Ohhhh my god, so I wrote a novel-length fic over the last five months and I justâŚneed to write down some Thoughts on that, because it hadnât happened before and I have no idea if it will again, just seemed worthwhile to collect myself a bit. To be clear: IâmâŚreally proud of myself?? Who knew I had it in me! And I think itâs a fun read! I learned a lot! More under a cut if you care to read my ramblings.
The gdoc containing my initial outline of ideas was created on October 29, 2022. I shared it with the group chat from whence the idea came, because I was planning to participate in a daily prompt challenge in November so I wasnât going to have time for it yet. By late November, quite a bit of work was happening in the docâa proper outline with a three-act structure I borrowed from various writing tips websites and then wandered off on my own with. Iâve never written something this structured and long before, so I searched for some structure tips.
I found a few different forms (a 9-block, 27-chapter structure; a three-act checklist) that I ended up using almost like a self-survey/brainstorm. A couple passes through that, plus trying to work it out as a character/timeline spreadsheet, gave the whole thing a much clearer shape. I knew I wanted to alternate between Edâs and Stedeâs POVs, but not limit it to theirs. Early on I decided that Oluwande would be a third POV character because (a) I love writing him and (b) the crewâs perspective is REALLY IMPORTANT. Then, because I used Lucius as an outsider, he became the fourth POV, introduced at the beginning of act 2.
[ID: A bar chart showing word count by POV character. Ed has over 34,000 words, Stede about 26,000 words, Oluwande 13,000 words, and Lucius a little under 10,000 words. End ID.]
But itâs not like I had it 100% perfectly mapped out at a chapter level, nor did I know exactly what details wouldâŚemerge. Like, I knew the shape of the details, but I kind of worked them out as I got to know this version of the characters better. The outlining process was kind of my draft: I went through it to get to the point that I could sit down and outline each chapter (or two ahead, in some cases) and then write it.
Very few things were written out of order, but the scene where theyâre trapped in the storage closet was written well before I finished chapter 1. And I thought it would happen later than it did. I really thought I was gonna enemies-to-lovers these guys! đ
There were a TON of details/potential plotlines I thought about including, but ultimately decided not to, either because it was totally out of my lane to do it justice (ex.: literally anything to do with Edâs heritage and foodâI read up some and whew, itâd have to be its own story, and not really mine to tell) and/or because it wouldâve overcomplicated/distracted from the plot as it unfolded. There was a whole thing where Stede was meant to pull a Christopher Kimball thing and screw over the magazine by starting a rival publication and, you know what, there was more than enough drama to mine from just the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen debacle(s).
The idea came from a group chat, and the same group chat was instrumental in helping me flesh out a bunch of character details. That was fun. Thatâs also where my main beta reader came from. Itâs funny, Iâve written on and off pretty much my whole life, but rarely had an editor like this. It was very collaborative and challenging in the best possible ways, I think; especially with something this long, it really helped to have someone who knew some of what was in my head but wasnât nose-deep in it.
While it hasnât been a runaway hit or anything, itâs had by far more eyeballs than anything else Iâve written in this fandom. Definitely a lot more comments than anything else, which is fun. Some folks I really admire have said kind things and if that didnât make me all đ well. (It did, though.) It was because of those commenters that I got a sense of how it was coming offâthat it was, and could be, fun and frothy and still touch on subjects that were difficult (labor rights etc.) without making light of them. At least, thatâs what I hope I pulled off in the end.
There were so many random little side routes and ideas that came up while thinking about and writing this that I really had to make a series. For the one-shots. For fuckâs sake, I put too much into building out this little world and this version of each character not to.
And if one of those ends up being some kind of E-rated fic involving Mary and Evelyn, like, posing for Doug with fresh fruit still-life and it turning into A Whole Thing, so be it. (It didnât make the story text, but Mary and Evelyn are married and Doug is Maryâs guy who lives in the guest house out back. Also they make cooking YouTube videos together as a trio. There will probably be one-shots about them because Evelyn was too much fun to write.)
