Good day everybody.
If you’re here for the first time I bid you welcome to my blog. This is my little home in the internet, so please make yourself comfortable. There’s coffee and biscuits (somewhere) and lovely house guests. 😉
Today, I’m just going to write a little about why I decided to do a rewrite on Chapter 18. If you haven’t noticed, quite a lot of time has passed between 18 and what should’ve been 19. It was purely because I had been struggling trying to make Chapter 19 work. In general, I’m very fortunate when it comes to my writing, because I do it about as easily as most people make coffee or breathe. I know where my stories go, I know what I want and I know how to get it. It was then very troubling to me when I sat with Chapter 19 and realized that i could not make it work. I tried very hard. I started a paragrapth and got to about 1000 words then realized that I didn’t like it. I deleted it, and started again. No success, so I scrapped that bit and tried a third time. When that didn’t work, I realized that I had a problem on my hands or rather, I admitted to myself that I had a problem. I had known it when I wrote Chapter 18(1) but refused to awknowledge it because I had been pretty rushed to put the chapter up.
The truth was that I had once again tried to push my characters to do things the way I’d have done it instead of trying to make them do it their way. When I realized this, I thought that I could work around the problem, but the truth was that I needed to rewrite the whole chapter. I’m at a very critical part of the story – where the main mission, ie – getting Kim’s mother home, is the in process of being completed (or so we hope, no telling what might happen). I need to start wrapping up some threads, get in the required action and still have my characters whole at the end of it. I know how this will end, and it’s almost important that I start implementing that to leave room for, yes it’s going to happen, a sequel. With the chapter that I wrote, that just wasn’t possible.
I am losing a bit of dialogue I really liked, namely:
Kim stepped closer and rested a gentle hand on Shego’s wrist, feeling as if she was gripping a stick of dynamite that could explode at any second. “We have to,” she said softly. “You said that I’m not a hero Shego, not here – but the truth is, you became a hero again the moment you decided to help me. The moment you decided to risk your reputation and your own neck to help me find my mother. You didn’t turn me into a vigilante villain, you’ve become the reluctant hero, responding above and beyond the call of duty.” She tried to entwine her fingers with Shego but the woman jerked back suddenly with a curse.
I really liked that bit. I might try and work it in again, but the way it’s going it isn’t. Lol. Oh well, you win some, you loose some.
If I have caused a certain amount of irritation with the rewrite, I humbly apologize. I know how much I hate it when writers go and change something I sank my teeth into, which is why it took a lot of consideration for me to do this. Although I won’t promise it, I can assure you that this will most probably be the last time I have to do a rewrite on this story. J
Also, writing fan fiction is about learning what you can and cannot do. There’s been a big debate on the internet of late in some circles whether fan fiction is good or not and whether it does more harm than good to author’s reputations ect. I’m not going to get involved in that, but I would like to point out that if it’s done well, and innocently (ie – not exploiting the creator’s rights) then fan fiction is a wonderful way to explore your own style, to get used to the process of writing and to improve your work. This rewrite has been a wonderful exersize for me, and it’s taught me that I shouldn’t just leap into something and carry on if I know it’s wrong. 🙂 that’s not the way writing works.
We’re in the last stretch people, it can only get worse from here. I thank you for your patience and your reading,
Alyssa
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