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Another piece of fan art from Ian Roll—thanks!

I haven't gotten much writing done over the last week or so; the weekend was full of other stuff I had to get done. Still, i've made some progress. I finally know what became of Venus after the little cliff-hanger at the end of the teaser, for instance! The chapter now stands at 28659 words. And counting.

I've been thinking lately about some of the story elements in SM4200 that were never planned; they just wrote themselves in, usually because I was stuck for a plot point. For example, take the years-long feud between Jupiter and Mars. Back when I was writing chapter 4, I was writing a scene with Artemis and Itsuko talking about Miyo, and suddenly realised that there was no good reason for Artemis not to bring Miyo round to the Olympus immediately. The trouble was, my outline didn't have the two meeting until chapter 8. (Just one of those plot points I'd scribled down without thinking it through: "Itsuko and Miyo finally meet.") So I invented a massive argument between them, on the spur of the moment, so that Itsuko might not want to meet Miyo yet.

Later on, of course, this caused serious repercussions. A good deal of chapter 7 was devoted to bringing the feud to a resolution, and on the whole I think it worked fairly well...and even, more to the point, fairly credibly. (Although, really, I'd have preferred to leave the two of them driven apart by a renewed feud for a couple more chapters before they finally made up. But Miyo had to be able to move into the Olympus when her parents threw her out in chapter 8, so the reunion and resolution came all within a chapter.)

What else? The church of Serenity were originally just a bunch of lunatics that I mentioned in the prelude, and never intended to refer to again. Until, half-way through chapter 6, I realised that it could be interesting if Suzue was a member. That led to a good deal more development of the Church, much of which has yet to be seen (some of it will probably be in chapter 13 or 14), right up to its ultimate role in the final dénouement.

And there's the very interesting development of Number 13 of the Serenity Council. (You haven't missed anything; this is in chapter 11.) After her questioning of the council in chapter 10, one reader suggested that she might go further, investigating them on her own. A good, logical idea, so I used it; but it turns out that it combines with a few other points rather interestingly, as well...