fic talk: divergence and things unsaid

[sword_logic]

i'm in the thick of editing S11 au right now, and it's occurred to me that i've never edited on quite such a large scale before - S11 au is currently clocking in at about 97k words, and while it's technically complete, i have one major gap to fill (gap as in "i did not write the transition from A to B, and i have to write it now), and then a lot of little things to tie up and conversations for characters to have. i keep finding things that i need to embellish or add, and it's actually an incredibly enjoyable process!

my current knot of loose ends to untangle has to deal with reconciling canon events, though, and the question is: do i describe events as they transpired in canon, or do i let the reader do it themself?

heurgh. the question is more "how much of canon events do i describe" than "do i describe canon events" - some things have changed, obviously, as i've either written about in previous parts or as is obviously necessitated by wash not being with the reds and blues. here's the thing, though (spoilers? maybe? don't read too far into this): a huge chunk of canon remains exactly the same in this fic, sometimes in broad strokes and sometimes... not.

now that i'm thinking out loud, it's probably better that i dedicate some time to expanding on the changes i made, since... some important things are different. carolina, for example! part ii left her in a very different spot than canon. i struggle a lot with exposition dump, though, so i don't really know what to do with the two full pages of handwritten notes i've got detailing all the repercussions and ripples of the changes i made (and a lot of those things probably don't need to be included, tbh). i guess we'll see. my current strategy is to have several different conversations about changed events, and i think it's going mostly okay so far, but i really don't want to just crush people with information at the end.

anyways! hand-writing notes has been really tremendously helpful to me with working out all of my canon changes, and getting to use my very cute highlighters has also been a huge plus. (trust me: they are very cute.) and here's a tiny snippet to top off this post!

“Yeah, they started [redacted], and then [redacted], and then—” He waves a hand vaguely. “Well, you know the rest.”

Wash refrains from replying that he really doesn’t know the rest, but nods anyways.

Comments

[sword_logic]

ooh, that's a really good yardstick! i'm going to keep that in mind as i plunk away at this. editing really is a ton of fun, and hiding all the seams (canon/non-canon, scene transitions, plot threads, etc.) truly is the most satisfying thing.