Today was another good writing day.
100% new material, but it flew because in this revision, the whole thing is now growing out of everything I discovered in the read-through and write-in revisions of the first draft.
Added a couple hundred words to yesterday’s chapter, but everything I wrote yesterday still worked this morning.
Everything else was the start to finish of Chapter 2.
My Line-for-Scene outline is holding together. My characters are stepping up, doing more in this version than they did in the first one. They’re deeper, have more going on, have actual pasts.
And this version of the story is starting darker, meaner. I think this is happening because now I know what brought all of them to this point… and because I’m starting at the exact right point, in the instant before “the way things are now” collapses and all hell breaks loose.
This is a post-apocalypse in which the folks in the middle of it don’t yet realize that the Apocalypse has come. That’s the second shoe.
Right now, only the first shoe has dropped.
And this time through, the story means more to me. It’s scarier, closer to the bone — because this time, I know how it ends, and I know what has to happen before it gets there. This time, there’s no writing into the dark, no guessing.
This time, I already know how dark the darkness is going to get.
Things happen in ways that I don’t expect, but they’re pieces of a puzzle I’ve already seen.
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