Apinautica Chapter II, First Draft
Alright so my work on the second chapter of the book about my travels had ben kind of stalled out since I started working full time in October. Initially I had had some other projects that took up my time on the evenings and then I'd forgotten the historical source material at a level of useful detail from the book I was most using (The History of Yoruba, published 1901 or so), but recently I finaly got around to rereading the relevant parts and then writing what I intended based on it.
The overview summary of my goals with the chapter is that it's the story of my first project in Nigeria; trying to keep the narrative inertia going with overarching plot arcs pertaining to my anxiety tha the project succeed. There's also substantial historical fiction. I myself and I assume most Americans had this picture of Africa as more or less an anarchy of huts before colonization, and my goal with the historical fiction parts is to really portray to the reader that there was just as much of a society there before colonization as anywhere in Europe.
This is my working copy of the first draft, so it still contains a lot of notes to myself. The blue parts will remain but be in a distinctly different font than the rest, the green is mostly notes to beta readers (well technically alpha readers at this point I think?) or myself.
Some sections of the beginning of this have been posted here before, but I want to put this to readers all at once so they can read it in the context of itself, as it would be in the book. Does it go on too long, fail to hold interest, etc?
Thanks, here is the link:
Chapter II: 9ja
