SCENE 5

Greetings, fellow readers!

As I believe I stated before, my main goal (pace-wise) is to tell a scene as quickly as possible. Get in, get out, show all the information required, and don't linger where it's unnecessary. As someone who tends to ramble in real life, this was a challenging endeavor.

But I think, in some cases, it worked a little too well.

Not that I mind, of course. I like it when I can show everything that needs to be shown in a few hundred words. Like Maren entering the city (thus allowing me to describe the physical space the action will take place) or Koda regretting the chaotic nature of the universe that doesn't want his best plans to succeed easily.

For the former, I wanted that done quickly because, honestly, whenever I read a book with long-winded paragraphs spending hundreds and hundreds of words detailing a physical location, my eyes glaze over. I know that, no matter how well the author describes it, my image of the place will be different than theirs. So I try not to spend much time trying to get you all to understand every little thing that I see in my mind. That's part of the fun of reading: you all get to have your own interpretations of the physical space.

But, of course, I firmly believe that everything you write has to forward something (like plot, character development, world building, or a combination of the three). Outlining several of the city's plazas makes for alright world-building, but tying it into Maren's plot (so many fun and extravagant places with no person to enjoy them) allows the scene to fit well within the story. It spurs Maren to action, giving her a little more context behind what's going on in the city, and is no longer details simply for the sake of grounding.

As for the latter POV, I decided a scene that simply and quickly explained what had happened since we last saw Koda and Mav would be best for this. Sure, it's less of a "scene" and more of a "summary", which I do not usually prefer, but here I think it works. A scene would have just been a conversation between the two of them, where they would have split up by the end of it and -- after a half-an-hour or so of searching -- Mav would have found a service vehicle before Koda. The scene would have played out the same way, that there was an explosion and Mav wasn't following Koda's unspoken plot.

Honestly, I wanted it to lead into the next scene as quickly as possible. There's a fight going on, and now all parties are charging toward the same location. It didn't take too long, but I'm happy we got to this point by the end of the first week of uploads. Next week is when things really kick off.

See you all then!