Revision Update - Chapters 13 and 14
In the Wystare Empire, magic is highly restricted, and spell licenses are hard to acquire. Unless, of course, you are Especially Gifted. EGs: men who fall in love with men, and women who fall in love with women. To be one is to possess extraordinary powers and bring the highest honour to your family. It also means 30 years of service in the Wystare Military.
But as a deadly war begins killing EGs off by the thousands, not everyone wants to come out. Especially not Princess Malia.
No seriously, I’m trying to get my sleeping schedule back on track and it’s killing me. On the bright side, though, I’m extremely productive when I wake up early. I’ve already written a poem and read and reviewed two chapters of Everything in Ashes and the sun hasn’t even risen fully.
Chapters 13 and 14 are a big improvement from Chapters 10 and 11, especially in terms of pacing. When I was drafting Chapters 13 and 14 I really slowed down, was more heavy handed with exposition, and took my time to write descriptions.
In Chapter 13, Malia slowly begins to turn on Zhaohui, and at the end of the chapter they have a huge fight and a big secret of Zhaohui’s is revealed. It’s a really tense chapter and I like it, but I feel like Malia’s anger toward Zhaohui came on a bit too suddenly, and I should probably build it up over the earlier chapters.
As for Chapter 14, the pacing was also good, although the scene at the beginning, in which Malia goes to apologise to Zhaohui, has two issues.
One, they make up too quickly, too easily. I don’t think Malia is ready at this point to give an apology like that, especially since a big part of her character arc is realising that she needs to apologise to Shirim. I think in revisions, I want to leave Malia more conflicted and have Malia begin to apologise in the third act. At this point, I still want her to be an Empire Princess afraid of contamination and ignorant about other species.
The second problem is the dialogue. It’s totally rambling, going around in circles sometimes, characters repeating things. I guess this is just what happens in first drafts.
At the end of Chapter 14, Z and M stand at a lookout and Malia gives some exposition about the war. Normally I’m pretty afraid of writing exposition for fear of info dumps. But I’m beginning to realise (especially after reading The Fire in Fiction) that exposition isn’t the bad guy, it’s a lack of tension. As long as you keep exposition curt, and make it a source of tension, it can work really well in the narrative, steadying the pace and increasing interest. Maybe I’ll make a post about exposition after researching more?
Might do another update later with another two chapters.
