HELP: Help me with a story-boarding decision.

[unrepentantAuthor]

Hi there! I'm unrepentantAuthor, and I'm writing a story about a cat who wants to be a person, and it's almost time in-story for the genetic modification procedure that will accomplish this for her.

I'm fiddling about right now with how Different Eyes' fourth chapter should go, and would love some input from fresh voices. Here's the context (mild spoilers):

I've spent 9,000 words now working up to our purrloin protagonist, Salem, becoming a pokémorph without it actually happening yet. There's mostly been lots of characterisation to justify why she'd go for it, and foreshadowing that It'll happen soon.

The draft version of Chapter Four I have right now is currently another 3,000 words in which she's finally offered the choice to become a hybrid (in her mind, to become a person) and takes it. The draft ends with her being administered a general anaesthesia prior to the procedure.

Now, my beta reader recently suggested to me that since Chapter Three ends with Salem leaving her previous location in the company of the person who very obviously is going to make the morphing offer to her, I should open Chapter Four with Salem already morphed and disoriented, disorient the reader in kind, and then cover both Salem's new existence and the lead-up to it alongside each-other (either with achronological scenes, or just by doing an extended flashback after Salem-as-a-morph is revealed).

The idea with this is that the readers have been waiting a while now to see the goddamn hybrids this story is supposed to be about! So I should at least tease them with a scene before covering the lead-up.

Something else I can do instead of or in addition to this is post Interlude 1 as the next update. It's 600 words of jargon in the form of a database article about the Species Hybridisation Protocol, a methodology for turning pokémon into human hybrids.

I would very much like some input from people about

1. Whether to post the interlude now or later?
2. Whether to begin chapter 4 with Salem as a morph?
3. If so, how disorienting and asynchronous to make it?

Thanks in advance for any commentary or advice.

 

[WanderingKalosan]

Honestly I would keep continuing chronologically until the point of change. You already are telling the story via flashback in the first place, so why complicate it further via flashback-inside-flashback?
Unless you have a good reason to skip certain scene (for dramatic reveals later on or to simulate Salem's possible trauma/dealing with new identity etc) I wouldn't go there. I am not that crazy to meet the hybrids / morphed Salem. I enjoy her slow journey to that point. Her experience and reasoning will make her decision (eventually) feel natural and a logical outcome.

Is there a pressure to get to the hybrids/morphs of this world? If so maybe Salem can meet a person who has been already changed. Not only we will see how these hybrids live etc but you could also use it later on as Salem remember this experience / meeting and being part of the reason she wants to morph (especially if the characetr was nice to her, or maybe even helped her while using some new abilities)...

Just my two cents of course. I wouldn't go the flashback way in this particular case but you are the author, so...
At any rate, good luck !

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Thanks for your input, @WanderingKalosan. I still haven't decided exactly how to handle this problem, but you've made me feel as if a conventional approach is defensible and I appreciate that. I'm always happier making choices if I feel that either option is valid and therefore the choice is a true one.

Thanks!

 

[diamondpearl876]

I've enjoyed the slowness of the beginning so far to get to know Salem and her pre-morph life, as I've said elsewhere. An interlude doesn't sound like a bad idea now that I've read chapter 3, but I still wouldn't go straight into morphing afterward. It'd feel like too quick of a jump.

I could see another chapter pre-morph where she gets hints that she's going to turn human but maybe doesn't fully grasp them yet and where she spends time with Alisha (without the actual process starting), then an interlude, then a disorienting chapter post-change. As for how disorienting to make it? I'd definitely describe the process among her chaos, or at least what she can remember of it.

 

[Ambyssin]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with the others, here. Fics are a written medium. We lack the benefit of visual mediums. Confusion and disorientation is something you're going to have a hard time really solidly getting across just in writing. And I, as a reader, am really going to have a hard time following it. Usually, surreal chapters tend to lose and confuse me, which I could imagine happening if you decided to go the asynchronous route for the sake of "getting to the point." I think, with the way you've approached it so far, you have to keep things chronological. For what it's worth, I don't feel like things have gone too slowly. Granted, my "introductory arc" goes on for, like, 9 chapters, so maybe I'm not the best person to offer this advice. :V

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Thanks @diamondpearl876 and @Ambyssin for your responses. I feel further fortified to best make the writing decision I'm most happy with.

My current plan is to have chapter four be 'ordinary', in which Alisha pitches the morphing process to Salem and the first hybrid character appears. Following the strong implication that Salem will shortly undergo the process herself, I shall post first the jargon interlude detailing what the process entails but which Salem couldn't reasonably narrate, along with @canisaries' wonderful review league prize art appropriate to this point in the story, and then a somewhat disorienting fifth chapter in which Salem comes to terms with her new body and recalls the dreamlike experience of the morphing process.

I anticipate that this will go well enough.