Summary of the Story

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The Long Forever follows Scarlet and Flagg as they travel across the Age of Always with Roland pursuing them. This story starts 4 years after the Age of Always ends. Scarlet chose to remain in the Age rather than return home to Garrett, and she's beginning to realize that something is wrong with her. She’ll learn later that staying there is slowly killing her, but that comes later. For now she just feels out of alignment with the world, and very tired - worn thin.

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One area I’m debating is about whether or not Scarlet has retained her memory. (The consequence of staying in the Age appears to be losing that.) And while I haven’t yet committed to it … I think that she has not retained her full memory. Her memory is fading and all she has left is impressions of those memories.

Very high level summary...

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In Track 1 Conviction, Scarlet is a shadow of herself. She looks to Flagg for certainty. She wants him to tell her whether Roland is good or bad, whether they're doing the right thing, and whether she ruined her life by staying. Flagg refuses to give her those answers. Instead, he keeps forcing the questions back onto her. Meanwhile, Roland begins to draw closer.

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At the beginning of Track 1, Flagg offers Scarlet his jacket when she’s cold. She takes it but doesn’t wear it.

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In Track 2 Agency, the pursuit becomes more immediate and Scarlet can no longer simply follow Flagg's lead. She has to start making decisions herself, including choosing their path and taking responsibility for keeping them alive. Their journey eventually brings them to the ruins of a city. It turns out that it's Garrett ... somehow here in the middle of the desert of the Age.

In Track 3 Integrity, Flagg and Scarlet enter the ruins of Garrett, but it’s like the city is alive, and everywhere Scarlet turns, she is confronted by vivid memories of the life and people she left behind. But more than that, she sees manifestations of the present and future she gave up.  Somewhere in all these illusions, Flagg is separated from her.

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And this is where Roland finally catches up to her. He tells Scarlet the truth Flagg hasn't: she's dying, Flagg knows it, and he can't give her what she wants. He tells her Flagg’s a villain. Roland offers a way home if she’ll help him make Flagg answer for what he's done.

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Scarlet declines, but before Roland can raise his gun, Flagg steps out of the shadows where he’s been watching. Two against one … Roland runs away.

 

This story ends as Scarlet and Flagg exit Garrett. The last we see of them, they’re walking down the road. A third member (a cowboy in a white hat) has joined their party. Scarlet is wearing the jean jacket.

Some other thoughts I might weave in if I were to extend the story some day... Scarlet may believe that she has joined Flagg on his journey, but the opposite is true. Scarlet (tho she can’t remember) set off on a journey to the dark tower to restart her own story. Flagg joined her, and Roland followed him. It’s Scarlet who is setting the direction, pulled along by her own intuition. What’ll happen if she gets to the dark tower?  For now, there's no time/space to add these ideas. the story needs to stay small and simple.

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What's Working and What's Not

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I enjoy the vibe and the overall ideas of the story. It's the execution of the story, especially in the dialogue, that I’m really struggling with.

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At the heart of it, I'm interested in Scarlet and Flagg's relationship. Scarlet knew him first as JD, someone human and understandable, and now she has to reconcile that person with Flagg, someone who has lived for an almost incomprehensible amount of time and has been both a hero and a villain. I want to explore what that does to their relationship.

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I also feel good about Scarlet's overall arc. She's the Scarlet who chose to stay in the Age of Always, and in some sense, she made the wrong choice. She doesn't belong there. She's dying because of it. But I don't want the story to simply rescue her from that decision. I want her to reach a point where she understands what she chose and chooses it again anyway, this time with her eyes open. I want her to go from being a victim of the Age, a victim of a wrong choice, BACK to the Scarlet we love. Someone who...

• Understands what she believes in (Conviction)

• Who owns her actions and her choices (Agency)

• And who lives by what she believes even when they cost her everything (Integrity)
   

In my brainstorming, those values come directly from Flagg. He's occupied too many different moral roles for me to believe he'd still see the world primarily in terms of good and evil. But conviction, agency, and integrity, they strike me as values that he could center on.

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I know what I want the first chapter to do. Scarlet is shaken. She doesn't trust her own judgment anymore, so she looks to Flagg for certainty. Does she belong in this world? Can she unmake her choice? She asks him whether Roland is good, whether she's made the right choice, whether she's ruined her life. And Flagg refuses to answer those questions for her.

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That's important to me. I don't want him to give her wisdom that solves her problem. The entire point is that if Flagg tells her what to believe, then the conviction isn't hers.

I like the idea that he answers her questions with questions for that reason. But in practice, I'm not completely happy with the dialogue. When every exchange becomes Scarlet asking something and Flagg responding with another question, it starts to feel constructed. The philosophy is there, but I'm not sure the conversation feels like these people. Or like people who actually know each other. And the whole thing feels so trite.

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The larger structure feels much clearer to me. Scarlet begins the story wanting Flagg to validate her choices. He won't. As the journey gets harder, she's increasingly forced to make decisions without that validation. And in the end it’s actually Roland who finally offers her exactly what she’s been asking for: certainty. He tells her what's good, who’s bad, whether her decisions were right/wrong, and he tells her how she can get what she wants.

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And ultimately Scarlet rejects that certainty too.

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She chooses the harder path herself.