30 days. Which, while 50,000 words is my personal record (thanks, NaNoWriMo!) It's certainly a new level of normal productivity for me.

According to my own personal goal of finishing writing this story by the time summer starts, I have another 3 or 4 weeks to write another 2 or 3 chapters. And one of the chapter's dialogue is already entirely written and I'm thinking of making the penultimate chapter one that I've already finished writing, but will edit extensively to fit better into the story that I've actually written.

The most recent chapters have been an exercise in "See Stefanie highlight important shit!" and "See Stefanie skip centuries in each chapter!" I hope people don't get too lost!

I'm off to type up more of chapter 9, which I think I am almost finished with. Chapter 10, I realized rather late, is about 7000 words long! I have my work cut out for me.

April Challenges bring May... Productivity?

My good friend Ally and I are doing a series of challenges this month! So hopefully I will be writing a little bit more. We're requiring each other to post at least three of the stories. Possibly 5. And a sixth, if we're super productive. They'll be one-shots, 500 words or less.

More on that later, I suppose!

In other news, I'm almost finished with chapter 10! I'm loving the way it's turning out... and I can see the end in sight! (Of the story as well as the chapter...)