Okay, so I was typing this entry while it storms like all hell outside, and then I go downstairs for dinner thinking 'You know, I bet the power is going to blip out while I'm down here' and IT DOES o__o I didn't save what I had written because it wasn't all that long or involved yet, so I'll just reprise now.

Since I've finished the second chapter of Clarity, I can now switch gears back to Claris. The thing is that Claris is much more of a loose story in terms of plot than Clarity, because in Clarity I'm really working with someone else's framework and just adding my own decorations. Sure, the setting and characters are mine, as are a lot of the concepts, actually, but I'm also working with a lot of concepts that AREN'T mine AND plot elements that are found in Sailormoon and the mahou shoujo genre in general. Although both Claris and Clarity are 'save the world' stories (in which the eventual goal is to save the planet from some overwhelmingly horrible demise), they have very different modes of getting there, and it's much easier to do it with Clarity because it works on Sailormoon's prescribed conventions. Claris, however, is just crack-addled madness.

I am not the kind that works with outlines. I've done it with a few Claris and a few Clarity chapters, but what I wrote down was stuff I had in my head anyway. Writing it down didn't really have a bearing on the overall quality of the chapter; at least I don't think so. I don't make notes on character, plot, or setting like other talented creators I know (Kai :B), and I wonder sometimes if my work doesn't suffer for it. I tend to kind of just take the characters and jump in, and see what they do. The end of the second Clarity chapter was totally unplanned, but I'm not unhappy with it. It's what Celina chose to do, and something that's logical, I think. It also leaves a good opening into the next chapter, which is always nice for both the writer and the reader. But I still had a pretty good idea of the whole flow of events and feel of the chapter, and I don't have it as much with Claris.

Umm.. I was going somewhere else with this, but I'm being a dork and watching the Rugrats special, so it's kind of lost now. .__.;