While I'm busy editing, I keep remembering all these little unimportant things that I thought a very select few people might actually find interesting, so I decided to make a chapter (and maybe a few more as time goes on) to at least keep a flow of updates here on Wattpad and hopefully entertain anyone who's patiently waiting for the next chapter.
I know this won't be as good as a new chapter, but I hope it's still entertaining. I'll probably delete these when the next chapter is posed, or I'll move them to the very end of the book as bonus content. We'll see.
The First Chapter, or The Seventh
The OG readers (if anyone actually kept reading after the first chapter) will probably remember, but for those who haven't been reading Red Skies at Morning since the very beginning, you would have missed the very first publication of the first chapter, which was actually the seventh chapter.
Originally Red Skies was going to entirely skip the events of The Lightning Theif and Wren's journey to Camp Half-Blood. Instead, I wanted to jump straight into the action at the beginning of The Sea of Monsters. So when I published the very first version of chapter one, it was actually just a very sloppy and worse-written version of the seventh chapter/the first chapter of Part 2.
The main reason for changing this was that I hadn't developed Wren's character or backstory at all, and I didn't think I'd be able to pull off that development through memories and flashbacks alone. And, when I did finally develop Wren's character and backstory, I decided that her childhood and journey to camp were way too important for her character to risk fumbling the explanation through dialouge and flashbacks.
Earlier variations of the current first chapter opened on the scene of Wren walking down the street, but everything before that explained as if Wren was busy reminiscing on her walk. I changed this because that chapter was already written in past tense, and I found the past tense of a past tense to be irritating to both read and write.
The current version of Chapter 1 was meant to refrence the way The Lightning Theif opens, as I figured that the fandom would appreciate the homage to the source.
What do you guys think, should I have kept the action-packed beginning and explained Wren's backstory through memories and diolauge, or do you like starting from the beginning of Wren's life like how Percy does in in The Lightning Theif? Or should I have kept the first version of what I have now?
It All Started With... A Trip to BC (this refrence thankfully doesn't make sense to anyone who read chapter 1 after I was finished editing it)
I originally got the idea and motivation to write Red Skies at Morning on a road trip to BC with my family in August. And if you remember, the first monster encounter Wren has at the beginning of the book takes place on a camping trip in BC in August.
What's in a Name?
I'm sure most people already know this by now, but for those who've never heard the rhyme, the name "Red Skies at Morning" actually comes from a common sailor's rhyme to help predict weather patterns. The full rhyme goes "Red sky at night, sailors' delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." Honestly, I remembered the rhyme wrong and that's why the title says "skies" instead of "sky" and now I'm on the fence about changing it.
What do you guys like better? "Red Sky at Morning" or "Red Skies at Morning?"
Okay, that's all I got at the moment. There'll probably be more pretty soon.