- Read A Day of Faces for free here.
- Read this specific chapter here.
- Read all the writing notes here.
Last time I observed that Arc 4 has swelled to twice the size of previous arcs (I’m writing this particular diary retrospectively).
‘Stimulus’ could quite happily have marked the beginning of Arc 5, if I’d chosen to delineate it that way. I may still decide to split it that way when I create the ebooks versions, keeping each arc roughly the same kind of size.
In writing and publishing in serial form on Wattpad, however, I just kept barrelling onwards, and as far as I’m concerned we’re in Arc 4 all the way to the end. I thought it’d end up being maybe a couple of chapters longer, simply to give me time to position all the pieces for the finale, but that keeps increasing.
Whether this is me doing the story and the ending justice, or being self-indulgent and letting the plot and pacing get away from me remains to be seen.
So the opening few chapters here flow right out of the training I’ve done with John Bates. If you’re doing any form of public speaking, or even any kind of communications, professional or otherwise (so, yes, I’m including everyone), it’s worth your while tracking him down.
The first half of ‘Stimulus’ does a bit of tidying up, wrapping up some loose ends as well as shouting back to the very first chapter as a reminder of just how far Kay (and the story) has come. And then we end up, slightly unexpectedly, in a romantic dinner scene.
Although most of it happens in what is not said, this is the moment when we finally see Kay and Marv make some kind of progress in their relationship. A big part of that is that, momentarily, they’ve been unburdened and given breathing space to do something other than merely survive.
As well as providing some payoff to the relationship building that’s come before, this also serves to raise the stakes as we move into the finale. Better hope nothing happens to either of these cats.
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