I believe that in some respects a story writes itself. What I mean by that is once you’ve got your characters set and you place them into a scene, they need to behave in a way true to themselves–that’s the problem I ran into last chapter with Prince Juhstice; he wasn’t and it will have to be fixed. With this next chapter I felt the need to bring the former Golden Arm Dougherty to life and I was also needing to deal with the dilemma of Ohrder knowing that Sir Dougherty was back on the scene and what he would do about it. I just couldn’t in any way envision him just sitting by and waiting to see what would happen, even though he’d just told the royal siblings to do exactly that. Then I started constructing what this reunion might look like in my head and every way I played it out it ended up taking on a much more somber tone than the rest of the story has to this point. Then the question became…is that alright? I hope the answer is yes, because the scene is a focal point in the subplot about Ehlsewhere’s internal conflicts. As is the follow on scene were we get our first glimpse of one of the principle antagonists, Sir Behkworth. Because both scenes are needed to progress the story, I’m hoping they don’t require a complete revamping.
After the fiasco of the last chapter, I was dreading reading this one. I’ll say up front though that, overall, I think it’s a strong chapter. And while the tone is definitely more serious than anything that’s come before, I think it works. Truthfully, I feel the interaction between Dougerty and Ohrder was so engaging that I can’t wait to get them back together. One of the things I wanted to accomplish with Dougerty’s character development was showing that he’s every bit the formidable man that Ohrder describe to us in the last chapter, and I think I pulled that off. The second scene between the king and Sir Behkworth needs work. I’m okay with what happened, but the way it happened was just a little too whimsical, especially following on the heels of the Dougerty/Ohrder encounter. So, my final take…scene one gets a light touch up while scene two gets a rework.
May the Lord bless your day,
Mike
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