Author's Notes: The Emperor's Dream Chapter Twenty-Four

Hello and welcome to my author’s notes for chapter twenty-four 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 twenty-four 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!

• This is the last official chapter in The Emperor's Dream! I'm not 100% sure how that's supposed to work, if I'm honest. Most books I read have an epilogue, and that is considered the true end of the story. This story is the same. Next time, we'll have the epilogue, and that will be it for this adventure. It's crazy how long working through this has taken, even for such a small book. Thank you for coming along with me.
• As I've said before, I'm a sucker for loyalty. I got a little emotional when I re-read Yishan swearing to follow Wanyi, tears on his face. I'm so proud of the people of the Owl Clan for following their disgraced leader no matter where fortune takes him.
• In my initial planning, I was hoping for this to feel like a bit of a transformation from the beginning of the story. In the beginning, we see Wanyi insulted by people, disrespected in the Council Hall, and things like that. My hope was that he could go from a place of dishonor to honor. I think there are some holes in that transformation, but the seeds of it are there. Perhaps I should have some people from other clans come with him and swear to follow Wanyi. It would also be good, I think, to see Wanyi interacting more with the common folk throughout the story. As of right now, he goes from being insulted by a meat merchant to being honored by a bunch of people, but I'm not sure he has done enough along the way to be truly worthy of their allegiance. At least not in the way that I'm thinking of.

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

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Until next time!