Notes on the Writing

I realized something about the Boneholders while writing Chapter 16. They hate magic users for not working. They sleep in walls that bleed warmth they can't explain.

Fifteen chapters in, I finally see what I've been writing about all along.

Every writing guide says Act 2 should expand outward. It took three failed drafts to learn that sometimes the opposite is true.

Fionn's best friend was never in the outline. He wrote himself into existence, and then rewrote my understanding of the story.

Chapter 11 had to close ten chapters of buildup and launch something new. It took three confessions and a fever dream to get there.

Most writers use Word or Scrivener. I use git, markdown, and a code editor. Here's why.

Chapter 10 is where the dramatic irony stops. Where fifteen years of secrets finally break. Writing the end of Act 1.

Chapter 9 owes a debt to Spielberg, Stephen King, and every film about kids on bikes heading somewhere they shouldn't.

Most engineers aren't known for prose. But when something doesn't work, we debug it. I treated revision the same way.

Chapter Six started with a detailed outline. The outline was wrong about almost everything that mattered.

The opening chapter has been rewritten seven times. Each version taught me something about what this story needs to be.

Torven was supposed to be the good one. The one who does the right thing. Then I had to write what happened next.

How do you create a community that feels lived-in? The Talan Settlement grew from a single image: dragon bones used as architecture.

Seventy-four words. I wrote it, read it again, and knew it was done.

Varn started as everything a villain should be. Cruel. Cowardly. Easy to hate. Then I tried to write his second scene.

The settlement has rules, rituals, and history. I keep wanting to explain it all. I'm learning not to.

Why the spare sentences. Why the white space. Why I trust you to fill in what I leave out.

There's something honest about publishing as you write. The story exists in its becoming, not just its completion.

This story started as a video game I tried to build when I was fourteen. I never finished it. The story never left.