Day 13 Progress Report

Day 13 (August 10) - Back to work. Spent the morning working on AK's short sections. She's easy to write for too. Maybe because they're short sections? Interestingly, she has me slipping into present tense narration, and I didn't even notice until the end. I have to make sure I'm consistent.

Speaking of tenses, it's always tricky for me. When I'm writing about things remembered, that happened earlier, I tend to stick in too many "had"s. He had laughed, and she had hated him for it, etc etc. You need one, or a few, to establish that the scene is not happening now, but it's easy to fall into the trap of sticking too many in and burdening the flow.

Today's progress: Revised and expanded AK's sections. Found a plot bunny with much potential for the second half. YU decides to be a show-off instead of revealing Major Plot Secrets. Drafted through page 9 of Chapter 4 and truncated the rest. AK needs three more chapters, starting from Chapter 4, before everything converges, so this way, if the truncated part can turn into another chapter, then everything will work out perfectly. We'll see. I'm flexible with chapter endings. As long as the story keeps moving, it's not hard for readers to interpret something that's not an intentional cliffhanger as a cliffhanger. I'm not entirely happy with Chapter 4 being only 9 pages, actually, but we'll see.