The Journeyman: Dev Log 3

Wow. It's already June. Hard to believe how quickly the year is moving. Well. Time for a quick dev update on recent progress:

I've spent almost all my creative focus over the past two months on story development. As of a couple of weeks ago, I finished a draft of The Journeyman's first major section in linear, screenplay pilot form, at about 62 pages.

• First off: it's a solid draft. Fairly polished (I don't like leaving messy pages, so I tend to write slowly), and while there's plenty of room for improvement, it’s a strong foundation. The characters are gaining depth, the plot is taking clearer shape, and the motives and trajectory of the story are clicking into place.

  
  

• I'm calling this a 1.4 draft. Meaning I’ve completed four editing passes since the initial 1.0 version. By draft 2.0, which will involve more dramatic rewrites, I’m hoping it’ll really start to take its defining shape.

  
  

In summary, this marks a major milestone. Over the summer, I’ll now be able to shift some focus toward technical details and art, instead of getting lost in the weeds of language, something I tend to do as I start splitting hairs on story details. So the narrative runway is very welcome. And having a good, solid narrative draft is essential.

In more personal news, last week I fractured my right foot. A Jones fracture, non-displaced, fifth metatarsal, and an acute avulsion fracture of the lateral talus. Not related to dev, exaclty, but it’s of course limiting my mobility. On the bright side, maybe it’s a good time to take a fresh look at the project and pick up a new skill or two while I’m stuck healing. I've been watching some of the Unreal Fest panels this week. There are a lot of exciting new features to explore in 5.6, and I have my eye on the new metahuman integration.

If you’re curious how my accident happened, I was working at home and got up from my desk to help my partner with groceries. I took a step to the right, and my foot went out from under me, and I rolled my ankle on the tile floor, without a shoe. I heard a pop, went down, in blinding pain, with near immediate swelling, and an alarmingly large lump forming along the outside of my right foot. Besides the fracture, I also sprained my ankle. This while moving through a space I’ve navigated literally thousands of times before. Strange. Why now?

My best explanation is that I was split between two minds as I left my computer. What I was doing, a task in progress, and what I was going to do. And then my body did not quite follow with me. What I'm taking as a lesson in staying mindful. Though, when I told my doctor, with some embarrassment, how it happened, he offered me some reassurance. His response: “Life happens.”