Hmmm… So I have Va’el, the bastard son of a bastard son of an emperor, who’s heading for a good dose of trouble – and I have another character thrown into a different batch of stress and pain – totally unrelated, but both events are far reaching, both necessary to the plot and both (of course) meant to engage the reader – I wanted these scenes spaced apart simply so that readers are not, in this instance, pulled in two different directions (sometimes that’s exactly what I want, but on this occasion it would be detrimental).

The natural unfolding of the story to date unfortunately brought the onset of both scenes to roughly the same point, which is something I needed to avoid. So, then came the who-goes-first game, which wasn’t/isn’t even easy in my imagination (because of scope – in the imagination is easiest, but I am juggling not so much giant scenes as a series of biggish ones, each an evolution) – never mind on paper, which is much more complex.

Just how far apart they have to be from each other is yet another consideration.

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