I began writing the first chapter of Issue 2 today. I actually wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how I would start the thing. It wasn't so much that I didn't know what I wanted to say, but approaching the second half of a cliffhanger in the right direction can be tricky. I've watched a lot of television shows. Their basic cliffhanger tool is pretty easy. They often link episodes together with those cute mini clip shows that begin with something like, “in the previous episode of The Ridiculous Idiots Show...”
Writing doesn't work so well with that trick. What is optimum is a special kind of reconstruction of the situation your characters are resuming. You need to carefully rebuild the current point of the story in a way that best illustrates the theme and mood of the new chapter. It's like taking control of a project made by someone else and modifying it for the best future results.
Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about this stuff, but I feel it is vitally important for a good story. For better or for worse, once I beat myself over how to begin, it went sort of smoothly. But I wasted too much time, so I'll have to work harder tomorrow.
First draft progress: 3.58 pages out of 50 (7%)
In other news, I'm considering a change in my pricing model. As such, I have removed ebook sales for now. I'll probably have a better explanation of this tomorrow.