Author's Notes: The Emperor's Dream Chapter Fifteen

Hello and welcome to my author’s notes for chapter fifteen of The Emperor’s Dream! This is the part where I re-read the chapter and write up my honest thoughts about it. It’s a first draft, after all!

If you haven’t read chapter fifteen yet, you can read it here.

If you are quite far behind, you can read chapter one here. Remember, these are first drafts only, so the final published version might change a little or a lot, but hopefully you either enjoy or learn something from seeing the process.

Now on with this week’s author’s notes!

• The first scene of this chapter feels lacking to me. It’s another long conversation. Even when I read it, I kind of lose track of where everyone is, which means some more setting details are probably in order. I struggle with using words to re-describe somewhere the characters have already been. But I think this scene especially suffers from the white room problem.
• But as for the second scene, I’m very excited to introduce Niuwan. You’ll have to wait until this Sunday to see how Wanyi’s bond with her works, but I’m super pumped to be able to show it off. Up until now, I’ve only shown some ways of using beastlore that are pretty on-the-nose: wings from birds, strength from bulls, things like that. But chameleons? They’re reptiles with no need for fantasy. I’ll just leave you to guess what will happen next.
• One thing I’ve noticed about my writing lately is that I often neglect specificity. Part of this is, I think, in the spirit of the first draft. “Just get it all down and you can edit things later.” Many people tell you to just use filler words for names and things like that. But I’m talking about how I will often use phrases like “relatively few people,” or “a bit.” On top of that, I think I tend to be a little light on description, which is probably fine depending on your tastes. But for a full-length novel, I’ll probably want to add in a little bit more. It also might help me with the white room problem I mentioned above.
• Maybe it’s cheesy, but I love the last line of this chapter: “Time to get some answers.” When I was quickly re-reading before posting the chapter, I thought to myself, “Oh, he should say, ‘Time to get some answers,’ at the end, that would be sweet.” Then, to my delight, past me had already put it there. So I guess it stays.
  • Unless an editor tells me to get rid of it because it’s stupid. They’re probably smarter than I am about this kind of thing.

I think that’s all for this week, friend! What questions do you have? I’d also love to hear your feedback. Let me know your thoughts!

And again, if you haven’t read chapter fifteen yet, you can do so here. That’ll make this whole post make a lot more sense.

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Until next time!