Something New

I talked last time about starting out a new project with an ensemble cast, each person with an unusual skill. I had a whisper of an idea about each of four people, their milieu, the shape of stories they could tell. To accomplish anything they need a leader, and I decided which one that would be.

I diddled a bit with the world. Thought up some ideas of how the story would run. Talked with my muse, Linda, over a very long lunch about how the story might get going. Wrote a page of notes and watched a DVD series from the History Channel that pertained to my chosen time period. I even had an idea for an opening scene.

All of this was good--but every time I sat down to look at it, the project became more daunting. After creating five distinct worlds over the course of fifteen books, the notion of starting over from scratch appeared bigger than Trump's ridiculous wall on the Mexican border. Not only did I need to come up with cool ideas, I had to stay out of my own way. Surely I hadn't included every favorite bit of world structure/custom/myth or character foible/skill/hangup that I love!

Certainly not, but still I couldn't get going even to write that first scene. Panic time. And then I went to Vancouver Island...





Now I adore writing retreats at my friend Brenda's house overlooking the Saanich Inlet almost as much as I love retreating to a certain funky little retreat hotel in the heart of the Rockies. Being away from home and its myriad distractions helps me focus. And somehow being surrounded with awe-inspiring beauty provides extra fodder for words. Certainly the energy of other serious writer friends working hard gives me energy. But it was Brenda herself who said about five words that broke the dam. She is a generous listener, and when I started running on about the backstory of my lead, she stopped me.

"Why don't you write that story?" she said. "If it works out, it could be a short story to accompany the novel. If you decide not to write the novel, you'll not have spent so much time and effort on it."

Perfect sense. Seven thousand words appeared over the next few days...like magic.

Now you who have talked about character interviews all these years can laugh at me. Yet this is truly a story, not interview notes.  (Though one could say, Romy is interviewing for a job.) And those who tell me that writing short fiction can be less intimidating that starting a novel...I give you points, too. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

For now I am continuing to write a bit of story that might never appear in a novel, but is a delight for me anyway. We'll see how things pan out. Read more of this post!

Every Project Starts the Same Way - Or Does It?

Every one of my books/series (now up to 15/5) truly begins with a character.  In the Books of the Rai-kirah, it was the arrogant, the-world-is-mine-to-enjoy desert warrior Aleksander (not Seyonne!).  The Bridge of D'Arnath rose from the bitter, exiled duchess Seri.  The novels of the Collegia Magica were to be a home story for the brooding necromancer Dante (nope, not Portier). Lucian, the non-renegade, the upright believer in pureblood discipline, was the whole reason for the Sanctuary Duet. Only for the Lighthouse Duet did I have ideas about the world and the world's problems before I had an idea of that character. But I didn't write a word until the image of a lanky renegade drug addict came to me. He was face down on the floor of an abbey church taking holy orders, and I could hear an unforgettable voice, saying, "What the hell am I doing here?" Anyone who's read those two books knows very well that Valen shaped and drove the story of Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone in the same way that Aidan, the visionary musician, shaped the story of Song of the Beast.

Even my pieces of short fiction that now number more than nil took off with the idea of a character. Gareth, the talentless farmer, was the inspiration for Unmasking, Girl told of her experience At Fenwick Faire. Valen, my favorite blackguard, was the seed for Seeds. The encounter of a novice constable with a familiar unnamed necromancer was the starting point for Uncanonical Murder (now out in the spring issue of Pulp Literature ).  And Saverian from Breath and Bone demanded to star in an almost-novelette for a new anthology to be announced later in 2016.

All the other characters, the world, the settings, the plot grew from ideas about that one person, even if, on occasion, a character I believed secondary became the more important than the instigator.  So there.

But when I started noodling around with a new (big) project last month...



I settled on an ensemble cast, each person with an unusual skill. I had a whisper of an idea about each of four people and then I ran into a wall that seemed near insurmountable. This will be a different process. Maybe.  I'll tell you how it's going next time.  Read more of this post!

Writing Evil

Blogging on my agent's livejournal today. The topic is Writing Evil.

I talk about how I try to avoid the Snidely Whiplash or anonymous Dark Lord kind of villains and aim to introduce ambiguity, choice, and realism into my work. Read more of this post!

Revision 5 - Illumination

For me, the best aspect of revision is the opportunity to think deeply about plot, structure, and character now I've got the entire story in my head at once. I can't get these insights if I'm too focused on word count and grammar, so I have to formulate a list of problem areas beforehand or as I do the tighten and clean-up pass. Then I take care of those issues on the content pass, and verify on the final readthrough.

In the present case, I've had an insight that I believe will strengthen both the mystery and the character arc. [Don't worry, I'm not going to get into spoilers!]

In abstract terms, I had hedged a bit on the villains of the piece. We know some of them for sure - there is a complete story arc in this book. A few other people we're not so sure of will be sorted out in The Soul Mirror. What I'm thinking of doing is placing one of these ambiguous characters more clearly into either the villain or not-villain camp.

So why would I do this, as it seems to remove a bit of lingering mystery?



First, because it will more clearly define the positioning of another, more important, character. [Think of how a scarecrow standing in the middle of a completely harvested cornfield stands out quite starkly.] It completes a character arc that contributes to a more solid ending.

Second, because I wasn't feeling good about "exonerating" this particular person as he or she stood in the work as written. Portier and Ilario and Dante are none of them stupid. To let someone wholly pull the wool over their eyes would be unrealistic. On the other hand, to have a wholly innocent person remain darkly ambiguous for so long would also be unrealistic. So I had to make a choice--is this person a villain or a naive? Then I had to go back through that character's thread through the book and make sure my decision was well supported.

Third, because I had planned to carry this ambiguous character over into the The Soul Mirror and wasn't feeling good about it. I've had a fresher idea...

There, you see? Revision leads us into tough decision making. If we push hard enough for clarity - the goal of revision - we can feel the uncertainties we've left in our writing. Choosing, and repairing, rewriting, and repositioning, can - and did!! - leave the work stronger.

I send off The Spirit Lens last Wednesday (the 34th of May, right?) and feel really good about it. Total words cut: approx 10K. Total words revised: every other one. Beginning stronger. Ending stronger. Climax stronger. Ultimate uh-oh - much stronger. Motivations clearer, both in my head and on the page.

Now it's back to The Soul Mirror. Hooray!

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Revision 3 - Pervasive Changes

One week in. How is the revision going? Overall, I've dealt with the easy issues. The first six chapters are much leaner, much cleaner, much clearer. I've cut out some 2500 words in a fairly painless fashion.

Now I just have to move forward on the linear review, tightening and weaving in the more pervasive changes.

Here are some examples of things I'm keeping in mind.



1. Characters At one point a character we've met only peripherally turns up dead. The implications of the death are huge. In order for this event to carry the weight that it should, readers really need to have a better handle on who this person is. My solution? Rewrite a scene in chapter 3, involving this character instead of the person who was formerly involved. Also, keep this character in mind as I read through the book and look for further opportunities to involve the person, at least enough to keep his or her identity clear in the reader's mind.

2. Worldbuilding Mages are very much resented in this world. Not only do their magics not work reliably, but "licensed" mages have a stranglehold on magical practice and do their best to eliminate the competition of small practitioners, old grannies and hedge-uncles who work magic by instinct. By the time I got to the end I realized I had not demonstrated this until somewhere around the middle of the book. I need to look for opportunities to drop in little tidbits to make this clear.

3. Dropped Threads My investigator/sorcerer Dante purposefully lets it be known that he possesses a particular set of unsavory skills. By the end I discovered that I had sort of lost that thread in the story. I know he is pursuing it, but the reader might not, and it will be extremely important in The Soul Mirror. I need to keep this near the surface of the reader's mind.

4. Clarifications One of the first things a student of sorcery learns is how to sense enchantments. There are three states that are very different: those spells that are bound and waiting to be triggered, enchantments that are active, and the residue left by enchantments that are finished. As these are essential forensic skills for our investigators, I need to make clear the difference in these three states.

I have about ten more issues, and seem to be adding items to the list faster than I'm taking them off.

Next up - the very best thing about revision. The insights that come once you get so totally immersed in the story as a whole. And yes, I had one. I'll have to figure out how to describe it without giving anything away.

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Learning from Critiquing

One of the best ways to hone one's writing skills is to critique other writers' work. Yes, I know I've said this before. But even after writing eleven books, and learning an incredible amount, it never hurts to get reminders.

I just completed critiquing seven manuscript submissions for several workshops. All of these were the opening pages of fantasy or science fiction works. These ranged from utterly beginner level to one that made me sorry the submission was only 20 pages. And I want to state right here up front a Bravo! for all seven submitters. It takes a lot of moxie to put your work out there for someone else to scrutinize. Some aspiring writers never get there...and they'll never get anywhere. Because as much as we must write for our own pleasure, publishing means communicating our ideas to someone else.

This exercise reminded me of several important lessons about openings.

1. Open with something important - the story!
2. Be specific
3. Go deeper - step back and view the big picture
4. Strip TV and movie cliches from your writer's vocabulary

1. Open with something important - the story!
   Even the most die-hard seat-of-the-pants writer [me!] knows a lot before beginning to write. Backstories of characters. World history. The nature of magic. You need to know those things. The reader may need to know them, too, but not necessarily everything, and certainly not in the first two chapters. Be ruthless. Get to story developments - events – in the first two pages. It is story that draws in the reader, not history. If it is page 16 before we know the gender of your main character or page 18 before the first “event” occurs, you will have lost most of your readers.
   



2. Be specific
   Specificity is what separates generic prose from vivid prose. Think about moving from place to place. Walk is a generic movement. It almost always requires an adverb to tell the reader what kind of movement we’re talking about, eg. walked slowly or walked briskly or decisively. English is rich with verbs, especially for something so basic as movement. Pull out that thesaurus - not to find hifalutin words your characters would never use, but to find the right word: stroll, meander, stride, trot. For nouns, don’t just say flower or cup or animal. Find a word that will evoke the world you’re describing or reveal something about the character who is describing it. Tankard and teacup give us more vivid scenes without excess verbiage. Think replacement, not addition. When your characters hear a prophecy, don’t leave us with generic, “Beware of the evil one. Shadows will drown the light,” come up with something interesting and specific to your story.
   



3. Go deeper - step back and view the big picture


What makes your fifteen-year-old hero different from every other fifteen-year-old hero in literature? Think of the heroic deeds he needs to perform…and then think of what seeds of personality or emotion exist inside your character that can emerge to support those deeds – or what the character lacks that he must develop to be able to do what you require of him. Sometimes you don’t know these things right away, but eventually you must. You’ll not only enrich your character, but you’ll get ideas for meaningful story events that will develop or expose these characreristics. And then look at the reverse to find interesting quirks and flaws. Maybe your female love interest doesn’t need to be highly literate, but she needs to be assertive, so let her lack of literacy be something that distinguishes her from other female characters or something that bothers her.


4. Strip TV and movie cliches from your writer's vocabulary
   
   How many people in the world can actually survive their boat going over a waterfall? A blow on the head severe enough to cause unconsciousness will generally cause a concussion. Look up the recovery time and symptoms of a concussion. Repeated concussions cause brain damage. [See the NFL statistics on players who are held out of games or retire because of repeated concussions.] Is it really possible to do the Jason Bourne thing and pick out the evil perpetrators from a mobbed train station? Visit a mobbed train station and try picking out one person! Labor almost never begins with one violent contraction. See what I mean? Don’t rely on film or TV for any medical advice, historical fact, or mechanical reality, ie. guns, bombs, car flipping etc. [Watch TV with a doctor, historian, or mechanical engineer and you’ll hear about it!] Besides being inaccurate, they are cliché. Boring. Unoriginal. And editors, agents spot them right away.
   
   

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Reader Mail

I love reader mail. Mostly the people who write me are happy with the books and want to tell me what struck them especially, or they want to find out if I’m going to write more in a particular world. [Yes, all right, all right, maybe someday I’ll get around to a Song of the Beast sequel .] To hear from a happy reader helps me through discouragement and reminds me that I’ve “done this before and it turned out ok.”

But some readers go beyond and expose something of their emotional involvement with the stories, and that is most gratifying as well.


Jarod wrote:

What struck me most of all in the book [Breath and Bone] was the way you wrote Valen's addiction. I'll admit that, at first, I didn't like it at all. I found that I disliked the character, the weakness, and my own difficulty in relating to his plight, being free of such addictions myself. I was frustrated that he couldn't just get on with life and be a "normal" protagonist and, well.. make choices that I myself might have made. It took me a while to realize that my reaction was a "good" one, in that it meant that you (as an author) created a believable and very flawed character whose weaknesses were a central part of his being--and wrote those weaknesses so powerfully that I wanted to skip the scenes for the sheer discomfort they caused me (but
I didn't skip them!). I surely can learn a lesson from this, that a flawed protagonist is much more interesting, and that writers must not be afraid to show those flaws and embrace them, lest the story dull.

How beautifully this articulates the storyteller’s art! Thanks, Jarod.
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That nagging feeling

Sometimes when I write a scene, I get a nagging feeling that something is not right. It most often happens when I have a plot point that I'm ready to include.

Today's example: Character A is in trouble. Character B comes to his rescue and demonstrates something. I want some additional things to happen, some curiosity and doubts about who could have done this amazing thing,building up to the revelation that it was Character B. I write the scene as I envision.

I reread it, tweaking words. I tweak more. OK, I've given Character A too much of a hint that Character B is doing the amazing thing. Why wouldn't he recognize what's going on right away?

What do I do about this?

Make Character A "foggier" from the bad guys' brutality. Reread. Tweak more words. Still feels wrong.

Remove all early hints of Character B's action. I really don't want Character A to seem stupid. Even bashed in the head he wouldn't miss what's going on, which makes my "delay" and building question seem stupid and contrived. Wrong.

So Character A must consider and dismiss the possibility that Character B is doing this. As I begin to rewrite yet again, I realize how convoluted this is getting, and the fact that I have now spent DAYS on this one scene. It Is Not Working.

Time to rethink. I must either skip the intervening build-up to the revelation OR give Character A an ironclad reason for believing it couldn't be Character B.

Oh...oh... The answer comes. The ironclad reason why he won't believe it. And the way that particular misconception plays right in to what the bad guys are trying to do to Character A already... DELICIOUS! One more rewrite and I'll be on my way forward.

Should I have made myself skip over the knot for the time being and continue forward with the story, planning to come back and fix it on another pass? Maybe. But I find I can't progress until it "feels right."

I just can't allow my preconceived ideas of a scene to stand without proper attention to character motivation and a reasonable analysis of "what would he know and when would he know it." Even if it takes three days. What if the solution changes the course of the story?

In this particular case, I don't think it changes anything farther along. But I'll see if things feel right as I get there.

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Epic Fantasy Week

Check out epic fantasy week on my agent, Lucienne Diver's blog. There have already been postings on promotion from Lynn Flewelling, and series and story arcs from David Coe. Next up...

Diana Francis on worldbuilding, me own self on developing fantasy heroes, and then Sarah Hoyt on writing fantasy in a scientific world. Enjoy! Read more of this post!

Me, Myself, and I - Part 2

Yes, I've been absent for a while. A family illness has kept me from the keyboard and I'm just getting back into Unholy Alliance.

First order of blog posting was a follow-up to my Deep Genre post about first person writing. I thought a reader's comment was worth a second part. So, if you're interested in the topic, check out Me, Myself, and I - Part 2. In summary:

the post covers ways to address some of the common writer problems with first person, such as conveying knowledge outside the POV character's grasp, keeping up tension, and so forth. Read more of this post!

Nice to meet you, Maura

How I love it when a new character steps out of my foggy plot and waves a hand, saying, "Here I am. Not only can I be the bearer of tidings, but I am a damn interesting person myself, and perhaps could serve a purpose you hadn't even thought of before." This is the creative in creative writing, I think. Today I needed someone to make a job offer to Portier. He is languishing in prison - already, you say? Well he got himself in a bit of hot water...


No, I'm not going to tell you what he did.

So anyway, I need someone to visit him in his cell and make him an offer. I decided this person needed to be a functionary in the queen's household. And I started looking for his name. I need a name to give me a starting place for description and personality. [Does the seed of an idea in my head germinate first, so that I'm looking for the right name to bring it to life, or is it spotting a name that evokes a certain personality? I can't tell you. Probably some of one, some of the other.]

But as I browsed male names, I thought, "Why does this have to be a man? A woman bold enough to visit a stranger in his prison cell to offer him a job could be an interesting woman. I ran across the name Maura, which sounded just right. And she stood straight up, assertive and confident, though I have a feeling there is something lurking underneath all that confidence. I'll bet I can find something to shake it, if I need to. She can't abide lies. I'm not sure why, as yet, but honesty is really important to her. Which, of course, sets up tension in any scene with my three conspirators...uh, excuse me, Portier prefers agentes confide. Yep, I definitely have plans for Maura.
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A Day for the Heart

I consider myself a moderately romantic person. So why can't your heroes and heroines catch a break in the intimacy department, you might ask. Well, of course, because I'm writing heroic fantasy and I must make my protagonists work and suffer to do their great deeds. And, indeed, I view romance in a literary sense - what the dictionary refers to as "an exciting and mysterious or exotic quality found in heroic literature" that can elicit sympathetic emotions on the part of a reader. I love tropes like [identify the book!] amnesia, telepathy, two souls in one body, love that transcends death, the forced cooperation of people entirely unsuited, enslaved or otherwise imprisoned heroes, the doubting hero, the hero/heroine who gets shafted by the gods, etc. etc. These are storylines that have intrigued us humans since we began telling stories. I like to think I give a different spin on them, of course.

As for the nitty gritty of romantic love in my books, there are two questions I get asked a lot.

1. What about Seyonne and Aleksander?
2. Which is your favorite romance in your books?
   

To avoid public SPOILERS for the rai-kirah books and several others, I'm going to duck behind the "Read more" label now. Don't go there if you haven't read all of the books...

1. Yes, I considered having Seyonne and Aleksander be physically attracted to each other. But then I decided that that was not the story I was trying to tell. Their relationship was a deep and abiding love and respect that could not be categorized as brotherly, father/son, romantic, or even exceptional friendship. I can't ever picture them as casual buddies. Though they shared an intimacy that no one in their world would ever match, there is a reason that Seyonne persisted in called Aleksander "my lord" all the way to the end of the books. And Aleksander didn't fight him on it.

2. As for which romantic relationship I like the best? That's a much harder question. Seri and Karon are obvious, and yet, I think that Jen and Gerick in Daughter of Ancients might be the romantic relationship I had the most fun with. They each had so far to come. You can't give yourself to someone else fully until you see yourself as a worthy gift [Carol's pop psychology for the day]. And it was the relationship that I gave myself the leisure to develop through lots of story time. I regret that I just didn't have the time to develop Valen and Saverian's relationship more fully. I think they will be very much fun, and...who knows? I just couldn't take up more pages with it - I was pushing page limits in Breath and Bone as it was. And then there's Aleksander and Lydia. Another reason Seyonne didn't have a chance, even if he'd been interested. I went looking for a perfect foil for Aleksander, and again, despite the lack of page space for her, I was delighted with the woman that stepped forward.

As for Aidan and Lara...their relationship was not about romantic love at all. Maybe it could be, maybe not. [I do know this answer, but I'm not telling.] You'll have to decide it for yourself. Or, if I ever get the chance and the inspiration to write more... So many books.

Happy Valentine's Day!
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Internet Magic

I'm back from visiting my mom in Texas and buckling down to some actual work on this book. I have a writers retreat in the mountains this weekend, and I hope to make real progress.

I am still mucking with the opening chapter, though I like the way Portier and Ilario are shaping. My rough beginning had Ilario acting too serious and clever - he is a ditzy young lord who carries a luck charm to protect him from crocodiles - and Portier too timid. Portier may be a failure in his chosen profession, but he has been charged with a serious task by his king, and he is smart and determined to make good. (And the king has chosen well!) I also gave these two too much room to get to know each other. Part of the unfolding structure of this book must be my three main characters learning to accommodate one another - or not doing so. Once I got these two guys straightened out in my head, I was faced with a problematical disconnect in the plot.

My opening action has these two new partners approaching a third person, feeling him out to see if he can help in the task the king has set, without revealing anything of the secrets that surround the task. Well, of course it all goes wrong. But the person they approach - a sorcerer - shows Portier something that shakes him. Only this early in the book, I've not laid the groundwork for why what the sorcerer demonstrates should shake him.

So, back up, Carol. How do I lay the groundwork for the structure of magic, the current belief system, its relationship to scientific discovery, etc - all that stuff I worked out week before last? If I do it right, then the reader can feel Portier's wonder when he says,

The green eyes stared at me. Watching. Waiting.
I stared into their fiery depths and felt the entirety of the world crumble.

You see the problem? We have to know what is crumbling before we can feel Portier's astonishment and distress. And this is tough to do so early in the story. So I think I need to stick in another piece.

So far, the king's charge to Portier has been off screen. We don't know what has caused,

the dread that settled in my bowels like Discord’s Worm, gnawing at the heart of the world.

I really don't want to show too much too soon, but if I do and Portier must place this threat within the context of magic, then we'll know what he believes. Thus when I shake him up yet again, we understand.

All of which leads to contrasting magic with science. King Phillipe has called upon someone familiar with magic to solve his mystery. But he embraces science, and gives Portier an example of what he loves - which led me to looking at 17th century scientific breakthroughs - which led me to this online copy of Robert Hooke's Micrographia. To be able to turn the pages of a book published in 1665 on my computer is just wizardly!

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Intermission

Life intrudes. Ended up driving a lot the past two days. I try to concentrate when I'm driving, so I can't say I come up with lots of plot ideas on the road. But I did manage to figure out a couple of things that were bothering me about this first scene. First, I have two characters going out to meet a sorcerer. My narrator Portier holds very firm ideas about magic, but somehow the fact that this particular sorcerer contradicts his ideas about magic never elicits a comment from him! He just seems to accept the possibility. Duh. And this gives me a great point of conflict for Portier and Ilario (as if they needed more!)

Second, I'm revealing way too much about one of my characters. He is a very complex man, and my first contact with him is peeling away too many layers. This particular "knowledge" smooths an area of conflict between two characters when we've only just begun to know them. One of the things I learned writing Transformation was the value of not telling too much too soon. Let information come out in a natural sequence. Let Conflict Fester.

Which is not to say a writer should purposely hold back information that is pertinent to a scene for the purpose of manipulating the reader - especially things your point of view character knows. Example: If your first person narrator encounters someone familiar and dangerous, it isn't fair to withhold the identity of the person or the nature of the danger. You have to consider, "what would really flash through a person's mind on such an occasion?" At least a name (or "my brother" or "the cop who killed my dad" or whatever) and what kind of danger this person presents. Or if you have your POV character keep looking in the box and never saying what's in it, you're building tension artificially. (If you don't catch that particular reference, never mind.) If the tension is "real" to the character (who knows the who and the why), it should feel real to the reader. Maybe tomorrow, I'll edit this to be clearer!

So what was the driving? Down to Boulder to visit kids Sunday and an excursion to the mountains to look at a couple of houses. Pete and I have been searching for "mountain property" for about twelve years. Lost the perfect place to a higher bidder back in 1998. Passed on a couple of places that we didn't understand were smashing deals. But now we may have found a place - it's a beautiful piece of ground with a weird house that would need lots of work. More later if that comes about. Today I zipped out to Evergreen in the mountains west of Denver. My niece just came home with a baby girl and needed someone to help amuse her two-year-old. Fun. Read more of this post!

Into Their Heads

Several tough days. I don't feel as if I'm progressing all that much. When other writers say they write ten pages a day, rain or shine, I shake my head...and feel terribly guilty. Yes, I can do that every once in a while, but not at the beginning of a brand new story. I am still feeling my way, exploring motivations and personalities and picking at details that will define the world. I'm still hunting names for things - for I can't move forward if I don't know. For example, what is the title of a Knight of Sabria? To be named a Knight of Sabria - Chevalier y Sabria, I decided- is a great honor, sort of like the Medal of Honor, except occasionally someone highly unlikely will end up with the title. And that somebody is Ilario.



Portier says of Ilario, his traveling companion in the first scene:

With a sigh I waved the fool onward, hoping to still his unceasing prattle with movement if I could neither send him back nor throttle him. Knight of Sabria, indeed. Ilario de Sylvae had been fostered since babyhood with his half-sister, Queen Eugenie, and had most assuredly never set foot near a battle. If the fop had ever drawn a sword outside Merona’s fencing halls, I’d eat my boots.

I am looking forward to working with Ilario. He must be the foil for stolid, morose Portier. His true nature lies somewhere beneath

such a panoply of red silk sleeves, lace collar, dark green waistcoat, gold link belt and bracelets, and uselessly thin and tight leather breeches deemed suitable for “rustic” excursions, one might think he had wrapped himself as a passion-gift for a court sweetheart.

But I am not sure how far beneath. That's the fun part.

The actual writing of these days has consisted of exposing Ilario and Portier's first venture together: They're seeking out someone to assist in the task the king of Sabria has set them. I've a year-old first attempt at this chapter (written as I played around with this story idea before) so the work is an amalgam of writing new words and modifying old words. I ought to just throw out the old ones, but that is very hard for me - and there are some descriptions and such that I really like. Eventually I will replace them, stripping and substituting pass by pass as I understand the situation better.

The first conversation between two principals is so important - revealing character, the state of the world, the present situation. It is tempting to throw simply everything into this stew. You want to ground the reader quickly, so that the import of the following scene is made clear. Quickly being the operative - and difficult word. I'll likely have to strip out a good deal of what I've stuck in. But for now, we're getting there. Tomorrow we'll meet Dante.
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His Name is Portier

I began the day browsing internet descriptions of Mediterranean landscapes - this book is going to be warmer than the Lighthouse Duet at least. One of my critique partners has set her story in a mythical France, and her descriptions are truly glorious. She finds the right words - mattoral, maquis, dust in the sunlight - so evocative that I am totally jealous and think how can I possibly dare go anywhere near that kind of scenery. By the time I landed on a website about Corsica, and found myself hunting photos, I decided enough was enough. I already know where my beginning scene would be set. Clearly I was avoiding the hard work. It was time to put some words on paper that were not in list form. Time to climb into the head of Portier de Savin-Duplais.

The problem is that I'm writing multiple opening paragraphs for this book. In one of them Portier muses over a trial that seemed to end the search for a traitor. Muses upon his own failure. This is a mature man deeply disturbed over events he has seen and participated in.

Our mystery is solved, the guilty party tried before the king and condemned to die for this most audacious plot. The golden kingdom of Sabria, the hope of the East, the glory of nations, rests easy again, its [a few choice lines]. So why can I not sleep?

Indeed this is the end of the story, reflected to the beginning. Some readers hate it when an author begins at the end. But it's never bothered me. I love evoking an air of mystery and disturbance. Seyonne's words at the beginning of Transformation (one of my favorite of all my openings) had to have been spoken after the resolution of the book. Still, this might make a better ending, leading into Book 2.

I keep this and write another introductory paragraph that begins a wry [can I say that about my own words?] introduction to my narrator. Forthwith:

What fools has the god graced with a more awkward position than the poor relation of a king?

He expands upon this statement, using a bit of his personal history, and leads us through a brief exposition of youthful optimism and crushed hopes to his present self. And then he begins the story.

This is not the "action" beginning we are taught to seek for genre fiction - the chase, the discovery, the big payoff that occurs before we even know our characters. I have a feeling my critique partners are going to hammer me for this. And indeed, if I were critiquing, I probably would, too. It may very well change as things develop.

But I know Portier SO much better for having written it. I knew he was a failed student of magic - that was in my proposal. But I didn't know that:

After fifteen years of study, I could not charm a flea to sit a dog’s back.

I also discovered he is a librarian! He calls himself a curator. And he is in despair. Which explains why he jumps at an opportunity his more sober-sided self would not consider. I think he'll live to regret it... [ Carol smiles hugely. ]

This is exhausting. More tomorrow.
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