31 Plays in 31 Days, #11 - “Respects to Pay”

MORE FAN FIC. Been feeling kind of guilty for how much time I’ve devoted to it compared to original wok this August. But when I posted the final chapter of The Favor, which this challenge helped me finish, it got over three hundred hits on its first day across AO3 and FF.Net. So I kind of can’t kick the habit when it means the stuff I’m writing actually gets read by more than a handful of people. Sigh.

This piece immediately follows Day #9 - Receiving Line, inspired by a moment in The Favor where a moment at Peggy’s funeral is mentioned. I thought I could relatively quickly dramatize the event, so I jumped in. As a matter of fact, this drafting tactic of writing a conversational moment as if it were dialogue in a play just to get the shape of it down is really effective for me. Maybe it’s because I’m better at drama than prose. But I was having trouble figuring out the order of ideas, what should be spoken when, and switching to dialogue only made it way easier. That’s a helpful trick to discover.

Of course, I have to make sure I commit to really editing the piece when it comes to converting it to prose. Can’t just slap some narration in around it and call it a day; it has to be shaped to the purpose. It’s too easy to dash it off. As this currently stands, it has a good arc, but perhaps it moves too fast. They move from emotional point to emotional point a little too quickly and easily. But that’s a common problem in these 31P31D scenes where I’m pushing to get them finished. In the prose edit I’ll have to see if it needs more, or if the narration can serve to soften the transitions. 

( Day #11 – Respects to Pay )