fic talk: planning the planning

[sword_logic]

in which i actually. remember that.

anyways! i've been meaning to update sbsbs for some time now, but i'm stuck in the one spot that i have the least notes for. funny how that works. i'm planning on updating with three chapters in one go, which were originally supposed to be i think two rather than three? but a) i don't like throwing out one <1000 word chapter at a time, b) these three all fit together, more or less, and c) there is a Certain Plot Point that keeps zooming out of my reach every time i think "alright it's time" and my god, it's fucking time already. [redacted] is going to [redacted] and that's that. and once that's wrapped up, i can move properly into the last stage of this fic. and then i can get back to S11 au.

funny that anon on tumblr happened to ask after S11 au yesterday, because i really do genuinely think about it very, very often, and i had actually been plotting/restructuring in my head yesterday while i was waiting in line running errands. it's funny; i've had S11 au plotted out for literal years (!) now, but after sbsbs, i want to try making a much more detailed outline before going back in to write. it's really wild to think about the length of S11 au both in terms of word count and like, Plot Length, because it feels both so much longer and so much shorter than anything else i've written. sbsbs is currently 40,445 words published — S11 au is 40,254 published; sbsbs has had so much more plot movement and relationship movement (not even just the main pairing) than S11 au, though i can't get too worked up about that since sbsbs is a pretty different type of fic than S11 au.

i got a bit into a read-through of the beginning of S11 au a while back (i should finish it), and it was really... surprising, i guess? to see that S11 au basically goes day by day, with very few timeskips of any kind, and at first it felt weird compared to sbsbs, which is supposed to be kind of snapshots of days — but the more i thought about it, the more i really like that S11 au is this kind of day-by-day slog (for lack of better term). also, admittedly, it's been fun to put wash and maine into the 5e campaign i've been DMing as sunset and arkadia, and to think about what their core traits and motivations are as characters as i port them. i'm particularly excited about the Tragic Backstory i've worked out for them, but as my party has not yet managed to con either of them into sharing, mum's the word on that for now.

in any case, this post got away from me a bit, so happy holidays if you're doing any kind of celebrations, and i'm gonna head right back to some writing.