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Spoilers ahead for A Bonding, a Coronation, and a Funeral, in case you care about that! :)
Back when I was writing the final few scenes in A Bonding, a Coronation, and a Funeral, I ran into a block with one of the scenes. (I mentioned in on Twitter here.) After fighting with it for almost a week, I deleted it and started over with a totally new tact... And it worked.
The scene itself, as published, is in Chapter 20 of Bonding. It's the scene that begins with "The knock on the door was all the warning Smokescreen got before Prowl walked in with a tray of energon." I had several goals I wanted to accomplish with this scene:
I ended up having the start of the chapter be Prowl coming to see Smokescreen, and having Smokescreen think back to what had happened between Bombshell and the Inquisitors. This way I could simultaneously show how much Smokescreen was struggling with everything (not sleeping, not eating, etc). Then I ended the chapter with him saying goodbye to Strikeback.
And it worked a lot better! I don't know if using this flashback/framing technique is better for the reader... but it works a lot better for my muse in situations like this. I've done this in a few other stories, but only when I've got a lot of stuff I need to cover in a single scene.
Anyway! The abandoned version of this scene is behind the cut. You can see that I went into a lot more detail about the Inquisitors. Some of the description was reused in the published version of the scene, but not all of it. (Also, the Inquistors will probably be making another appearance in the next long fic I have planned for this AU.) I also changed how intense Prowl and Jazz's parting was. ;)
( Abandoned version of scene behind the cut... )
Back when I was writing the final few scenes in A Bonding, a Coronation, and a Funeral, I ran into a block with one of the scenes. (I mentioned in on Twitter here.) After fighting with it for almost a week, I deleted it and started over with a totally new tact... And it worked.
The scene itself, as published, is in Chapter 20 of Bonding. It's the scene that begins with "The knock on the door was all the warning Smokescreen got before Prowl walked in with a tray of energon." I had several goals I wanted to accomplish with this scene:
- I wanted to establish that Smokescreen was still struggling.
- I wanted to give closure to what happened to Bombshell.
- I wanted to finally give readers a look at the Inquisitors, who had only been mentioned in offhand comments at this point.
- And I wanted to give closure to Strikeback's fate.
I ended up having the start of the chapter be Prowl coming to see Smokescreen, and having Smokescreen think back to what had happened between Bombshell and the Inquisitors. This way I could simultaneously show how much Smokescreen was struggling with everything (not sleeping, not eating, etc). Then I ended the chapter with him saying goodbye to Strikeback.
And it worked a lot better! I don't know if using this flashback/framing technique is better for the reader... but it works a lot better for my muse in situations like this. I've done this in a few other stories, but only when I've got a lot of stuff I need to cover in a single scene.
Anyway! The abandoned version of this scene is behind the cut. You can see that I went into a lot more detail about the Inquisitors. Some of the description was reused in the published version of the scene, but not all of it. (Also, the Inquistors will probably be making another appearance in the next long fic I have planned for this AU.) I also changed how intense Prowl and Jazz's parting was. ;)
( Abandoned version of scene behind the cut... )
