As of now, the very last section of the last chapter is still in progress: Falling stars. And to say it’s come a long way would be an understatement. To address the elephant in the room, the team has already pushed the release of the game to January of this brand new year. We may have to push that back even longer than that.

There was an outline. There was a revised outline. 5 chapters for this update. It was simple, concise, and fairly straight to the point. Did I follow it? Sorta. Kinda. For the most-ish part. Yes then no. Was it because I got out of control the past few months when writing the first draft, probably. Frankly I don’t remember half - if not most of what I wrote up in the first draft.

I’m just here to share what I remembered from the whole writing process.

OUTLINING THE HIGH SCHOOL ROMANCE

Let me preface things by saying that I am a big fan of slice-of-life, romance mangas. Those things can take like literal years of mutual pining before anything even remotely happens between the two love interests. I wanted to take a note out of that long, arduous genre called slow burn. While the initial outlines of the first update were good - I just felt that there was a lot happening so fast.

The old outline I think, had more events that were just *chef kiss* perfect to get with that cute girl/guy/they you got along well in highschool. Feels like a constant series of high-high-high stake events that are these two memes in a nutshell.

Instead of climactic scenes mimicking Romeo and Juliet, I revised the outline to include more casual interactions at school where both Taylor and Lori were still getting to know each other - slowly becoming a pair of very unlikely friends and building a solid foundation of whatever their relationship may progress to in the future. 

Rather than being event oriented, I kinda went the route of the story being character driven. So in this update, the most I can say is that the Lees will be stirring a lot of the plot (and consequently Lori and Taylor’s relationship). So the update got more Lori and Taylor hanging out a lot more due to circumstances that I can’t say because spoilers. But looking back on it, the whole thing unexpectedly ended up being full of the whole classic highschool drama and then some. It's the hot mess we all highschool shebang. 

The original scenes that were “cut” from the first update have been respectfully moved to later updates, where I think would be more poignant given a more solid relationship of trust and a certain level of affection already established between Lori and Taylor. 

SHITPOSTS AND THEN SOME

Even when I myself already revised the outline, it did little when I realized I was the type of person to see an outline and go “ah a suggestion”. We shitpost. A lot. The outline isn‘t God in this team, we are. So this makes for an interesting process. 

Was when I innocuously added in a scene that Lori goes to the library because she had nothing else better to do - to which Pyr reacted by saying “Lori reads?!” Turns out my headcanon of Lori just reading for fun turned out to be a divisive headcanon. Well it mostly challenged Pyr lol. I didn't expect it to stir a debate that night between Pyr and Skai. It was a whole thing, mostly the two of us dogpiling Pyr on call after that. Skai had to add in a whole exposition just to confirm? introduce? officialize? to rub the salt in Pyr’s wound? that Lori does indeed read in her free time in the revision. 

Plus, new ideas that weren’t in the outline cropped up. It ends up making the manuscript longer, and another reason as to why some original scenes didn’t make the cut for the first update. Admittedly, some of the pre-planned events were replaced with drawn out random, mundane interactions with the characters because I drag them on. But isn’t that the bread and butter of any slice-of-life’s out there?

NEW CAST AND PERSONALITIES

And we also came up with new characters! If you saw my previous DevLog, we teased art of Luke and Faith. They weren’t part of the original cast when we started Meteor Shower. 

Luke initially was a no-name president plot device. Skai brought up that they were willing to draw up art of the “President” and other side characters so Lori could have more people to interact with. So these plot devices ended up gaining their own personalities. Honestly, I wasn’t too sure how to go about it. I ended up designing Luke as I wrote him in his first scene, desperately hoping to get a feel of who he is. For better or for worse, he ended up becoming a real something. He’s a real piece of shit and I love him for it. His screen time in the story ended up taking up more page count than I intended. I can’t wait for the update to finally show him off. I am ready for any and all barrage of love-hate he might or might not receive. 

Faith on the other hand, we have plans for her. Not in this update yet. But soon enough. You’ll find out soon enough once she makes her first appearance what she’s meant to be in this story hehe. We weren’t really discrete about it. 

Other characters whose personalities ended up blossoming in this first update were unexpectedly - Lori’s own parents! Mr. and Mrs. Lewis probably came off a little stiff, stand-offish set of folks that I’d honestly be scared off if those were my friend’s parents lol. But that doesn’t mean they have to be all that bad all the time. I wanna say I added a little bit of quirks to the both of them that I hope can endear them to others besides me. Fundamentally though, they’re still the same middle-class suburban parents who just want the best for their daughter. So say a rowdy looking blond whose looks scream “CUZ I’M JUST A TEENAGE DIRTBAG BABY-” comes knocking on their door to pick up their daughter for a date - the Lewises are probably gonna pop a vein or two.  

And other side characters that will be blessed with Skai’s art are Isabella (Luke’s girlfriend), and Mrs. Barret (The school librarian. She’s spunky for her age. Taylor Beware). 

THE UPDATE

Chapter 7 is still a work in progress as of now. I’ve whipped up another outline that hopefully we will see it through for this update. I am taking a break from writing the first draft for this year because I have board exams to prepare for. But will still be around to help with the second update in the future as a support of sorts. Devlogs will as much as possible still be monthly among the three of us. And I hope that all of you waiting will stick around when we finally do get to launching the update. Thanks!