💾 Archived View for yujiri.xyz › writing › henrys-quest › commentary.gmi captured on 2023-04-19 at 23:22:06. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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As I mentioned in the preface, the story in its current form would've been better served by a completely different first chapter. I think there's too much intro before the viewpoint character does anything, and too little content to the characters. But by the time I realized, the story was finished and I didn't have enough motivation to rewrite the chapter.
There was actually a lot of canon about the characters I had decided on before I started writing that didn't make it in. June was an artist, and Henry's dad was a former Xenia cop who quit because he had a conscience, and there was a story I never got too specific about where he got captured by some bandit crew, earned his life by giving them inside information about the Xenia police which resulted in them defeating a police squad that was hunting them instead of the other way around, then escaping them. If that story had've made it into chapter 1, it might've added some nice substance to him saying how dangerous the rest of the world is.
I feel pretty satisfied with chapters 2 and 3. But I do think Roy could've been portrayed a lot better. My original imagination was that he was the last in a series of ruling bandit gangs, and that his lasted so much longer than the others because he was smarter than the others, he knew not to make too many enemies, etc. While that helps explain why he let Henry go to Xenia even when there was nothing in it for him, I ended up writing him as a hothead in every other scene (a certain person from my past may have colored him accidentally), which makes it less believable.
The idea of Henry picking up a rare, futuristic weapon, which I imagine looking like the blasters from Treasure Planet, from the first town he visits, only to find out later it doesn't work, was one of the first things I had in mind while this story was incubating.
Tina, as some ally Henry would meet in the big city who would have idealistic dreams about saving the planet instead of just surviving like everyone else, also goes about as far back as the story itself. As I was writing her I quickly realized that I liked her much more than Henry, but I was still pleased with the decision to make Henry the protagonist for the reasons I said in the preface. Even though Tina will probably never get her own story because I don't think I have any passion for this world left, I'm glad the possibility is open, and that if I ever do write it, it won't be my first.
I feel much less proud of chapters 4 and 5. They're where my lack of planning ahead caught up to me and all the logistics came crashing down. I wanted Henry to end up using the gun, or else it would feel pointless that he took it, but I also didn't want him to actually kill anyone, and I wanted him to find out that it doesn't work, which seemed hard to do at the same time as not using it to shoot anyone. I also wanted him to get the MacGuffin, escape Xenia, and then get executed by Xenia police along with Roy on the way back. That ending was in my vision from the start. While I totally considered compromising it and just having Henry get caught and executed without escaping Xenia, I felt his failure would be less poignant if he didn't get so close, and also worried it would make the story feel kind of meaningless. As-is, while his quest was a failure for himself, it did result in the tyrant of Duncan being eliminated, which might lead to the people of Duncan being free after the story ends. I wanted this hopeful open end to add some bittersweetness to the story.
I think the most believability-straining aspect of chapter 4 is that the gate guard doesn't demand an explanation for how he got the car, or even make him show a driver's license. After I hammer home the idea that Xenia police have suuuuper tight surveilance and control over everything, there's no way that would work. Second worst is that he can operate the car without having ever driven or likely even seen a car before.