Cliffhangers

Ah, Cliffhangers, bringers of the reviews

They're just delightful, right?

No? But...But they're fun!

Oh, right. I guess that's true. They are very mean to the readers. particularly mine.

I always have issues with where to end a chapter. Take A Captive Light, for example. I could have ended it where I did, or just after, with Kari holding T.K. And him being, to her mind, dead. oh, spoilers! If you didn't read A Captive Light but are reading this for some odd reason... why? the link's right over there *points to the link*.

anyway. both would have gotten a reaction out of the readers- but I opted for the first, so it's unclear who has just been offed, and doing previews for the readers that make it sorst kinda a little clear. ish.

More on THAT in the next chapter observation.

But Let's talk Cliffies for a bit, while I procrastinate my homework.

they are great ways to get reviewers to come out of the woodwork. And It can be more than fun to get emails from readers exclaiming about what happened. I had a few friends who I knew IRL reading, and they all ...erm.. spoke forcefully to me the next day at school. Somehow I managed to keep my mouth shut.

So I like Cliffhangers, as I'm sure you've realized. they bring a sense of dread and eagerness to the readers, and also make sure I don't wait six months to update, like I might for non urgent matters.

Anyway, thats all for now

HNA

A Captive Light Chapter Ten and Eleven.

Chapter Ten: Worth A World.

Again with oddly specific to the situation dreams, although Since it's Kari, and she's prone to being possessed by the Spirit of the Digital World due to her status as the Child of Light, I thought it worked. Yes, that chimey music stuff is the Spirit of the Digital World. *shrugs* I know it didn't have a voice, but I'm dealing with words here, and a floating pile of glitter might look cool, but describing it.... eh. so yeah, it became music-y stuff. I liked writing Kari in this. She's such a sweetheart. She knows exactly wants going to happen, poor duck, and everything is against her. Ken, her friend's loyalty, the universe, me... but it had to be done. I was also fond of bringing back " Mimi's Army" which really saved everyone's butts in the last few episodes of the first season and never really comes up again. Agumon got a line! I am so terrible at remembering the digimon, so I was proud that I remembered he's have been there. not that he'd be much good in a fight, but hey. Here, Davis goes OOC. and by that, I mean he shows some smarts. Davis, upon re-watching season two, seems dumber than I remembered. But oh well. We'll say " character development!" and that he reverts back to normal because of trama. Or maybe a blow to the head. Moving on. The conversations were weird to write. I don't do well with conversations, because when I write, I get deep in character, and switching POVs so fast is HARD. anyway. Ken was colder than I'd have liked, because I do love the guy, but that's life.

That Trust Password thing has always fascinated me. I like using them in my stories, but of course, the DD probably wouldn't think of it, which is odd since there are shapeshifters running about. so I had fun with that. The question took me ages to think up, but I did find one that worked. This ending was the last of the not so Really Terrible Cliffhangers- yet at least three reviews pointed out the evil cliffie. It Amused me greatly.

Chapter Eleven: Light's Ransom.

Dear heaven, I loved writing this chapter, which says a lot of things about me, none of them good. I'm evil, Evil, Evil. And I regret nothing. This was mostly written quite late on a Thursday night, something I never do- but in this case I was leaving friday morning and had no computer access all weekend. and I wanted to torment people. So up it went. T.K's plan went into motion, and went well, something that tends not to happen in any kid's shows. Of course, he was a bit of an idiot for not having brought any kind of tool, but then, he was only 11, and it was more of a desperate Hope than a plan. T.K's good at Desperate Hopes. They usually work better for him than this one. Some adorable Takari fluff- I don't really care about pairings, but there are four exceptions to my rule- Castle and Beckett in Castle, Ash and Misty in Pokemon, Katara and Aang in Avatar, and T.K and Kari. And that last one I've held onto since I was nine years old. So yeah, had to do that, I just had to. Anyway, Chekov's Magic Digimon Feather shows up, and things are looking pretty good. the audience lets out a sigh of relief.

And then it all goes South. Davis get's to be flipping AWESOME, something I never in a million years thought I'd write. The cavalry comes, yay, epic battle that's not so epic due to the depressing lack of epic battle music from either Lord of the rings or Narnia.

And then I pulled what was The single worst, in my mind, of ANY of my cliffhangers EVER.

I'll do a post on cliffhangers next.

I warned people about me killing characters. I have an attack, Kari in pain, blackout.

Whatever possessed me? Oh yeah. I'm evil. also, the Core, Which is the next chapter, which I will talk about AFTER the Cliffhanger stuff.

see you soon.

~HNA

Nothing to do with Fanfiction....

Yeah, Like I said, nothing to do with Fanfiction. Sorry. Well, not really, it's not like anyone's reading this yet, so you couldn't be waiting for the next set of chapter observations.. if you ever would. Bit that's not the point. This is the Point:

I just won a creative writing contest with an original Children's Short Story. VERY HAPPY.

A Captive Light Chapters Five through Nine

Chapter Five: Promises and It.

Marking the first of my Really Terrible Cliffhangers (RTC), I had a ball with this chapter. First of all, I got to explain to the new kids what happened with " It" (Wizardmon's death). I know it doesn't fit with Canon, as they are supposed to learn about it in the 17th or 18th episode, but hey, that's the least of the fans' worries, all things considered. Am I right? I also had a bit of fun with the Kamyia family- Mom's inedible cooking. I went through a few cookbooks before I found something that sounded as bad as the things spoken of in the show. I also got to bring up the other families, which was fun. I'm loving Izzy's parents. this also marks the beginning of the light Takari promised. It's still mostly friendship, because the kids ARE only 11, but still. Warm Fuzzies all around.

Chapter Six: Just Across The Street.

Oh boy. This is where the story really got going. I also had lots of set up for A fading Hope, although I didn't know then that I'd be writing it! I liked parts of this chapter, but other's bothered me. I really dislike OCs ever since my first fic, and Old Shame with an awful Mary Sue, but logically, I knew that the parents would call the cops. Thus... cops. I did like getting to do a Chasing Vermeer shout out in this, though. Fun Fact- all of the school friends Tai calls are named for people I know- variations on nicknames, of course. Sana and Lin for school friends, Doryu for my boyfriend, Turle for my brother, and May for myself. That was fun, although none of them seemed to spot it. Sigh.

Chapter Seven: A Captive Light.

Oh, nightmares. I Felt weird about putting that in, but went with it. Still, why do characters in books and movies aways have dreams so specific to the current situation? I ought to write an English paper on that. I wanted to hug Tai for this, and Kari. My gosh, I'm cruel. Despite this chapter bearing the same name as the overall story, it isn't in anyway the Core. that's later. It was hard to write Ken in this, but I think I did ok on that. Another thing I loved was the shout out to the 1997 A Little Princess, one of my favorite movies. KHLostEmporess got that one, and that made me very happy. I had a blast writing this though, because the Plan was mostly finally revealed. ish. enough to freak people out. Also, the crest of Light- the fake one- shows up. that made several reviewers very happy.

Chapter Eight: Attempted Rescue.

Again, no one called me on it, but huge mistake. unless Mimi and Sora teleported, there was no way they'd have gotten to Japan so soon. If/ When I ever go back and fix stuff, I'll probably have them land somewhere closer, haha. I hated writing this chapter, because it was all just filler. Ugg. But people seemed to like it, so, meh. And I was quite proud of "Tai dove headlong at the boy, despite the fact that said boy was currently about 13 feet off the ground, atop an eight ton monster." It amused me greatly.Again with the RTCs, I proved my Evilness.

Chapter Nine:Emperor's Desire.

My birthday post! I got quite a few reviews from that. I ought to claim it's my birthday more often. only the day I posted this chapter, it really was my birthday, and I'd never lie. except about deadlines. I love Joe. I've said it often. He's just great. Ah, the Ransom Note. Good grief that was a pain to write. I really hated writing that. Somehow there was some repetition, but again, no one called me on it, so it doesn't really matter. Anyway, the RTC on this chapter wasn't so bad as the next few, but wasn't as much fun either.

That's all for now.

~HNA

A bit about my Writing process

Before I go on to the next set of chapters, I'm going to talk a bit about how I go about writing something.

I start with a core. By that, I mean I start with an image in my head- often the climactic scene, or something right before it. I know, more or less, how the characters got to that point, and what is currently happening, but that's about it. details are fuzzy.

Then I do a one sentence summary I go through the entire story and plot out each chapter in about a sentence. For example, the sentence summary for the Prologue of A Captive Light was "Ken plots to use POF [power of friendship] against the DD and kidnap someone". Then, I write out a longer summary- a paragraph or two, depending on the chapter. Once that is done, I go through and write the whole chapter, look it over twice and post it.

You'll see more about the Core of A Captive Light when I get to the later chapters.

I also listen to music- a lot. Sadly, I no longer have access to the computer I was using while writing A Captive Light, so the song list I used is gone. still, I do remember most of the "soundtrack" and will post a list later. When we get up to date with A Fading Hope, you can expect to see the full lyrics and if possible a recording/ video of the song used in that chapter, but since A Captive Light didn't have song fragments at the start of each chapter, I won't be doing that.

~HNA

A Captive Light, prologue through chapter four

Just notes and observations about the already written A Captive Light.

Prologue:

It's been nearly two years since I wrote this. Looking back, I used to cringe at it, until watching some of season two with my roommates last month. It seems I got Ken pretty well in character. This opening, short and watching the villain has become a favorite type of opening of mine. I rather enjoyed writing it, and the counterpart in the sequel. Just enough of the Evil Plan is given away to worry the audience- something I noticed Ken did in the show. This was this first Digimon fanfic writing I'd done in ages, and it came out nicely, I think. I wrote most of it durning my 11th grade English class.

Chapter One: And So It Begins.

Yes, the title is ripped right off of Digimon season one's first episode. The title, however, wasn't a part of the story until later on, and I still dislike it, but had nothing better to put in. This chapter was rather hard to write- mostly because I took a break for about three weeks from writing all together. I was also very worried about keeping everyone in character- I had to remind myself that Davis and Yolei( who keeps getting her name mangled by me) ought to argue, Gatomon had to be sarcastic, and the digimon.. I hate writing the digimon. They tend to have very... bland personalities- a few traits, but the show was about the kids, mostly. It was awkward. This chapter also marks the entry of my shout out to Tamora Pierce, a favorite author. the Zhannemon, named for the queen of the Stormwings, come from a great series called the Immortals Quartet. Later on, I realised that the Zhannemon and the Stormwings were more alike than I thought.

Chapter Two: Broken Promise.

Return of the funny disclaimers, in a shout out to Avatar, the Last Airbender. If I thought keeping folks in character was hard last chapter, this one was crazy. In my defense, Kari does freak out in the Dark Ocean episode, and in the 7th episode, Davis was a bit more.. tactful. Ish. Still, I feel like I could have done better. This chapter introduces us to the angst of It. It was fun to write, I won't lie. I tend to get into character when I write, and nearly had myself in tears. I had the most fun writing T.K in this, though. I was seriously channeling the Dark Ocean episode for that.

Chapter Three: Gatomon's Fear.

I wrote this chapter after about a month and a half of letting people sit and stew. And I was not kind about it. I really didn't like writing this because I hate writing Evil!Ken, but upon watching season two- particularly the 8th episode- he was just so cruel and cold. So I had to go over the top by my normal villain standards. It was very, very hard to do. I feel like I went too quickly from Ken yelling to Gatomon having her Tramatic flashbacks and flipping out, and some reviewers wanted to know what it accomplished, as Ken already knew the name "Kari". The original draft- some lines got deleted somehow and I forgot to put them back in- had her stay stronger a bit longer, and Ken ask more questions. I also wanted Ken to do some online snooping. I have no Idea how the school system works in Japan, first to admit it. But I had fun. Berkerely is a reference to Berkeley, California, where I used to live.

Chapter Four: False Trail.

This remains one of the longest chapters I've written, at ten pages in word doc. I wrote it all in two days- boy was that crazy. I vowed never to do that again, and did anyway. This was a bit crazy to write0- I got to mess around with character relationships and mostly forgot about the digimon. I particularly liked writing Joe- and his tally of the number of times people were almost killed. One line that I planned that didn't make the edits was a Joke Tai made about Vampires, Myotismon and Twilight. This chapter also sets up a lot of stuff- not for this story but for A Fading Hope. I also made a mistake that I only noticed later about the Digivices- Cody's was Yellow, not blue, and the older ones didn't glow with the crest colors unless they were digivolving. Sigh. No one pointed it out, at least!

~HNA

A brief Introduction

Hello. I'm Hedgi, of fanfiction.net, and I started this blog because I like to talk. And I Like to talk about my writing, and explain things. Only I don't want to waste all my reader's time with authors notes when all they really want to read at the moment is the story.... thus, a blog.

Here, you will find a variety of things: Author's notes, comments on chapters- both the plot related and life relate aspects, explanations for various things (like cliffhangers), observations, lists and lyrics of songs listened to while writing, progress reports, sneak previews and whatever else I feel like.

I'll also answer questions and address broader reviews gotten from Fanfiction.net here.

Since as of writing this, A Captive Light is complete, I'll " rush" through it, but any questions or elaborations requested will be gladly responded to.

That's that, I suppose.

~HNA