When you are trying to decide what to do and want to write it out somewhere or just have someone decide for you.
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It's not a secret that I'm using a lot of my already-written short stories in my NaNo, which is a sequel. The book is based on the foundations those short stories built after the first book, and it would be silly to not include those foundations which would be developmental changes from book 1 to book 2. I was feeling that the beginning was lacking because I was trying to use one short story as if it had already happened, and it was just failing to portray the developments created in that short. Steal four paragraphs from the short and rewrite them to work in context, and instantly the scene had more meaning and the reader can feel the change, rather than be told of it. Because I did that, that scene becomes an integral part of very important dialogue in the next scene.
But several chapters later, and the next time these two characters come back together, I have accidentally set up the perfect intro to use that short story word-for-word. Although I made those paragraphs work in the first chapter, they feel shunted in to me, and I adore the original short story. I would much rather put "(add Non-Scents after NaNo)" here, but it means I'll be stripping that first chapter and the results of it in the beginning. But if I decide in the end that I don't want to use the short here, I want to have something happen in this scene that moves the novel forward in some other way. So I feel torn because how the scene after this develops is based on whether I decide to use the pre-written stuff here or not.
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It's not a secret that I'm using a lot of my already-written short stories in my NaNo, which is a sequel. The book is based on the foundations those short stories built after the first book, and it would be silly to not include those foundations which would be developmental changes from book 1 to book 2. I was feeling that the beginning was lacking because I was trying to use one short story as if it had already happened, and it was just failing to portray the developments created in that short. Steal four paragraphs from the short and rewrite them to work in context, and instantly the scene had more meaning and the reader can feel the change, rather than be told of it. Because I did that, that scene becomes an integral part of very important dialogue in the next scene.
But several chapters later, and the next time these two characters come back together, I have accidentally set up the perfect intro to use that short story word-for-word. Although I made those paragraphs work in the first chapter, they feel shunted in to me, and I adore the original short story. I would much rather put "(add Non-Scents after NaNo)" here, but it means I'll be stripping that first chapter and the results of it in the beginning. But if I decide in the end that I don't want to use the short here, I want to have something happen in this scene that moves the novel forward in some other way. So I feel torn because how the scene after this develops is based on whether I decide to use the pre-written stuff here or not.