2010 EP Progress Report

One of the weird/borderline-crazy things about creating your own stories is that you make up little personal details about your fictional characters. Like birthdays. And December 29 just so happens to be Rory's. So in honor of that, plus the fact that 2010 is drawing to a close, this post is going to be entirely dedicated to my personal progress report about my pet project of four years and counting. Therefore, if you have abhor my self-indulgent posts about my pet project or you have no clue what in the world I'm talking about, stop reading HERE.

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Now, moving on.

So, last year I made the laughable -- no, make it ROFLMAO-able -- New Year's Resolution of finishing the first complete draft of EP by the end of 2010. Hey, dream big and all that jazz, right? Needless to say, that CLEARLY did not happen.

So what did I actually manage to accomplish? Well, some things I changed:

• STRUCTURE COUP: essentially, I completely overthrew the original narrative structure that alternated the chapters between Charlotte and Rory. A couple of past reviewers complained that the structure made the flow extremely choppy. The story is now divided into three "acts" -- Charlotte's POV makes up the entire first act; Charlotte still dominates the second act but vignettes from Rory's POV start to appear; by the third act, Rory's POV dominates until the climax scene for Charlotte's storyline, and then Charlotte takes over for the conclusion.
  
• FALL OF THE QUEEN: this was a fairly recent decision I made, so I may actually change my mind about this -- I threw out all except one of the beginning chapters about Rory and will instead narrate from her POV only for the events that occur after she reaches the peak of her fame at Ecstasia. The back-story about Rory's entry into Her Highness and her rise to power will be instead revealed through Charlotte's journalism interviews with Rhys, Patrick, and Leo. (The decision actually makes me quite sad, because that meant essentially discarding nearly half of the chapters I had already written.)
  
• AKA THE NEW GIRLS: both Rory and Charlotte's back stories are clarified. The Maciels move to Rosecrans at the beginning of Rory's sophomore year for reasons revealed later; Charlotte is now also technically a "new girl" in the sense that she dropped out of a private arts academy due to burn-out and then enrolled at Rosecrans High.
• BYE BYE SKYE: I originally wanted to use her as a foil for Rory -- but then decided this girl made things way too high-school-drama-ish and that she was completely unnecessary.
• MINOR STUFF: Rory is now Brazilian/Taiwanese instead of Portuguese/Japanese; Patrick is of some sort of Hispanic/Spanish descent (Santoro instead of Elleston); Rhys is no longer the stereotypical flirting playboy but someone much less cliched; greater emphasis and repetition of thematic motifs (Orpheus and Eurydice; Brahms and Clara; self-fantasy vs. obligation; etc.)
  

And I'd rather not say just exactly how far along I am with the drafting process -- it's quite embarrassing.

I promise -- a more interesting post within the next two or three days.