I love finishing a chapter. Every time I do, no matter how smooth or difficult the writing process turned out to be it always brings a sense of accomplishment with it. And, after finishing each chapter, I tend to sit back and reflect on it and the overall story for a bit. While doing so, I tend to ask myself, “How do you think it’s going? And in this case, the answer was, “I think I’ve got a good story going here. Then, sometimes I remember to also ask myself, “How do you feel about it?” This would be as good a time as any to mention that most of my full rewrite areas in a story deal with the emotion, or lack thereof, within the events and the characters. Reflecting back on everything I’d written to this point, all sixteen chapters, I could recall a number of scenes that were emotionally charged–but not nearly enough of them. Okay, that’s what second, third, etc. drafts are for. I can live with that. But for chapter seventeen, while I had some things plot-wise that I wanted to accomplish, I determined that it needed to have some strong feelings built into it too. Now those don’t always–shouldn’t always, be good/happy feelings, the best stories entail a rollercoaster ride of emotions, but in this case, with what I needed to do to further Shahdow’s character arch, a good old ‘feel good’ chapter–it actually stretched into two chapters, seemed in order. But…did I hit the mark once I put fingers to keyboard?
Let me add a defensive caveat here; writing emotionally impacting scenes are the hardest–at least for me. So, with that in mind, I am very happy with this first draft. The writing is sloppy, needs polishing and likely repolishing, but I feel that how it played out between the two boys was very workable. I enjoyed reading the chapter and look forward to how their friendship continues to grow. I think it’s worth noting here that when I first pulled Reginhald into the story I had no intention of using him as anything but a low-level, ongoing protagonist. I’m happy that changed and I hope you are too. After all, Ehlsewhere is at its heart a feel-good redemption story.
May you and yours feel the Lord’s blessings today and everyday,
Mike
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