Fairy, Fairy, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Tale Grow?

[caper_est]

A massive 180 words since Friday on the Luke Lackland part of Killer-Kate &... - but at least I've got it started off. My trouble here is that I'm so consummately not a soldier, and yet at this point I have to have some real mediaeval irregular warfare going on. Can't skate over it, can't add any more Robin Hood derring-do or magical tricks than I have already, without turning the Langdale Rising into the kind of lies I don't want to write. At least I know what game Luke is playing now.

I'm now five chapters from the end of the yarn, which is exactly where I've been for nearly half the year. But this is five chapters a lot nearer the end than I was in the summer! 

To illustrate my meaning, this was my original chapter outline for Lord of the Rings before the tale grew in the telling:

1. A Long-Expected Party
2. The Shadow of the Past
3. The Wight Stuff
4. A Knife in the Pub
5. Many Meetings
6. "We Cannot Get Out!"
7. Fosterling of Laurelin, Daughter of Ungoliant
8. The Breaking of the Fellowship
9. The Muster of Rohan
10, The Passing of Foromir
11. Helm's Deep and Ugluk's Stand
12. Where the White Moon Dies
13. The Battle of the Cross-Roads
14. Mount Doom
15. Galadriel in Gondor
Epilogue: Mistress Lobelia's Spoons.

But in this tale I am (so to speak) now five chapters away from the end at the Siege of Gondor, rather than five chapters away in Helm's Deep.  Which is quite a lot of progress, really!