Another Chapter Nine update

No, this isn't the full chapter. Yes, I have been working on it. I've made quite a bit of progress, actually, but that progress is all pointing in the direction of (like chapter whatever-it-was) having to split the chapter in half.

With my current editing/additions, it is creeping over the four-page mark, and I still haven't gotten to a reasonable stopping point. I am about halfway through the chapter and, in fact, haven't quite reached the first paragraph of the original draft of the chapter. I try to make it so that there's only one important confrontation per chapter. This allows me to focus better, I think. Anyway, I've ended up putting a new fight scene which dominates the couple of pages it's in, and the aftermath of that fight is going to make a really big break. I can't continue the sort of dramatic tension that's built up so far and carry that tension onward for another two or three pages--within the same chapter--until the huge dust-up happens. (For one, it's a matter of the big fight building up over time...which doesn't happen within the span of a chapter.)

I'm actually getting a bit fed up with how long it's taking to go through the current chapter nine. Plus, somehow, I keep getting roped into backtracking. This morning I spent almost three hours drafting a prologue/less crappy chapter one. It goes into more detail about what happens when I make my changes and my break from the canon work. It overlaps very little--maybe nothing--from chapter one...but I think it's a much better starting place. (I am tempted to skip chapter one entirely: just go from "prologue" to "chapter two." But, alas, chapter one is still necessary.) It is also the only chapter that comes from Sasuke's point of view. Though I still am writing it in third-person limited, you're getting it from Sasuke's end of things instead of Kakashi's. It's kind of cool, I think. I have finally delved into how Sasuke works.

I don't know when/if I will edit and post the prologue. I tried to be as straight-up with it as I could, in order to avoid prolonged editing and expansion of boring expository narrative. I got frustrated at the end and scribbled down about three or four paragraphs' worth of "this happened, and then this, and then finally that." Hopefully it won't be too hard to smooth out.

Man! Pretty soon I'm going to have to put up an index for any stray latecomers...and my own sanity, hahahahaha.

Anyway, I am still grinding away at chapter nine. I probably won't have it up here until after the scheduled outage early Monday morning. (Gosh darn pacific time! How dare you be three hours behind!) I don't think I can finish up in less than thirty-six hours. I need to do things like sleep and. Well. I need to sleep. I can't sleep upright at my computer.

Later!