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

Hello and welcome to my author’s notes for chapter sixteen 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 sixteen 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!

• I’m re-reading this after two weeks of not engaging with the manuscript, and today is one of those, “I’m terrible at this and never should have tried to write a book” days.
• That said, I think the action is decent for this scene, but I’m noticing lots of things I want to change about my prose.
• The ending of the chapter feels really abrupt to me. Wanyi’s in a high speed chase, then suddenly he’s free and just goes to sleep. If I remember correctly, when I wrote this draft, I was trying to finish the chapter up quickly before going to bed. Or something like that. So I just tied a neat little bow and summed it up so I could call it good. To me, it feels like jerky pacing, and a bit of a longer cooldown seems warranted.
• I do really like the final line, though: “That night, he dreamed of dragons and of Jinhua’s face, smirking as he slid a knife between Wanyi’s ribs.”

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 sixteen yet, you can do so here. That’ll make this whole post make a lot more sense.

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Until next time!