My Brother's a Jinchūriki!

~Special~

While I continue working on the next chapters, I thought I'd share with you my process.

For the Natsumi centered chapters, I obviously have creative freedom with them, but that still means extensive research. Watching the episodes leading up to where I want the chapter to fit into, and also the ones after. Scouring the Wiki's and forums to verify different details, which can be very time consuming, especially for things that are not mentioned often or if there is not much information on them.

For example, the Yang Water Hand Sign. It's canon that there is one, and canon that Tobirama utilizes it in some of his Jutsu, but it took me roughly 2 hours of searching all the Wiki's, forums, and episodes featuring Tobirama or mentioning his/his techniques for me to find an answer... which ended up being that the Yang/Yin versions of the hand signs are not shown. Ever. So... you can imagine, it felt like 2 hours of wasted energy.

Then, having to cross-reference locations, timelines, time of day, etc. As the different Naruto episodes utilize time skips, it's sometimes difficult to determine just how much time takes place, so I know fully how much of a time frame I have to work with for my Natsumi chapters alone, in order to get the timing right. So, if I were to say that she traveled to some place but was back in the Leaf by nightfall, it'd have to actually be how long it takes to reach there.  It takes a Shinobi 3 days nonstop to go from the Leaf to the demon desert. I have searched for many, many hours before to find an accurate arithmetic breakdown of the traveling and the distances of the Naruto universe map, and found one that was as close as I think is possible to get it. Major props to whoever figured out all of those equations, though. They're the true heroes. 

At the same time, If I want part of a chapter to show that Natsumi is doing something at the same time as Naruto, I also try to verify the time frames as much as possible, even looking to the Novels for the details. (Seriously, you have no idea how happy I was that the Chunin exams all clearly stated the dates and times of the first and second phases. Most of the time, the most I can narrow it down to is Morning, Afternoon, Night.)

Then comes the writing part. I usually try to write a basic outline of what I want to happen in each chapter. It's not really a formal outline, but I usually, at the top of the chapter, Just write in parenthesis a paragraph of what I want to happen, a general idea of the conversations or main points, who is in the chapter, the time frame, etc. Once I have this general idea down, I look at the last Natsumi chapter and figure out how much time as passed since the last actions/speech, and figure out how long the time skip has to be. THEN I can start the exposition.

Usually when I'm writing, even with free creative liberty, I'll have to stop maaaany times during just one chapter (or even during one paragraph) to do more research or to check my notes. I have had to scrap entire chapter outlines before because I forgot that a certain character, who I had wanted to be in the chapters, was actually busy elsewhere on a mission at the time, so... yeah. I had to scrap about 3 whole chapter outlines and completely re-write them in order to accommodate this new knowledge. It was frustrating, to say the least, but at least I realized it beforehand and felt like an idiot for getting something like that wrong. Buuuuuut this is also why I have general outlines or bullet points in my notes of things that I want to happen or need to happen as part of my plot. It helps me to keep the story I want to tell on track, as well as help me when I'm having writer's block. I usually organize these ideas or bullet points by their level of priority. The most important conversations, fights, or events have highest priority, followed by the lesser ideas, which are typically things that I think would be cool, fun, or interesting for me to include, mention, or expand upon. Because of these idea lists, I have most of the main plot points of Natsumi's story planned out all the way up until the Pain Invasion arc, and even a few notes of some things I am considering for the Boruto Era.