Another Day in Woodcrest - Part 2

Sorry it took me so long to make this post! As always, nothing went quite like expected, but at last I'm finally here to talk about the ramifications of that, where Day 18 is at in it's progress and the process involved as we proceed.

So, as discussed in the first of these 'Another Day in Woodcrest' posts, the first thing to do was to construct a detailed draft of Day 18 and assemble all of the individual pieces that would make up the day until we had something we were satisfied with. 

In assembling Day 18 in this way, I came up with some mixed results in terms of how the scenes felt and flowed. In particular, the scenes early in the day (1, 2, 3) felt good and flowed nicely, but those later in Day 18 (4 - 8) did not. Each of the sequences in question had an important story purpose, but in their current form, they feel more like they're an obligation than anything genuinely worthwhile. I spent a few working on my ideas and seeing if I could produce something stronger. This was partially successful, as I did manage to get Chapter 4 to a fairly good place, but despite attempting Chapter 5 from a different angle, the results still fell short of my standards, and there's no point reworking later sequences until I get the ones that set them up nailed down.

So with a few days spent on the issue and little progress being made, I decided my time was better spent actually preparing content as opposed to planning it, especially considering Chapter 5 isn't intended for release in January: the first four chapters are what I'm aiming for, fingers crossed, with the remaining four releasing the following month. So with that in consideration, I've begun working on 18x1 which will hopefully be wrapped up fairly quickly.

The hope is that as the full versions of the earlier sequences come into their final forms, decisions made during the writing process and inspiration I might have had along the way will guide the future scenes in the right direction. This sort of thing does happen from time to time and so far it almost always worked out fine in the end using this same approach, so here's hoping!

18x1, 2 and 3 are all in fantastic shape and I'm really happy with how they flow and the kind of content they include. 4 is a good scene too, though I still feel like it's missing a little something special - I know I'll find it in due course. Those are all chapters I'd love to release this month, so wish me luck!

Some writers like to write their stories out of order, but I find it much more managable mysslf to write everything in sequence. It makes it easier to remain consistent, and a small moment of inspiration can easily grow scene by scene until it becomes something much more. Often when you see days having repeating gags (IE: shattered kneecaps), these are unplanned gags that unfold naturally as the content is written. I have stuff like that happening often, and Day 18 will be no exception. 

So of course, now begins the process of actually creating the content in the first place. I've planned ahead as much as I can and had CurryCatz make a start on the required artwork, but there will no doubt be something I come up with on the spot that will need some artwork, there always is, but if it makes the content stronger, it's worth doing. 

I'll report back once I've got some days penned out and I'll talk about how they changed from plan to reality and whether they've seeded any breakthroughs!