The main goal of this chapter–since it’s really just a continuation of the last chapter, is to make us believe that a boy might very well be able to slay a dragon. The mechanism I chose to do that was a sword fight. The good news is that’s an action scene, which you know I love. But there is a “however” attached to it. My tendency when writing action scenes is to become too technical with my description of events. The result when that happens is something that should be exciting to read becomes tedious. I once go stuck for three weeks trying to find an engaging way to explain how someone picked a lock. The problem resides with the way my brain works. I like to make sure things are as plausible as possible, so I always work them out step, by step, by step, by….get the picture? Then for some inane or insane reason I try to write every one of those steps into the story. At this point, before you click on the chapter, you’re probably hoping to hear that I didn’t do that here. Sadly, all I can tell you is that I tried to keep from going on ad nauseam about how the battle played out, while focusing more on why Shahdow was able or unable to do certain things. Still, I’m expecting that this chapter will be one that needs more editing than usual.
Well, not as bad as I was envisioning, but I still felt like I was reading a “how to” manual for a lot of the chapter. I will need to find a way to make the reader feel like they’re watching a sword fight instead of trying to figure out what movement is happening at the moment. Still, I think the overall flow of events will work, and I like the foreshadowing that takes place at the end when Shahdow is looking at the tapestry, even though that paragraph contained the worst writing in the chapter.
Since I’m writing this in December, let me wish you a Merry Christmas,
Mike
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