I held these chapter notes back because they were all a bit inter-linked and spoilery. Now that the entire book is OUT THERE, it’s time to drop the notes: (I’ll have separate notes for the interactive game soon) All it takes This chapter was exceedingly difficult to write. It’s essentially […]
I rather like the title of this chapter. This is one of those chapters that required some extra wrangling to get right, in the form of a more detailed breakdown. I often find that action-based chapters need that beat-by-beat examination before I start writing. The kind of action I like […]
Read this chapter here. This is Stryke’s final reckoning, really – with himself. All his life he’s followed orders, followed his king, always on the assumption that he was on the right team. Throughout TMC he’s been forced to reconsider that, in the process having to come up with his […]
As a less experienced writer I used to obsess over plot. Plot was everything. This seems to be the case for a lot of people who aren’t writers, too — a common criticism of a film or book will be that “the plot isn’t very good”, or “the plot’s a bit basic”. When I used to write as a kid, my entire focus would be on trying to formulate a twisty-turny, intricate plot.
(more…)Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/763381796-the-mechanical-crown-climbing-the-steps Throughout the book we’ve had these tiny glimpses of Tranton’s past, without ever fully indulging in a flashback, or a focused thought, or a spoken explanation. He’s a private man, even to himself, and there are aspects to his past which he is very determined to […]
Writing in a weekly, serialised format sometimes throws up odd challenges. In this chapter it was a particularly morbid one: remembering that Pienya’s crumpled body is lying in the corner of the scene. The flow of the action across the chapters means that what we have here is a swapping […]
You can read this chapter of The Mechanical Crown over on Wattpad. This chapter turned out to be very easy to write, with it forming itself onto the page in a single evening. Getting to that point was extremely difficult, though, mainly for structural reasons. The issue I had was […]
You can read this chapter of The Mechanical Crown over on Wattpad. This is another case of me having to remember Who Knows What. With the action accelerating it would have been very easy for me to write this chapter without Holst referencing her previous encounter with Kraisa. It’s the […]
You can read this chapter of The Mechanical Crown over on Wattpad. Juggling all the many characters of TMC has been one of the major challenges of the book, especially compared to my previous which was very lean in comparison. Now that we’re at the finale, though, it’s proven to […]
You can read this chapter of The Mechanical Crown over on Wattpad. The positioning of the characters here is relevant, in that it always had to be Tarn who aids the prisoners in the machine rooms. I didn’t want someone from outside to come in and be the saviour, regardless […]