Sometimes the easiest scenes are the hardest...

Sometimes the easiest scenes are the hardest scenes to write.

Take the closing scene in chapter 11, for example. It's not posted publicly yet, so I'll avoid actual story details; but for now suffice it to say that it's a fairly pivotal moment in the SM4200 storyline, one that I've been building toward for some time. Going in, I had a bundle of notes on the scene, but more importantly it was long ago played out in my head, repeatedly. I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Naturally, it didn't work out that way.

There were little things. The scene in my mind took place in late twilight, but when I came to write it, other story details meant that it had to happen in the morning. But that's trivial stuff. More importantly, when I came to actually write it, I had to look at it in much more logical detail than I'd ever done before. And the scene in my head just didn't work right.

There were details like: dammit, just how is the Olympus building laid out? Suddenly it became important. I spent two or three days coming up with a floor chart. At least I know how it all fits together now. (But it turns out that Itsuko's office isn't at the back of the building, the way I've had it in early chapters. Sorry; I'll do the necessary revisions.)

In the end, it came out...fairly similar to the way I'd originally pictured it. Working a bit better. And full of details I'd never pictured.

That's nothing compared to the opening of chapter 12, though. I have a lot of notes for that, too; but as I was pounding merrily away, it suddenly occurred to me: if the characters do something perfectly logical which they have good reason to do, all my carefully-plotted scenes go to hell in a handbasket. As it were.

So, I'm on my third rewrite of the opening of chapter 12. The good news is that this time I think it's working...

[Current progress report: 2776 words, and counting.]

 

Pre-reader progress report for chapter 11: I've had 4 responses so far, of 13 pre-read requests I sent out. Two of these were actual commentary; two were promises to comment later. That's fine; a 215K chapter takes time to review, I know. (Chapter 9 took two or three months to finish pre-reading, mostly due to one particular pre-reader; but boy, was the chapter improved when it was done.) But I do seem to have lost a lot more names than I'd hoped.