Newsflash: August 5

It's August! When did that happen?? I've been working on Royal Affairs - more sporadically than I'd have liked because of some medical issues (this is beginning to become a refrain, which is very annoying - but though unpleasant I've recovered).

ANYWAY, medical stuff aside, I've been doing lots of work on romantic and friendship scenes for Chapter 9 and Royal Affairs is now at 225,253 words. The pace of the game is going to pick up massively at the end of the chapter, which is going to be a big cliffhanger, and Chapter 10 - so this is when you can have some emotional time with the characters before everything kicks off.

I went through a lot of back-and-forth about what sort of thing to have in these scenes. In the equivalent Creme de la Creme chapter, Engagement Season, there are a lot of engagement scenes with each of the characters and I started off thinking it would have the same pattern - I even outlined it in code that way. But as I started writing, I realised that didn't work for all of the characters, and wouldn't quite feel right; it also felt repetitive when I was writing. So there are now two characters who you can get engaged to in this chapter, and a few whom you can sleep with if you want, but others have different sorts of conversations. All the scenes are about developing emotional connection and intimacy in some way, and I really feel like I've learned something. Some of the characters have spent a lot of the game being careful to put across a particular image and not necessarily being fully open with the MC - Hyacinthe and Javi in particular - and in this chapter I've felt able to peel into what's really on their minds.

And also you can make out with the characters a bunch if you want to. Hyacinthe and Beaumont especially have tended to be quite restrained in that regard and it's interesting writing them in that sort of moment.

My goal for the next fortnight is! To! Finish! Drafting! This! Chapter! It's been a long one and I'm eager to get into sorting out MANY plot threads that I've been busy setting up. I can't believe I'm getting towards the end - this chapter has been a lot of inching up the rollercoaster slope to get to the top, and Chapters 10-11 will be zooming down. It's just been a case of slooooowly getting to that high point!