A Week of Progress

So my progress this week continues, with my initial edit of episode five now done and both my rough draft and initial edit of episode six done as well. The process I use calls for significant time between the rough draft and the edit, but most of episode six has been written for a while now, and it was just a denouement that had to be written, albeit a long and emotional one.

Episode six, tentatively titled “The Final Unicorn,” is perhaps my biggest departure from inception to result to date. The original concept was a play on “The Last Unicorn,” the seminal work of fantasy literature. The plan was not a direct satire, but at the very least, there were intentions to mirror certain aspects of the book and send up the details and tropes in different ways.

But somewhere along the way, things took a turn. I think, or maybe I hope, that this is a case of the characters coming to life in my head. Instead of simply telling them where to go and what to do, I had to set up the situation where they go off in the direction of the unicorn. From there, the character’s personalities and desires took over, leading to a set of situations that I never envisioned but that I feel worked out well in the end.

The episode also includes a brief comedic aside on the history of unicorns (detailing how they are quite different in this world, even to the characters’ surprise), including a number of nested footnotes. Basically, the history is from an existing tome published by the Emerald Palace as part of its Beasts and Bestiality (but not that kind of bestiality) Series, with the footnotes added by the organization’s lawyers after complaints and lawsuits (and some of those footnotes have footnotes from incidents caused by the footnotes themselves). I think it is funny, but now I have to find out how all this works in EPUB format. I know footnotes work fine now and can figure that out fairly easily, but nested footnotes? I worry about sending the reader down a trail that makes it difficult to go back to where they originally were. So it’s time to do some investigating.

If nothing else, I’ve got two months to figure it out, but that time is chipping away quickly. Quickly enough that a glance at my calendar shows a month-and-a-half. Sigh.

Ep six also marks my first completely serious chapter. Well, almost completely serious. It’s the aforementioned denouement, although actually it’s not really a denouement; it’s just a bit on the end. I needed to bring some backstory to the forefront to provide some understanding to all the characters. For a while, I was hiding certain bits of information from the reader and some characters, but not all characters. With the head-jumping I do, it was getting sloppy, though. So best to be out with it. One minor mystery revealed, which sets up the action in episode eight, and will provide some good comedic fodder for the rest of the season.

So back to it. By the end of the week, I need to be done with seven, halfway on eight, and have five ready to ship. Lots left to do!