Episode 1 Revision Progress Log, 4/14 chapters done
I know it doesn't sound like much, but 4/14 chapters is really like halfway done when it comes to rewriting Episode 1.
Seriously, just looking at the original word counts you can tell where the brick wall is in the fanfic (when it shoots from an 8k word chapter to a 35k word chapter). Ironically, I didn't change Food Freak Fortress (the 35k chapter) very much.
Besides the optional removal of a lot of the wacky shenanigans that unfortunately clogged up the actual narrative, something I HAD to do to these chapters was reorganize them in the context of the revised Prologue. As I get through Episode 1 my old writing will merge more and more with my new writing, so it will only get easier to revise from here. Here's a detailed look at the changes to these 4 major chapters:
Most changes to the intro to the big family conflict in Episode 1 were only technical. I just didn't know how to write scenes that were easy to read back then. That's been fixed.
I did make one important change to the narrative - I made it very clear that Heather was the one to come up with the idea of moving to a new home in the forest and that's what ends up setting the whole family conflict in motion. To the family, Heather isn't obviously responsible for it, since she pawns the idea off on RJ and he sponsors the effort for his own motivation, but it's the start of Heather's relevance to the plot, which she soon comes to regret.
An outlier, to say the least. Even in the original, it was exclusively focused on 2 OCs who weren't important to the main plot and only showed up VERY sporadically in future chapters until I completely gave up on writing them into the episode. After removing those scenes, this chapter is only about 2000 words now.
The Brick Wall. As I reread this chapter though, I realized that I couldn't remove any scenes without messing up the narrative that this chapter has. 4 years ago I wrote it like it was its own fic and it's still like that. Every scene serves some purpose to the episode as a whole. Also, it's just got some fun ideas. So even though I spent forever on revising it, I left it mostly intact. Only a few thousand words were trimmed off.
I was so caught up with the first brick wall (FFF) that I forgot about the ACTUAL brick wall (this chapter). It was almost as long as FFF. That wasn't the problem... The problem was that it was WAY less necessary of a chapter since its narrative beats pop up in similar ways throughout the rest of the episode, making it just a slog to get through. It grinds the episode's pacing to a halt. There was a lot of shitposting in this chapter that I unfortunately needed to remove. It was a fun style of writing for the time (2022), but it would be much more fit for a fanfic with an episodic TV format, not full length stories.
The point of this chapter was to shove Heather into the spotlight within the family. For the revision, I kept a precise focus on that, and I redesigned most of the chapter from Heather's POV for a better immersive effect, since this is really her first time being important in Over the Hedge (I was very proud of this fact back then).
I had to completely rethink Heather's narrative in this chapter to make it easier for readers to get to the REAL gem of this episode, chapter 5 (Heist Buddies).
Heist Buddies was my favorite chapter originally and it contains the same kinda RJ and Heather stuff Paper Beats Rock had, but better executed. It uses the "every chapter is its own story" philosophy I had for these chapters in 2022 to much better effect. It has a beginning and a happy ending... or does it? It's a deceivingly self-contained "side plot" that actually has larger and larger ramifications as the episode goes on. I'm excited to reread it.
