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I am, incidentally, still working on the revisions to "What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)." It's just taking forever. This is mostly because I laid out the story timeline and realized that in order to have it make sense in meteorological terms, I needed at least a full year to pass -- the story starts in spring, takes at least six months to play out, and ends with a thunderstorm... and those don't really happen until the weather warms up, which means I have to cycle all the way through winter and back around to spring or summer.
And that meant that even after tweaking some time jumps between early scenes (to make the start of autumn term at the academy match up better with standard Japanese school year patterns), I had a seven month gap between Naruto's return from Wave Country and the meeting in Kakashi's office. Which is just ridiculous.
So I figured I really should write the dinner party scene... but I needed something to hang it on, some point beyond just, you know, a bunch of people in a room, and for the longest time I couldn't think of any hook.
Until tonight it occurred to me that if Japanese school years switch between April and March, Sasuke really ought to be teaching a different set of kids by the end of the story. Since he clearly isn't -- the OC student remains the same from autumn to spring -- I figure he got switched from being a part-time teacher with only one class to being a full-time teacher with two or three classes. (I never really said in the story text, but I figure that the ninja academy does in fact split teachers up by subject, which is why Iruka seems to have taught Naruto at several different ages. Sasuke is teaching ninjutsu and general history; he's not teaching weapons, genjutsu, taijutsu, traps, math and writing, or anything else.)
So clearly what happens is that Naruto and Sakura decide to throw Sasuke a celebratory dinner party, and he is completely taken aback A) that they want to do that, and B) that anyone else wants to attend. Especially since he's still deeply ambivalent about this whole being-in-Konoha thing, and trying to convince himself he's going to escape and get revenge, really he is, any day now, he swears...
Anyway, I have only just started the new scene, but at least now I have a hook. And the rest of the edits are basically done, so once I get this part down, I think I'm good. Still, I'd really hoped I'd be done with this by now!
(23,000 words and counting. I always seem to get longer when I go from first to second draft. *sigh*)
And that meant that even after tweaking some time jumps between early scenes (to make the start of autumn term at the academy match up better with standard Japanese school year patterns), I had a seven month gap between Naruto's return from Wave Country and the meeting in Kakashi's office. Which is just ridiculous.
So I figured I really should write the dinner party scene... but I needed something to hang it on, some point beyond just, you know, a bunch of people in a room, and for the longest time I couldn't think of any hook.
Until tonight it occurred to me that if Japanese school years switch between April and March, Sasuke really ought to be teaching a different set of kids by the end of the story. Since he clearly isn't -- the OC student remains the same from autumn to spring -- I figure he got switched from being a part-time teacher with only one class to being a full-time teacher with two or three classes. (I never really said in the story text, but I figure that the ninja academy does in fact split teachers up by subject, which is why Iruka seems to have taught Naruto at several different ages. Sasuke is teaching ninjutsu and general history; he's not teaching weapons, genjutsu, taijutsu, traps, math and writing, or anything else.)
So clearly what happens is that Naruto and Sakura decide to throw Sasuke a celebratory dinner party, and he is completely taken aback A) that they want to do that, and B) that anyone else wants to attend. Especially since he's still deeply ambivalent about this whole being-in-Konoha thing, and trying to convince himself he's going to escape and get revenge, really he is, any day now, he swears...
Anyway, I have only just started the new scene, but at least now I have a hook. And the rest of the edits are basically done, so once I get this part down, I think I'm good. Still, I'd really hoped I'd be done with this by now!
(23,000 words and counting. I always seem to get longer when I go from first to second draft. *sigh*)
