Fractal Legacy: First Draft, Part One Complete

Well, that was something. Compared to the first thread in part one of Fractal Legacy, the Kitrano thread simply flew past. I think it was the most prolonged spell of sustained writing I've ever achieved, even writing over 4,000 words in one day. That was a record for me.

It's surprising, considering it contains possibly the hardest SF concepts I've used, loosely based on real speculative scientific theories. Rather than bog me down in the details, it appeared to free me to take wild creative liberties. Great fun! The wet weather likely helped too.

It wasn't all plain sailing though. One of the concerns from the first thread was that some chapters were longer than I usually aim for, teetering around 5,000 words. That got out of control in the second thread. When I had one over 6,500 words long, I decided to have a rethink, especially as the stories in the two threads weren't dove-tailing as well as I'd hoped.

The solution turned out to be relatively simple. The longer chapters tended to have a couple of scenes from different perspectives, so with a small amount of surgery, I turned them into two shorter chapters from a single perspective. Now, all but the last chapter of part one, where the threads come together, are from a single character's perspective.

All in all, part one, Expansion, turned into quite a beast. These are the chapters (the colour coding indicated the perspective, but I'm not telling you who yet):

In total, that's 58,500 words. Phew. I think this will be the longest of the books in the Fractal Space trilogy. I've just completed a read-through of these chapters in order (having written them out of order) and come away being unusually impressed with myself. It was almost like I knew what I was doing all along. Cough.

My plans for the rest of the book have shifted a little, although not significantly. However, I have gone back to having three parts, as I realised the following few chapters have their own theme. It still starts with Expansion and ends with Contraction, but now Bifurcation nestles in between. That comes next. These are the planned chapters:

Right. It's time to crack on. It's either that or shampoo the carpets.