Segment 2 (Chapters 4 – 7) The AX5 Cure

 

At times, authors have to make difficult decisions regarding the protagonist, or main character. The protagonist is their creation, and there is a lot of emotional attachment between the author and their main character. Here, Alex is feeling overly confident, so I had to break him down a little bit to begin molding him into the leader of humanity. I feel fine, however. 😊

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Another thing about Alex’s breakdown and accusatory tone towards Tom was that it was during Alex’s watch that the last blips were missed on the radar while he was cleaning up his mess. So his reaction towards Tom was a bit misplaced.

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The introduction of Senior Airman Amanda Kern has purpose. A funny thing though is that the whole chapter 7 was only two paragraphs long in my original writings—as in...some airman picked them up, and they left...  I was able to introduce this new character to continue the post-AX5 failure story while they started driving back.

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As an author, I learned early on (and the hard way) that readers do not like reading a bunch of boring narrative... so I started introducing new characters to help explain the story through dialogue, i.e., Olivia Maddox, Colonel Poore, and Amanda Kern. Additionally, with Amanda Kern, it continued to allow me to show Tom’s tough and burly persona toward a subordinate like Airman Kern.

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One might ask, why did the two occupants wait until the last night of drinking to open up about their lives? Such situations can happen sometimes, especially in military operations, where the crew—and, in this case, an officer and subordinate—don't become too chummy. They are cordial and work together while the focus is on the mission. But after the failed mission, I was able to fill in the gaps because the AX5 mission was over and they were more comfortable sharing.

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Please message me on my Facebook Author page if you have questions, comments, or want to know more about Chapters 4 - 7.