After the Dream vs Role of Seven

This post will contain spoilers if you haven't already read 'After the Dream'.

So lately in reviews I've had a few people note the rather large differences between Role of Seven (Ro7) and its former version After the Dream (AtD). I figured I'd take a small break in my normal ramblings to try to explain things. If you never read AtD then don't worry about this, if you have, enjoy.

Basically, I know Ro7 seems completely different from AtD. When I started the first version of this story, I did so on a whim. I was bored and procrastinating during exam time. I didn't plan it out at all and instead just eagerly wrote up the first few chapters more or less out of desire to write an angsty Naruto. I don't really know why but I'm guessing that I was reading other angsty fanfics at the time and wanted to try my hand at it.
After, oh I don't know, chapter 5 or so, I decided on the next big move - namely Naruto and Sakura leaving Konoha. I was already bored with writing angst and wanted to get them out of there as fast as possible. Once that was done, say by chapter 10 or 11, I was stuck again.

Essentially, I had written out 10 or 11 chapters without placing any foundation for a longer plot.

I paused for a bit and tried to plot out the rest of the story. Having done so, like I said, it was more or less without foundation, just lucky randomness that I had dropped into the early chapters that I decided I could use later on.
I didn't really like that.

Most of what's been changed in early chapters this time, is stuff that I would have wanted in place had I continued AtD because we'll get to a point (probably around chapter 15) where the similarities will become much more obvious and we'll start falling back in with AtD.

That doesn't mean that from chapter 15 (or so) onward I'm just going to be reposting old AtD chapters, that would be silly. I didn't restart this just rewrite the early stuff. As I had went over the old version a lot of things stood out to me as being really annoying, too random, or too cliche.
Some of the changes are purely out of spite towards my own characters (I got sick of a few of them and decided to get rid of them, you'll notice this later).
Does this make sense so far?

Anyways, another way to look at what makes this seem so different is the length so far. Technically we'll still on chapter 4. The Chuunin exam (which I admit was a last minute addition) ended up taking a long time to get up because of computer problems and writers block. Since then, I've pretty much gotten back on track.
If you read AtD, we're actually right on target with what's about to come next.

If there are any questions (especially if I've confused you more) just let me know in comments. I'll either respond to them in the comments themselves, or I'll put up another post later to respond to all of them if there are a lot.

Oh yeah! I know I put up the link to AtD somewhere, but I figured I'd put it here too.
After the Dream
Role of Seven