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Chapter 20 Posted

Okay, so the chapter that was due yesterday is up now: "Invalid Item" . I'm still not thrilled with it. But I had to balance narrative economy, character plausibility, and a certain amount of back story.

(1) Will puts a brain band onto Yumi. How does he escape with it? Easy: he grabs it up and runs away. That's narrative economy. But that would lead to all kinds of awkwardness when he next sees her, if we're taking character and personality seriously, so he's got to have some kind of cover story. How much time and how many words to spend on achieving that balance? Would it be faster to leap ahead and explain after the fact how he got away without embarrassing himself? It might save some words, but not very many, if a good explanation is given. So there's one spot where I have to struggle to convey something that's minimally plausible without getting bogged down.

(2) If you've read a certain other branch in the story, you know Stephanie Wyatt and what she's like and how she acts around Will. But that's only one branch in a sprawling interactive, and I can't assume familiarity by readers. So I have to describe her at least in part. It is usually best to let a character speak for herself instead of telling the reader what she is like and what her history is. But in this case Will is meeting her under another face, so she is not going to be characteristically herself, not the way she would be if he were himself. Also, there's the irony that she is going to be the subservient personality in this meeting. So it seems best to do some introductory telling. Here again, the question is how many words to spend giving that set up.

(3) Will in his disguise. Look, I know why you guys voted 2-to-1 in favor of the "Use Coach Schell disguise" choice. You want to see Will inside it. Narrative economy says, "Skip from Will exiting the coffee date with Yumi directly to him entering the DQ." But you guys will want some mirror time. Psychologically, Will will want some mirror time too. There's also a tiny bit of family business to gloss over. So there's another big chunk of prose that should be inserted.

(4) Even in disguise, it won't be easy for Will to be a part of the conversation he wants to listen in on. Time has to be taken to get the other characters comfortable with him, and to establish his relationship with them.

Consequences of the above: The point of the chapter—to position Will as a disguised eavesdropper—doesn't come into play until very late. I wish it were much earlier. For reasons of space—interactive chapters have a hard 10K-character limit—it has to end at that particular point in the conversation.

A "Continue" could easily come next. The choice itself doesn't excite me much. But I can dimly imagine very different scenarios unfolding from what Will does next.