We've sort of done that, albeit not quite to the extent that we did it in S5M3. There's also been a substantial helping of "new character walks into the room, looks around, says 'you guys can chill out, I got this,'" which has kept the focus from moving around quite as much as you suggest. :)

>a la what you did with First Dates & Firefights
>(which I still maintain is a Fall Out Boy B-side waiting to happen).

Heh, depends on the period. On From Under the Cork Tree, for instance, it would've required a long-winded parenthetical subtitle. "First Dates and Firefights (It's Probably a Good Idea Not to Bring Your Mom Along For Either One)", for example.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well, not really, since it's mostly either finished or plotted by now; I was more going for "providing a look into the process". But that's fine!

>In particular,
>Utena and Corwin's pre-wedding jitters probably don't need to be
>re-visited.

Indeed, I suspect even they would agree with that, although, for the record, Corwin didn't really have any. Or if he did, they happened in the story before Clarion. He's not really up that tree in Out of the Blue because of wedding jitters, though. He's up there because he's preoccupied with a peculiar feeling of doom (in the older "something is happening" sense).

>Number two is the big one. We didn't GET to the actual ceremony and
>post-ceremony party in Clarion Call. That will be new and exciting, so
>roll with that more than the pre-wedding logistics. For that matter,
>if it were me writing this (disclaimer: I am in no way equipped to
>write this) I might consider not even bothering with a run-up.

Well (as you will hopefully see within the next... hmm, I don't want to jinx myself... The Next While), we did and we didn't. There's a fairly detailed chronicle of the couple of days before the wedding in Try, Try Again, but it's mostly not to do with logistics per se; it's because, in practical terms, that's when the party started. :)

        "I have to say," [REDACTED] teased, "you don't really present the
appearance of a man under pressure."
        "Well, yeah," Corwin agreed.  "The thing is, Utena and me, we
already -did- most of the -hard- parts.  In reverse order, even."  He
grinned.  "That's kind of been a theme for us right along."

>It's totally okay for stuff to
>just NOT be shown, especially if they feel like they're bloated and
>unnecessary or very "same-y." The crowd control that's taking place
>behind the scenes can remain there unless it's something actually, you
>know, interesting.

Oh, I know, and I'm not planning on showing most of that. A little, to give a flavor for what the people responsible are up against, but it's far from exhaustive. What I was getting at above was that, the way my process works, most of it still has to happen somewhere in my head, and that's a bit fatiguing even if it doesn't come out into the readers' field of view. It's like not being able to remember the second verse of a song without singing the first verse in your head first. I can't be the only one that happens to. Can I? Never mind.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I can actually think of at least one high-profile(ish) writer whose mind works the same way; Ben Aaronovitch. I had the pleasure to sit in on a Q&A with him a couple years back, and he considers it essential to the establishment of verisimilitude that everything needs to happen, somewhere, in a way that he knows about and drives, in order for his stuff to work to his satisfaction. In some cases he will actual write fifty or sixty pages of stuff he -has no intention- of ever submitting to his publisher just so he can work out exactly what's going on off-screen to justify events happening on-screen.

So, y'know. Take that for what it's worth.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Second person? The Crappy Internet Porn voice? I'm going to have to decline. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The... What?

What porn have you been watching? I was thinking Sherlock Holmes.

Second person - you did this, you did that, you experienced the other. The only things I've ever seen written primarily in the second person are particularly awful Internet porn stories and Charles Stross's Halting State, which is like Internet porn without the porn. :)

I don't recall a Sherlock Holmes story written in that format, but then I haven't read the canon in a while. Most Holmes stories are in the first person, but mainly telling about the actions of a third party (as opposed to, say, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels, which are in the first person and mainly concerned with the narrating character's own doings).

--G.
seriously, Charley, I'm a fan, but WTF was that supposed to be?
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Ah. There's the misunderstanding, then - I was given to understand that second person referred to fixed third person from the perspective of someone other than the protagonist - Watson observing Holmes, for example. A quick rifle through Wikipedia shows me that I - and by extension, my grade 4 teacher - were wrong about that.

Having learned that, the only use I'd have for second person would be in text adventures. I was actually suggesting a fixed third person account.

Another alternative (and what I suspected you meant to start with, though my suspicion has been proven wrong) would be first person from a minor/throwaway/new character. But since it's already in the works/near completion in third person (which I prefer anyway both as a writer and reader), this is really just pissing in the wind on my part.

Fun fact: his publishers were unsure enough about Halting State that, even with a finished manuscript in hand, they would only buy it if it were part of a two-book contract, with the second book being a space opera. (Read: safe and guaranteed profitable.)

-Merc
Keep Rat

Ted Chiang's novella Story of Your Life has significant parts in second person, and unusually works. But that is part of the central conceit of the story :-)

S.