the ramble dump

Back in February, Amelia and I went through all the old Starcustard chapters, most thoroughly the first, and picked out and changed lots of bits with awkward syntax or phrasing (admittedly, they were mostly mine), so it was all nice and improved for the FMIT launch.

However, writing Chapter 6 these past few weeks, we've found we've had to go back again and take out or change a few more things, only this time for different reasons.

There are ideas that don't seem to fit so well now that we've defined the Starcustard universe a bit better. For example, we got rid of teleporting, which was briefly mentioned in a quick description of the slavekid card catalogue, because that makes things too easy.

There are also things that, in the context of the chapter, are so minor that they've merely been mentioned in passing, but that could potentially lead to some pretty sloppy plotholes if we don't see to them. The example of this that we found this time round we did actually try to sort out in Chapter 6, only to find out that the idea just didn't work, so we had to cut it out completely.

And then there was a single word we had to get rid of because we'd used it when we had a much vaguer idea of where that aspect of the story was going. While working on the sixth chapter, we had a long, deep conversation about where the story is going way beyond where it's at now and more than we ever have before, ranging from doctors to darkness and wide story arcs. And so we've had to go back and change this one little word, now that we have a clearer picture.

They were all very minor changes in the context of the chapters we've published so far, but all of them could have caused problems or huge differences as the story advanced. That's one of the main features of a system where each chapter is published when it's finished and you don't know where everything goes next. You have to constantly go back and edit what people have already read. If you're lucky, this is just minor things.

But then sometimes it isn't. I think there are few stories that have undergone as many drafts, redrafts and recreations as The Aberration. After their 'final' redraft for the FMIT launch a few months ago, I was supposed to leave those first few chapters alone for good. However, this week, as well as the usual syntax proofreading and some almost invisible minor changes, I've gone back and made more slightly bigger changes.

Minor TA spoilers follow.

The first isn't especially exciting, but here it is just so you don't have to go back and read it all again. The type of metal Beef encounters, which started off as copper-coloured, then went to shiny and silver when I posted it online, and then to green, is now back to copper-coloured. These changes happened for various reasons that I can't really go into as I kept changing my mind about things, but now (I think) I'm finally settled on it.

The second is the addition of the strange clock as the object they find inside the porcelain woman. For the past few months it's been a boring, bleeping sort of object that has mostly just been there as a more credible replacement for the note that they find in the old Kommingle version of the story. I just thought the clock would be more interesting. If you want, you can go and read Chapter 2 to see its new ending.

Hopefully, I can leave those chapters alone now. Poor things. But, you never know.

You can expect an extended Chapter 5, though. That'll be posted along with the new chapter in the not-so-distant future.

Before that, however: City of Anarchy.

(And yes, I've been going through that, too.)

One final note, harking back to the beginning of this post: Starcustard has a new opening track! As grateful as we are to friend Lonkey for coming up with Fleetwood Mac's Albatross at the last minute almost two years ago, we've decided it didn't sit quite right as the opening track (and also I personally now loathe it after all those M&S Food adverts), and replaced it with... Mystery, by Kelley Stoltz (some guy Melia found).

Labels: city of anarchy, starcustard, the aberration

# posted by Chris @ 8:47 PM