Extended Writing Update

My takeaways are very unrelated this week, because I spent a lot of time jumping around and filling things in for the eventual beta, plus working on Chapter 12's first draft. So I've put them in bullet points below ~ (There are some very mild spoilers for later chapters, but nothing I'd consider more than a hint)

I shooould technically be prepping Chapter 11 for its alpha but I've got time for that later. Inspiration was striking me now and I gotta follow the muse ^_^

Incidentally, I've never fully understood the concept of a muse, so if anyone has any thoughts on what mine should be feel free to assign me one 😂

Here's this week's notes (scroll to the bottom as usual for the weekly preview)

• The romances are going interestingly. I didn't expect Wren to be sleeping with MC in book 1, and I really didn't expect Rin to still not be sleeping with MC by chapter 10! Though we did have the ch 10 hookup that was heading that way, so who knows.

• I also didn't expect to find a place to mention Wren's "big backstory moment." All 3 ROs have something going on - Keo with their parents and split heritage, and Rin with being an orphan from a young age. But Wren's so darn cagey about their personal life! I just accepted it and figured okay, well, Wren will get some more development as they begin to trust MC more in book 2, and then get a ton of development in book 3 no matter what because circumstances will force it to come to light. But here we are, and in the late-game MC actually gets a major hint about what Wren's backstory! Which sets us up beautifully for book 2 having a conversation around it in early chapters.

• It's such a frustrating thing to write something while knowing it's not going to work. I had a whole end-game consequence that just wasn't fitting correctly with the skill check it used - but I couldn't figure out what to replace it with until I'd written the whole darn thing out 😭

• Analogies are interesting when I'm writing characters from different biomes. Desert, forest, and plains. The latter two have enough in common that there's not much difference, but I have to remind myself sometimes that Wren and Rin won't liken things to cacti or blazing hot summer days, and Keo/MC's more likely to refer to a domed shield as being like a terrarium, rather than a fishbowl.

Preview time:

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"Fine," (rin_heSheThey) mutter(s_r). "If things go south I'll hit on him to get him upstairs. If that doesn't work, I'll stab him."

"That's the spirit!"