zandravandra
@zandravandra
CycleLunar
@CycleLunar asked:

For HMTP questions - has the process of writing a story that you're releasing chapter-by-chapter been substantially different from how you worked on your light novels?

it's been very different!

there's a way to split writers into two groups that I've heard a lot of times: pantsers and gardeners (based on whether you write from start to finish by the seat of your pants or you grow your entire story like a well-tended garden) and I am definitely a gardener. so writing this way, where I can't go back and change the past, has been a really wild experience!

...hence the flashback chapters

it took me a little while to figure out this pattern, but I'm sticking to it now (I even went so far as to go back and add a couple chapters in the early part of the first act to make it all work) - even-numbered chapters are chronological timeline chapters, odd-numbered chapters are flashbacks. that way I get to have my cake and eat it too! I get to be a gardener while also writing chapter by chapter. I get to do my favorite thing in all of writing: make readers go "WAIT WHAT?!" as often as possible, in as positive a way as I can. I love ah-ha moments where everything clicks into place so much as a reader that I want folks who read my stories to have them too ^^

(and there are folks who have begun figuring out some of the ah-ha moments ahead of time as well, which has been really exciting to see from the sidelines as I write!)

I'm not saying I'll write every book of mine this way from now on, but I'm now seriously considering it for way more stories than I ever did in the past. this chapter-by-chapter thing can be pretty fun!!


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in reply to @zandravandra's post:

One of the wackier uses of the alternating flashback method I've read is Use of Weapons, the tale of a violent mercenary works for a society that has fully embraced Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism in an attempt to deal with the pain and trauma in his life.

The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one stream is numbered forward in words (One, Two ...), while the other is numbered in reverse with Roman numerals (XIII, XII ...). The story told by the former moves forward chronologically (as the numbers suggest) and tells a self-contained story, while the latter is written in reverse chronology with each chapter successively earlier in Zakalwe's life.[2] Further complicating this structure is a prologue and epilogue set shortly after the events of the main narrative, and many flashbacks within the chapters.