Week 5 - Beginning Episode 2

This week, I completed my first episode and moved on to writing my second. While I am slightly behind in progress, I am continuing to work at my planned pace and have strong guidelines for how I will write my second episode. Finishing my first episode has given me a better understanding of the themes and characters in my story, and made me start fleshing out the character arcs I want to give to certain side characters to help flesh them out.

In one of the later scenes in the first episode, I write a moment Shen has with his father that seeks to humanize Kusho and the burden he carries, but also convey the distance in their relationship. I had been anticipating writing this scene since I started the project, and I had Shen hug his father while Kusho shows no reaction, showing Shen’s desire for affection that his father does not fill. In my second episode, I skip forward in time, showing Shen and Govos making the transition to adulthood and the new challenges they will face. In the canon material, Shen meets Yevnai, his fiancee around this time of his life, but she is given very little characterization beyond being his love interest. In my adaptation, I am attempting to remedy this fact by exploring her motivations and giving her her own character arc as somebody seeking freedom and self expression but who attempts to get these things in different ways as she matures. 

Because Yevnai is only ever characterized through her romantic relationship in canon, giving her personality and identity beyond that is proving to be a challenge for me, especially since she is only a side character. However, for the story arc I am planning on completing for this project, she will not get very much screen time and this will only become a bigger issue once I attempt to complete this project in my free time. I will spend the week after the break finishing the rough draft of the second episode.