John Louis

11/5/25: Progress Report 6

Added 2025-11-05 19:35:39 +0000 UTC

Hello! I apologize for delaying this progress update by so much, but that whole week where I wasn't able to write meant I didn't have much of anything to report. I am now, however, back fully in the swing of things, and I have enough material for another more comprehensive update.

Chapter Two of ITUO is now up to 64,000 words in length. I've done some trimming and editing throughout the week, which meant a few days worth of words have actually been removed, but I think it was to the benefit of the chapter as a whole. I've been reading Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, and I think it's actually helped me in describing the movement of time in a campaign.

I've had some difficulty getting out of the Whiskey-Four mindset, where POV swaps and scene-breaks are used to move the pace along. Instead, I've tried a few passages where there isn't a break and then a jump in time, but rather a long, almost summary-like segment. I think it works to communicate the monotony of a march without being boring to read (hopefully).

There are now only 13 "placeholders" remaining throughout the draft of Chapter Two. Some of these are just to fill in code, and none of them are very big. I should be able to have the grunt writing completed before the 14th, I believe.