This chapter needs to be BIG, monumentally big! I knew that coming in. After all, it’s the first true battle against Khaos, the dragon. My main goal was to set the tone that this war was going to be epic; and not just epic, but insidious too. I believe that true evil, the evilest evil, doesn’t come at you the way you would expect it to, and that when it does appear you find yourself wondering if there’s anything that you can possibly do to stop it. With that in mind, I asked myself what the enemy’s greatest weapon is, and I think most of us would agree, it’s finding ways to use our own thoughts and feelings against us. Fortunately, I had already set things up for Khaos to be able to do that, I just needed to find a way to bring it alive with my keyboard. Let’s see if I managed to pull it off.
EHLSEWHERE Chapter Thirty Seven
This chapter was never intended to be lighthearted, from the opening paragraph it was supposed to be a tragedy, to leave us anxious about the future of Ehlsewhere and our favorite characters. Well, I got the gloom and doom part down, just not in the way I wanted to. The whole thing was a travesty of writing. I think a little story I did in the fifth grade about a day in a bee’s life was better written. So…what went wrong? First, I obviously didn’t spend enough working though the various–and excessively numerous, scenes in this chapter. The initial one, Khao’s incursion into people’s minds was ‘acceptable”, but only as a premise. I’ll keep the method the same, but his message and the delivery needs work. As for the rest…I think the character’s reactions to what happened are important, but there was way too much disjointed jumping around. For the rewrite–major rewrite, I’m going to have to ask myself what are the key takeaways I want to impart, and who within the story is the best one to bring that about. Maybe the biggest problem I had here was trying to do to much too soon. A dragon planting ideas in your head, and playing with your emotions while he did it, is certainly insidious enough, but likely I’d have been better served letting the various implications behind that play themselves out subtly, as the story continues to unfold. Anyway, sorry for putting you through all that, hopefully the next chapter won’t be such a mess.
All my best to you and yours,
Mike
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