{"id":3502,"date":"2025-05-18T09:55:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T14:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/?p=3502"},"modified":"2025-05-22T21:14:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T02:14:38","slug":"lbdg-commentary-33-through-the-living-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/lbdg-commentary-33-through-the-living-years\/","title":{"rendered":"LBDG Commentary 33: Through The Living Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This short penultimate chapter breezes through 22 years as young Local Boy naturally ages into the timeline to become his future self at his daughter’s wedding in the year 2000. Going into this novel the plan was to tell a Timely Persuasion<\/a><\/em> adjacent story from Local Boy’s point of view. That’s exactly what I did\u2014including skipping over most of the years TP skipped. The skipping wasn’t pre-determined, but once I got there naturally it had a nice synergy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Timely Persuasion<\/a><\/em> scene from son’s POV<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Local Boy Done Gone<\/a><\/em> scene from father’s POV<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The other payoff here is when the light bulb goes off and Local Boy finally understands what the redhead means about how time travel ties to manipulating memories\u2014but he also takes a chance and is able to prove he does still have free will. The stunt to illustrate this is ensuring events play out like they did in the other book \/ in previous chapters of this book1<\/a><\/sup> as far as any POV character believes, while still letting things expand or change just outside of those pages.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With time running out on these commentaries and not much more to talk about, here seems as good a place as any for final thoughts on how I maybe could’ve got this down to 27 chapters. This is another case where I chose a cliffhanger over a contained scene, though realistically 33 & 34 could be 1 chapter. Continuing that line of thought chronologically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6 & 7 (Open Mic at the Coffee Shop)
15 & 16 (Old Man & Redhead separately appear to Local Boy back to back)
18 & 19 (“That’s not your wife!” and immediate aftermath)
24 & 25 (Local Boy becomes his older self in the 1990s)
29 & 30 (Another Open Mic at the Coffee Shop)
31 & 32 (Taking the van to the storage unit)
33 & 34 (The End)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upside to that consolidation is accomplishing the cheap trick<\/a> of landing on exactly 27 chapters for a book about the 27 club. Downside was some longer chapters & some pacing issues. It would also move the 6-6-7-7-8 cadence of the part based structure to 6-5-5-5-6, which putting it down in writing I might’ve liked better. Dang it!3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tidbits:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n