>>32698471Thanks Lunaito, I appreciate it! Yeah, I will readily admit it's a bit of a struggle to come up with names that both feel distinctively "Deadbeat" to my autistic mind, and that are actually easy to remember and differentiate from one another. I'm always trying to balance my urge to dump exposition with keeping a scene moving, so I'm happy to hear I'm managing that decently. As for inspiration, I can see where you get 40k novels from, I've read and enjoyed a bunch of those, and I do have a preference for 40k-esque character archetypes. Though I can never reach it, the prose I hold as a gold standard to strive for is Frank Herbert and GRRM.
And yea, I write out character personalities, relationships, and arcs before I begin, even if those end up changing a lot as I write. Those are very rough though, they're just strings of keywords "Aloof, perturbed, wants a promotion, hates Samuel", stuff like that.
I also write bullet point outlines of the individual chapters to know where I'm going with them, those tend to be very useful for breaking up the chapter into manageable parts. A trick I use a lot to get through the intro of a chapter is to look at the first important "event" of the chapter (That can be a meeting, a conversation, a fight), and write the intro while keeping that event in mind. Basically, have the intro build up to that event. Or, you can do a cold open, and skip all the pleasantries and have the chapter begin with the event. Even if it's a bit shocking to start in the thick of it, you can always introduce your setting and characters after that event, once you've got your feet in the door.
I'm kinda rambling now, but thanks for the kind words!
>>32698908Thanks anon!
>>32698483That's entirely up to you, none of the existing repped nations will be forced to lose territory, after all.