#dragon replies

ok long version (rip me):

I actually have planned chapters out, like when I hit all the points I want to cover in the chapters, I stop writing that chapter. so each chapter has like maybe 3-6 set scenes that I want to do, sometimes I end up cutting them because I'm dragging everything along to get to one point, so I end up stopping there and starting the new chapter at the point where I want to begin.

and sometimes scenes get added to help the flow of the chapter, but as it stands, the 3 parts that I'm planning to use for the updates are each very long by themselves. again, chapter 5 is 13.2k long. that is the longest chapter to date for this fic, and honestly, with edits, it will get longer. chapter 6 is looking to be slightly shorter, it doesn't have nearly as much weight as ch5 does, so we might be thinking somewhere around 10-12k, but not the monster of ch5. chapter 7 is a huuuggee, and I hadn't even started writing it yet, but there's a lot to it, and a huge action scene to wrap up this first part. so I'm talking anywhere from 12k to 15k.

the reason why ch5 is so long is that it covers a large time frame, there was a lot of things that needed to happen in order to set up ch6+7, and because there is still a lot to happen (world building, character development, plot development) ch5 will feel like it takes forever because, in a sense, it does. ch6+7 will feel much faster than that. and that's not because I'm changing the pacing so to speak, but no one wants to hear all about the different mundane things the characters do while I'm waiting for the time to pass in order for ch6+7 timelines match up with ch5. you'll see some, but not all of them. that being said, I will be showing more light-hearted moments than I have in previous chapters. it makes it so the characters are more three-dimensional than they are now. they are starting to feel flat i want them to be more than the animations we watch for the show, or the black and white words i write on a screen.

when ch2 happened, it got very serious very quickly. a lot of things happened and it kick-started Lance's and Shiro's friendship and forced lance to show some of his true colors. writing from his pov makes him to be far more serious than what he shows to the world. from an outside pov, lance appears to be a very fun loving character, and that is brought to light more with Blue. Shiro is seen as a very serious character from an outside pov, but as he gets more comfortable with Lance and his team members, he begins to lighten up. it’s slow, but it will happen. I have development set for Hunk, I have some set for Pidge, Allura gets some. Coran gets more of a focus in a different part of the series (yes I said series, theres more than one fic to this whole thing, i’ll explain more when i update with ch5).

but as you can see, theres a lot thats going on, that is being orchestrated just right for these chapters to make sense and dont overwhlem readers with jumping back and forth. once we get through this part, we are pretty much on one timelin and there will be moments where we jump to a parallel point in the over all timeline of the fic to see something different.