Got a bit behind on posting chapter notes. Time to catch up, starting with ‘Tranquility rising’. I am acutely aware of the impending ending of Arc 5. Despite the past few chapters being unusually quiet affairs, they’re building up to something. I’m also deep in planning for Arc 6. I’ve Read more…
Read it here! The original plan for this chapter was to have Tarn and Tranton walking around Aviar, so that the dialogue and exposition are surrounded by action. I shifted away from that approach towards having them stuck in a fairly static scene in Tarn’s apartment for a couple of Read more…
Read it here. Yep, the chapter title is a ref to the Babylon 5 episode. Why not? Talking of references, the character name of ‘Obin’ is a minor nod towards The Banner Saga’s ‘Ubin’. No connection story or personality-wise, I just like the name. Here we have Tranton, separated from Read more…
Read it here! Writing an online serial which gets published weekly, as it is written, is closer to creating a television show, or an on-running comic, than it is to writing a novel. Each chapter commits me further down a particular path, and there’s no going back to revise or Read more…
Read it here. Hatch Eyer is a scientist at heart. Intrinsically, she wants to understand the world around her, and gets irritated by anything which eludes her. She observes, analyses, concludes. Arriving at Aviar is the greatest moment of her life, and separating her scientific curiosity from the practical and Read more…
Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/627441254-the-mechanical-crown-new-alliances This is a dialogue-heavy chapter in which characters meet up who have not been in the same scenes previously. That’s always a fun opportunity, whereby you can use the juxtaposition to shine a new light on those personalities and see how they react to each other. Read more…
As a side note, I’m going to be getting back to posting about writing matters outside of these chapter notes very soon, as the long UK school summer holidays are nearly at an end. Next up will be something about the importance of logic even in fantastical settings, using Kieron Read more…
Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/621492901-the-mechanical-crown-beware-of-old-gods In this chapter we dig into the question of “what’s going on?” in greater detail. However, rather than it be Exposition Chapter Part 2, this does something slightly different – and hopefully more interesting. For starters, it’s called ‘Beware of old gods’, which immediately sets the tone. Read more…
Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/618199032-the-mechanical-crown-a-new-truth This chapter was always going to be a tricky one. There’s a lot of information to share, and I do what I can to lessen the weight of it by a) presenting it in the form of a museum and b) having the characters explore the information Read more…
Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/615242352-the-mechanical-crown-blue-skies At last, some relief. We’ve essentially had 14 chapters of increasing grimness as the story descended into its worst moments so far. This arc was always going to be like this, taking some of the youthful exuberance and optimism of the earlier parts of the book and Read more…