Shadow of the Empire: Day 06

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Only 3236 words words so far, had a stall the past couple of days. That usually happens to me, few days writing, few days of very little.

Well, it seemed for a while this project might not be novel length after all, but be much shorter. Although it also seemed what I was writing was too abbreviated to be the full story, enough that I had thoughts of finishing early and then expanding on what was written.

Last night had one of those moments of understanding, and realised I had things happening in the wrong order. Was trying to push the characters to follow what was laid out in outline, which was not working well because it went contrary to how they'd been established. Then I realised letting them go the way they were inclined to would get us to the same point, later, without having inconsistent characterisation, with a clearer sense of why their enemy is their enemy (which I'd been worried was getting lost), and getting to showcase some stuff that I was being worried was being inappropriately left out. So that's a very handy detour that'll add quite a lot of word count too.

Sadly, by the time I realised this it was 0300 and I needed to sleep. But now there is today! and... errands. But we'll get there.

As much as I say I hate the story, that it is terrible and in no way worthy of being written, I have read enough by authors to know this is a common sentiment while writing, and enough personal experience to know I feel that way about just about every story I write. So I'm not going to throw it out just because I hate it at the moment. Maybe at some other point, maybe after it is finished, if I think my assessment of its quality is a bit more enduring.

The first part of this story turned out to be more prologue than quarter of the narrative, but here's the end of it. We continue with the writing of the next part, but give 'end of story-part' priority as posting cut-off point over 'how much we wrote today'. So here's that bit, and an image:

( 819 words )