Lost Moments | Commentary (Patreon)

As we step ever closer to the end of this arc of Open Trade, it feels like a good time to talk more about paths that are not taken and lost moments. Specifically I think Lost Moments is the bigger focus on this discussion.

What happens is I'll write too much for a scene, happens all the time. I want to explore a little corner like having Mina come back to visit Steph in South Korea after a couple months. Or I did write a bit of Stephanie not responding to her American name.

These don't make it into the final draft of the story for a couple reasons.

First and easiest to explain is Time.

I only have so many hours in the day. I want to finish the story before I die. So stuff that is less plot relevant gets cut. Even in just terms of how things post here on the site. If I take 2 pages to focus on something, then that is week of real time that passes for me to tell you that. So pages become more and more precious the longer a story goes on.

Second and more complicated reason is Story Structure.

I know at the end of the day, it is my story and I can go in any direction how ever long I want. But I also want people to read the story.

So when something gets set up, I feel a lot of pressure that it is important. And the more it comes up the more important it becomes. The more the story says that it needs to be resolved.

For example, let's talk about the most recent pages with Stephanie and her Family.

I have several objectives with these pages.

I want to show that the rest of Stephanie's family cares for her enough to fly half way around the world to spend time with her.

I want to work on getting Stephanie back home to the US.

I want to show how the cultural change and time in South Korea has changed Stephanie.

I ended up showing Steph's evolution with food.

There was a version of that where Stephanie cooked some traditional South Korean food. Another version of them all going to McDonalds and the family commenting on how different the food is to the US, and Steph not following the why.

And I did write a scene of one of the sisters calling her Stephanie and her not immediately responding.

It ended up getting cut for taking too much time. It's a page of the gag with the name. But then I feel required to do a following page of the family being concerned about her, so they don't seem entirely heartless.

But every time I explore a path like that, 5 more paths open up to explore. And 5 paths that have weight and 5 paths that take us father away from the driving where I need the story to go. So ultimately, cuts are made.

I may hint to these scenes when talking about a page, but I don't often talk about them in detail. Mostly because things that are cut are not always cut.

I planned on Riley entering the story much earlier, but would keep getting pushed back because it would push other story elements back too much. Same with Lexi visiting her family. It was supposed to be way earlier. Lexi probably suffers the most from these cuts.

But when things are cut, I don't throw them away they tend to go off to the side to used later. So I am not normally able to talk about them, because they are not fully gone.

But other ideas are cut entirely. There is no way to go back and show Mina visiting again later once Stephanie goes home. I thought about addressing if Stephanie is sexually active while alone in South Korea with a trade that makes her amped up her desire. Again we can't go into much once she leaves. Addressing Stephanie's sexual needs was a constant thing that got cut or pushed back. I had a hard time finding a way into it.

Now there are ways of combatting these issues.

Bringing this arc to close opens up everything immensely. It's hard to get into Steph's cultural identity in any depth with a hundred plot lines going. But if I new arc begins that is solely focused on that, then we can explore it deeply, and other things like laws and regulations would be a distraction that would get cut.

Similarly, one shots are a nice remedy to this. I did actually write a one shot about Steph not responding to her name. I was just drained this week and wasn't about to make it for this post. I'll still make it and post it later.

But 'A Fern in the Forest' doesn't suffer from the same issues. We are jumping around all over in that story only showing moments that seem fun. I'm not required to follow up on those strips of events in the same way. Also we don't know Forest as intimately, so it's easier to not show the fallout from bad things.

So if there was a moment in this Arc of Open Trade that you didn't get to see, this is probably why. There are things I really wanted to get into, but never did.

Hopefully, with ending this arc, new stories of these characters can explore a vast amount of things.

What is something you wanted to see be explored more, but never happened?