My Mass Effect story has officially become a smallish novel.  The good news, it has now locked together because of the advent of the shrink who strolled in, and because I let go of my hope of doing something rather fun and comedic.  I embraced the fact that this is a story of renewal and recovery in so many ways.  Whatever gender or background, or rogue or paragon, every player’s Shepard has been deeply affected by what they’ve endured over the past three years.  Since as I writer I love broken people who have to overcome their demons this was a perfect character for me to write.  My little Elf in Dragon Age was just so delighted to have a.) survived and b.) become a powerful political figure in a human kingdom that he doens’t have a lot of angst, but my Shepard.  OMG.

So Dr. Mendelberg arrived, and then I realized that scenes I’d already written made a lot more sense if they came after the scenes between Shep and the doc.  Now they have power and context, and they move the story forward in terms of showing Shepard healing.

Structure.  It’s everything.  Just like punctuation makes sentences comprehensible, well, plot and structure are the punctuation of a story.