Consequences Chapter Four has now been posted! You can read it by clicking on the hyperlink.

So far, chapter four has been my favorite chapter to write. I know I’ve already written 30,000 words of the story – arguably already a whole book to writers more concise and frankly good than I am – but this was the first chapter where I felt fully confident that I got the characters, that I understood them. The first three chapters aren’t bad in this way, but when I was writing, I was nodding along going, “Okay, okay, okay,” in my head, taking in the events.

But in this chapter, I was an enthusiastic partner, trying to keep up with my mind going, “Ooh! And then this event happens, and he says this, and she says that.” It just clicked. Interestingly, I wildly deviated from my plan already, and it’s likely I’ll either have to redo my soft outline for the story or just say screw it and write on the fly. That said, writing on the fly is the greatest cause of continuity errors, which have been getting a bit more frequently lately. Who knows? Maybe I wrote one or two into this chapter. It’s getting harder to remember every detail of the universe of my stories.

Minor Spoilers Below!

One thing that interests me about my writing is that my scenes are getting longer, usually due to more dialogue. This is interesting because I don’t know if my writing is getting better or worse. I like it more because I happen to like longer, deeper conversations, but of course with more dialogue (and more ‘fluffy’ dialogue), there’s less actions per page. That could be seen as a bad thing to some viewers. Again, I think this chapter, particularly around halfway in, has some good moments there, but perhaps that too is because I’ve gotten to used to my newer writing style of longer scenes.

This chapter only has three scenes in it. The later chapters of Mutual Benefits are like that too. The earlier chapters of Being More Social aren’t; sometimes a whole scene can be all of two paragraphs long. Whether it’s a good or a bad thing, I don’t like that style now. I feel like if I’m bringing in a new scene, it needs to have enough substance to justify its existence. Maybe that’s my inner Salvador talking.

I hope you all enjoy the chapter. If not, I always welcome feedback. Just because I liked this chapter the most doesn’t mean you have to. At the end of the day, your enjoyment of the story, as a reader, is what matters. It’s why I keep writing. I’ll talk to you all next week.