Well.

The problem is, my productivity has been extremely spread out. I’ve gotten a little further on Promises, Like Tears. I’ve written the script for about half an episode of Grimms, and mapped out all the episodes in each season…so I have a very clear picture of where everything is going. I’ve written a better version of my query letter, and am set to revise it yet again. I discovered the most awesome epic fantasy writing music on the planet. I made some awesome Halloween costumes. Aaaaaand, I’m revising Hands, Like Secrets. Again.

I just really don’t seem to have the discipline to keep plugging away on one single project at a time. I can do it for a couple of weeks, but then it’s like I HAVE to work on something else for a little while. My system of grouping projects together (one series, one novel, one season of Grimms, specific visual projects) has been useful in keeping myself within limits, as far as what gets worked on. I really can’t decide if my multiple project mindset is something I ought to try and train myself out of, or something to harness. I mean, once I break into the business I will have to be able to work within a schedule. I won’t be able to work on whatever the hell I want when I want, you know? So maybe I need to get myself used to that now.

So, in order. I’ve kind of hit a wall in Promises, one of those “just wanna get this stupid scene DONE and move on” walls that you simply have to kind of plod through. I felt like I was losing my grip on the characters and their motivations, like everything they were doing was coming from me instead of them. Being a character-driven writer, I hate that feeling. When I get that way I just have to take a step back. That was around Halloween, too, so I was doing costumes, which always eat a lot of my time.

Also, I got a copy of Scrivener for my birthday this year, and part of what’s been eating my time in the last couple of months has been moving all my various ideas and works-in-progress over to that format. Scrivener is a writing program which basically allows you to store all your documents, photos, bits of research, anything related to your story in one place, and lets you organize it. It’s really a great tool if you, like me, find yourself creating massive folders full of story-related stuff for each novel, and get tired of having to have multiple programs open all the time just to access it all. Initially I wasn’t going bother moving Shades, since Hands, Like Secrets was done and Promises well started. But after realizing that I could put ALL of my Shades stories in one project file, including the sequel and prequel, I decided it made sense to dump it all into Scrivener. Moving all my various projects has really helped me take stock of where I am in each project, and what still needs to be done. It was this move, actually, that got me working on Grimms again.

I ended up going through the whole story and working out arcs for each character, especially when they would peak or bottom out. What I didn’t want to happen was having all eight Grimms hitting rock bottom at the same time, because then I’d have a bunch of emotionally charged episodes followed by episodes where nothing significant happened. Gave each episode a name and a general plan of action as well.

The other major thing I did was make one of the Grimms gay. When I was creating the characters initially, I set out to make the cast as racially diverse as possible (without it seeming contrived). The girls outnumber the guys, but since guys tend to be over-represented in visual fiction, I think it will actually end up feeling even. But my relationship pairings were…too perfect. Hansel/Gretel, Red/Stiltz, Cutter/Cinder, Rapunzel/Oros (a fae), and Rora was going to fall for Alan Hunter in the end. But the whole point of having a diverse cast is so that, hopefully, everyone that reads the graphic novel will have at least one character they can really relate to. One character that “represents” them. This is the strength of an ensemble. So I got to thinking, who will my LGBT readers relate to? I felt like that perspective deserved representation as much as any other.

I chose Rora, initially because she was the only “unattached” Grimm, and changing her orientation would least affect my already established story arcs. But as I began to approach her character with this new nuance in mind, something unexpected happened. She almost immediately fell for Katie, the human girl who gets placed with Mother Goose in Season 3, and it was perfect. It introduces the problem of a Grimm falling for a human, which nicely contrasts Rapunzel’s struggle (Grimm falling for a Fae). It explaines a lot about Katie’s character. It links the Grimms with Smile, the second Fae-rescue team that Katie eventually helps start. I get to address the issue of homosexuality from the perspective of someone who’s grown up in an environment entirely free from the usual associated stigma (Arcadia), and someone who is all too familiar with the stigma.

And then, just this month, I really started to reassess where I am with Hands, and my agent-hunting. Because aside from that one nibble right at the beginning of the process, I’ve only gotten form rejections and silence. I tried revising my query letter, but that hasn’t seemed to help. Therefore, I have to think that it’s the story itself, specifically the beginning (as that’s what most agents request), that’s the problem. I have actually suspected (and tried to deny) that Hands didn’t start in quite the right place, that the scene in the High Priestess’ office is too tame to kick off the story. I just couldn’t figure out how to include all the necessary backstory otherwise. But I started reading a book called Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers by Les Edgerton…and realized that a lot of that backstory is not really necessary. Interesting, perhaps, but not necessary.

What I essentially decided to do was start the book in Chapter 2. I mean, compare the strengths of the opening lines:

Chapter 1: “I’d been summoned to the High Priestess’ office that night.” Bleh.

Chapter 2: “I sank back against the wall, gripping my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.”

Yeah, the second one is a whole lot more intriguing. And that immediately segues into the battle between Raphel and the High Priestess, which makes for an awesome first chapter. I was able to add back in enough information that (I hope) the reader will be able to figure out what’s going on. (Though I will say, if you are the kind of person who likes to have all new information, definitions, words, and explanations laid out for you up front, you probably aren’t going to enjoy this book.)

And, in rewriting that beginning, I really started to straighten out Saeli’s GMC as it progresses through the story. Although the last major rewrite I did straightened out most of the major continuity errors, there was still some disconnect between various scenes, specifically in the area of how Saeli is reacting to what’s going on. The various issues were coming and going, one after another, instead of piling up to the climax. Also, Saeli’s a bit tougher and sharper this time around, and there’s a very noticeable disconnect between what she’s thinking and how she’s acting at any given moment. I think this has everything to do with where the story starts now. She’s all over the place, emotionally, in her head…but to anyone else, she probably comes across as calm, quiet, and even a little bit cold. She’s actually pretty downright harsh to Raphel at first, and overall I think she’s a better match for him this time around. I’ve found myself writing him a little bit softer and more seductive in response, and I think he actually likes her a little bit more than he did before. It means that his cruelty is all the more jarring when it surfaces, which is appropriate.

I think this will also help me push through Promises, as I have a much clearly picture of where Saeli has been.

I’ve also discovered what seems like a hundred little tiny plot holes, which is both irritating and alarming (I’ve sent this to agents? Good gods, what was I thinking??). Most are continuity gaps, emotionally getting a character from here to there. Some are logistical, like why on earth did I have Saeli and Raphel walk up an entire flight of tower stairs in the city Temple when time is of the essence and THEY CAN TELEPORT?

And the latest one: After Raphel spirits Saeli away and returns her, the High Priestess decides that it’s not safe for Saeli to leave campus until she is dedicated to Scisaxar. Saeli gets special permission to leave campus for a few hours to go to a graduation party, at Cara’s request. She walks alone to a cabstand and takes a cab. On the way, she is intercepted by Raphel.

See the problem yet?

Saeli would never have been permitted to walk out of Aschamon alone. See, the reader knows that Saeli has already thwarted this rule once, and that she is not in any physical danger from Raphel. But the High Priestess does not know that. There’s simply no way she would allow Saeli to travel to this party by herself: she would arrange for Saeli to be teleported straight there, or at the very least, assign someone to escort her.

Cara is a bit more blaze about the whole danger aspect. She’s helped Saeli sneak out once…but that was only to Main Street, and she was with her roommate the whole time. Letting Saeli travel by herself, across town, at sunset? No, I don’t buy it. Again, as far as Cara knows, there is a murderous Cowl out there just waiting to get his hands on Saeli again.

But the thing is, Saeli has to be alone for this scene to work. She has to disappear with Raphel for an hour, and then has to appear at the party with no one the wiser. (Which means Raphel can’t neutralize Saeli’s escort, or abduct her for an hour when teleportation is supposed to be near instantaneous.) Raphel also cannot go anywhere near the party, because any Anjahel there will sense him. Saeli has to start learning rashas qi onscreen, as it were, and it must happen before all the party excitement (because she won’t be in any emotional condition to do it after she’s been “abducted”). This does not leave me many options.

My best one:

#1: Cara acts as Saeli’s escort. Raphel, in the guise of “Aiden”, whom Cara has met, convinces her to let him have an hour alone with Saeli before he takes her to the party himself. Cara would probably agree to this.

Downsides: Cara has been to Valene’s house (where the party is), so there’s no good reason for her to NOT teleport her and Saeli straight there. Especially since Cara wants to give Saeli the full advantage of her limited freedom, and figures Saeli won’t want to waste time in travel. Granted, they would have to exit the school in order to teleport, but they’d only have to be outside the gates. Raphel cannot intercept them there for obvious reasons.

Possible solutions: Saeli convinces Cara to get a quick bite to eat in town before heading for the party. Maybe, if Cara can be convinced that isn’t bending the HP’s rules too much. Or, Saeli travels with a large group of girls (probably Cara’s friends) into town ahead of time to, I dunno, eat or accessorize or whatever. A group would seem safer. Problematic, in that Raphel isn’t going to want to be seen by a whole bunch of Aschamon students and risk being pegged for what he is: a Cowl. Also, it means lots of people are going to know that Saeli disappeared with a guy, which means the word is much more likely to get back to the Priestess. The Priestess would recognize Raphel from his description. Eh…sounds like I’m going with option #1. It’s the least complicated.

Least complicated being an extremely relative term. Just thinking of all the little scenes I’ll have to alter to make this change is making my head hurt. But it needs to be done.

After all that, I’ll have to do another line edit, because somehow even though I dropped an entire chapter, my word count went UP. Then I will write yet another query letter, which I think I have a better idea of how to approach that now. If all goes well, by the first of the year, I will be querying again.

Oh! Epic fantasy writing music. Discovered a group called Two Steps From Hell (via Brandon Sanderson’s Facebook, of all places), and immediately had to get both of their commercially available albums. Apparently they mostly make movie trailer music (in fact, I recognized two of their songs in the latest Twilight trailer). Which means most of what they’ve done is only available if you, you know, have lots of money and make movies. But, man. This is what I’m talking about:

Two Steps From Hell - Archangel

Anyway, here’s to getting an agent in 2012.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Here’s the situation. Saeli, Raphel, Mora, and Kaladan are on a world that is, due to a series of unfortunate events involving three jealous goddesses, one naive god, and a very angry angelic…well, doomed. Said goddesses created an extremely infectious disease that eventually rendered every single female on the planet unable to bear children. The last generation has reached their mid-50s or so, and they’ve essentially lost hope.

Enter Saeli and Mora, two young women of childbearing age who, due to their not being born on Dheu, are immune to this disease. You can see how this might interest certain parties. The two women get kidnapped, and are currently trapped in a cave surrounded by twenty or so men who are so desperate to not be the last generation that they’re willing to rape female strangers and force them to live out their lives on Dheu bearing children.

Saeli and Mora are both trained in the art of using their qi to do all sorts of extraordinary things, like fire and ice and wind and teleportation spells. None of the men who have captured them have any such power. (Although half of them are what they call “spirit walkers”. They can essentially thrust their spirits out of their bodies and travel about the “spirit realm”, where they receive guidance from the angelics who live there. This is, of course, of no practical use whatsoever against someone who can lob a fireball at them).

The first obvious question: how did a couple of magically inclined characters get captured by a bunch of non-magically inclined characters in the first place? Especially Mora, who, being second-in-command of Raphel Kailar’s infamous cabal, should be neigh unto impossible to capture WITH qi. The answer? The two were taken by surprise and drugged. Saeli didn’t react in time because she’s never really been in a real fight before, even though she was expecting the attack and knew what the assailants were after. Mora didn’t react in time because Saeli hadn’t yet gotten the chance to warn her what was coming.

The drug, nepthas, is one that specifically neutralizes one’s capacity to draw qi. The idea of qi-altering drugs is not new to the overall story, having been introduced in the first book. It would make sense that what the spirit walkers of Dheu and the majahel of Verre draw from the same source of energy, and that the spirit walkers of Dheu would have discovered a means to keep novices from jaunting about in the spirit realm unsupervised. In high doses, nepthas renders the victim unconscious, and can actually stop the heart if too much is given. It allows a group of non-magic wielders to knock Saeli and Mora out for several hours and spirit them away.

So now they are in a cave…the drug has worn off and both girls are awake…Raphel and some others are on their way but haven’t arrived yet…and the men, not quite desperate enough to assault female strangers while they are unconscious (although they considered it), have been waiting for this moment.

Now I have to create an impasse. I’ve given Saeli and Mora back their qi for this scene, because I can’t have the men actually assault them until the cavalry arrives. Yet I cannot have the two girls whooping up on the men and escaping just yet, either…but given their powers, it’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which this realistically would not happen. You can’t just not have them consider using their powers because, well, it’s their primary weapon. It’d be like a trained swordsman stepping into a battle and forgetting he has a sword. Ain’t gonna happen, you know? And if they were to use their power, there’s really nothing the spirit walkers can do to stop them. So I’ve got to do something that will even the odds, at least until Raphel and Co. show up.

Even the odds #1: Reintroduce nepthas.

I had one of the spirit walkers throw a handful of nepthas leaves on the campfire. I’ve already established that nepthas is an inhaled drug (the first time they took cloths soaked in a wet mixture of the drug and slapped them over the girls’ faces)…so given that they are in a small space, it shouldn’t take too long for the tainted smoke to take effect and render Saeli and Mora helpless again.

Problems: It will still take time, several minutes at the very least. Saeli and Mora could easily escape in that amount of time. Rather than evening the odds, nepthas merely functions as a ticking clock.

Even the odds #2: Establish what can and cannot be done with qi in a small space.

The cave, while small, is nevertheless big enough to contain about twenty men and a small fire around the entrance area, and Saeli and Mora further back. (I’m going to have to assume the men stashed their horses elsewhere; perhaps in a nearby cave, with someone to guard them.) The roof is high enough for everyone to stand comfortably, although it may be *just* that high. If I wanted to be specific, I could have Mora’s head brush the roof. It is deep enough for Saeli to create what amounts to an electrified web between the two parties, where the men would actually have to approach to be zapped by it. So I’m imagining a space that is something like a crack in a wall: deeper and taller than it is wide. Let’s say at its narrowest (which is where Saeli and Mora would be)…wide enough for two or three people to stand with arms outstretched and fingers touching. Wider at the entrance.

I began to write some dialogue between Saeli and Mora, in which they each brought up and discarded various forms they could use to escape. It helped me sort of figure out in my own mind what can and cannot be done with qi, and how environment shapes that. There are basically two “methods” in which qi is used, once you’ve drawn up the appropriate elemental energy: 1) Use the energy to manipulate its physical counterpart; ie, using Air to make a breeze, using Earth to create an earthquake, etc. Easier. Faster. Or 2) Manipulate the energy itself. This is how majahel sight works, and how you create shields, like Saeli’s lightning net. Also, most anjahel skills rely on this method. Any qi form that does anything more complicated than moving matter around probably uses a combination of the two methods.

The physical element does not have to be present, but the energy does. Luckily, most latent energy sitting around contains the four basic elements, so finding sources of energy is not usually difficult. One might have a little trouble using Water in a desert, or Fire in a lake, but it would not be impossible. However, elemental energy =/= physical matter. One may be able to draw Water energy from a dry place, but unless there is an actual source of water on hand (even moisture leeched from the air), one will not be able to spontaneously create physical water. One may be able to draw Air energy, but one cannot create a breeze if there is no physical air to move. The single exception is Fire, which is why fire forms are popular among both Mantles and Cowls.

So, back to Saeli and Mora’s non-predicament. My goal was to run through every possible form and see if there was a logical reason why said form could not be employed (because that’s what any intelligent majahel would do, and I have to assume the reader will, too). Make sure there was no way someone could say, “Well, they can do ___ and ___, right? Why don’t they just  ____?” with me going *facepalm*.

I began with “put out the fire”. Saeli suggests blowing it out. Mora explains that the act of pushing all that air OUT of the cave will draw an equal amount of air back IN, along with all that tainted nepthas smoke. They’d drug themselves in the act. They discuss putting it out with water (Saeli has heard dripping water in the cave somewhere), but again, what happens when you dump water on a fire? Clouds of smoke. Putting out the fire will do no good if they render themselves helpless in the process.

Then they move on to “neutralize the men”. Blast them all out with air or water? They’d just come back in, and also, see above. If they used fire, they’d probably incinerate themselves in the process. Saeli is actually the one to suggest killing them all, but only in the context of “Gee, I’m surprised you didn’t suggest that right away, Mora”. Neither of them, especially Saeli (who knows more of the story), particularly wants to seriously hurt or kill the men…partially because they empathize with their problems, and partially because killing “cowens”, ie, non-magical people, is the moral equivalent of shooting an unarmed person with a gun.

But they could paralyze them (Snake Creeps Down). They could also freeze them (Cross the Courtyard + Water Flows Downhill). And those are forms that the reader has already seen, via Raphel’s battle with the High Priestess. They could bind them up with cords of air (also something we’ve seen Raphel do). Plus we know that Saeli knows how to put people to sleep and influence the mood of a crowd, per her anjahel abilities.

After about a page of writing, and a lot more thinking, I was forced to conclude that, while Saeli and Mora’s environment limits their options some, it was not enough to realistically keep them from escaping. So…now what? How do I contain two magic users who have a very, very good reason to want to escape, now? (The nepthas on the fire effectively eliminates the weak but semi-plausible “oh, let’s just wait for Raphel, we don’t want to hurt these guys and they can’t do anything to us in the meantime” solution).

Then I remembered a chapter from the first draft, one I’d planned to eliminate, where Saeli and Mora are being guarded by a dark angelic that the spirit walkers had summoned. Random tidbit about Dheuan spirit walkers (that only I know): they have the ability to summon angelics, just like Verre anjahel. They can enter the spirit realm at will, after all. However, since their whole society is built around conversing with, learning from, and building relationships with angelics, summoning is very much a forbidden practice. It’d be like treating your teacher with respect, but ordering his children or servants around like animals; it just isn’t done.

That doesn’t, of course, mean that no one does it. As it happens, Othau and a few others have learned how in secret. So it would make sense that, faced with a couple of magic users that they need to subdue (but not hurt), they’d summon up an angelic as backup. I decided upon a marilith, since it’s 1) the only other dark angelic besides vrock that have been mentioned by name so far in the trilogy and 2) they are bigger, scarier, and much more intelligent than vrock. Inadvertently, this beings a whole new dimension of problems, because marilith are difficult to control. Mora senses, correctly, that the spirit walkers don’t really know what they are doing (or they would have chosen a more suitable angelic!), and thus, their control over the marilith they summon is tenuous.

Even the odds #3: Introduce a marilith.

And this finally does it. Because now Saeli and Mora cannot afford to do anything that is going to hurt or even distract the summoner, for fear of loosing the dark angelic from his control. Now they even have to worry about what will happen when Raphel does show up…because if he charges in with qi blazing, he could cause as much damage as either of the girls. Also, having a dark angelic around will give our other angelic friend Isharyel something to do besides stand there and be all wise and stuff.

So that was the process I went through, more or less, to make this scene work. I guess the lesson here is, when you have to put magical characters in a perilous situation, there are two things you can do. Introduce limits to their magic, and make the environment play to those limits. If that fails, introduce a second magical force to oppose them.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Anonymous

So here’s the one I finished. Keep in mind I did this really fast. For some reason, the skin color I used for the shadows in Saeli’s face came out really dark on the web…makes her look kinda dead or something. Oh well.

Saeli / Raphel

In other news, I’ve been line editing…slowly…and also creating a basic overarching plot for my Grimms concept. Oh, and wrapping presents. And making presents. Speaking of…I should probably get to that at some point today.

Like this post?

Like!

2 likes

Anonymous(2)

I say all this because Raphel has what I’d call an abusive personality. In this, the first book, he’s very, very subtle about it. But in a way, that means this is the book where I have to walk the finest line between dark hero and villain. I don’t want Saeli to know she’s dealing with an abuser, but I do want the reader to start wondering. One of the things I find myself pulling out of this edit is the tendency of abusers to blame their actions on the victim. “Look what you made me do.” “It’s your fault I had to do this.” Raphel does this to Saeli a lot in “justifying” his kills. “I wouldn’t have had to kill this person if you had done *this*…” I haven’t even had to bring it out except in one scene…I was putting it in there all along without realizing it. He doesn’t outright blame her; she wouldn’t stand for that, not yet. But the implication is clear.

Raphel does it for control. If Saeli is too busy blaming herself for all the bad stuff that happens, she won’t think to blame Raphel and she won’t question him. Late in the second book, things will probably get to a point where Raphel doesn’t even have to make excuses for himself anymore; Saeli will just automatically cast Raphel as the victim of her own incompetence. She’ll start seeing herself as directly responsible for Raphel’s morality; she’ll start thinking in terms of being good enough and pure enough to save him from his own dark side. Thus, when he “fails” and kills someone, or whatnot, Saeli fails. Bad mental place to be. Especially since Raphel is the one who orchestrated that mindset in the first place, and will actively use it to his advantage.

I have to plant the seeds in this first book, or no one will believe it when Raphel gets worse later on. I’m working to make those seeds as subtle as I can, because I know from hearing people’s stories that abusers are really difficult to spot early on in the relationship. Raphel has to be particularly careful with Saeli, because she could at any moment hide herself inside Aschamon and be out of his reach forever. (Which is why one of the first things he does is start undermining her faith in Aschamon’s defenses. Part of the reason she decides to hear him out at all is because she’s afraid the school can’t protect her if she refuses.) He can’t afford to scare her off, so he’s cautious and gentle with her. But if a guy slaps you across the face within five minutes of first meeting you, he is not a nice person. (If he later confirms that he’s not a nice person, you might want to listen.) If he starts making you responsible for the deaths he could cause, unless you do what he says, he is manipulating you. If he kills people and then tries to make it sound like he wouldn’t have had to if you had done something different, he is manipulating you. If I can get readers to recognize the signs in this story, I hope it will help them recognize those signs in real life.

I imagine there will still be readers who will be upset with me for not redeeming Raphel in the end, but I don’t want that to be because the clues weren’t in place for them to see his downfall coming. Part of the overall theme of Shades is the inherent tragedy one faces in cutting oneself loose from someone you love who is abusing you. (And recognizing the fact that they are, in fact, abusing you.) You cannot help a person who refuses to be helped, and staying with them does not help them. It enables them to keep abusing. You have to get yourself out, even if that means abandoning them to their own darkness. That’s what Saeli essentially has to do.

I’m a little more than halfway through this second pass of this edit. My word count is essentially unchanged…I guess I’ve been taking out more or less the same amount of words I’ve been adding. The next edit will be a line edit, which will be loads of unfun, I imagine.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Yesterday I listened to a Writing Excuses podcast about first person POV, and a lightbulb kind of went on in my head. Third person limited, which is what I wrote the first two drafts in, is too honest for the story I’m trying to tell. The only way to have a strong female protagonist fall for the villain, and to have that love survive several instances of betrayal, all the while keeping the heroine from looking like a moron, is to be in her head. I need that bias. I need that distance from Raphel. I’m trying to deceive the reader into falling for Raphel, too, and he’s *just* villainous enough that nobody will buy it unless they see him directly through Saeli’s eyes.

I worry, sometimes, that I’m writing Raphel too sympathetically this time around. If the line between a dark hero and a villain is a knife’s edge, Raphel is going to be cutting his shoes through the entire trilogy. It’s like when you hold an object close to your face. If you look with just one eye, it appears one way. But when you look through the other eye, it appears to be in a completely different place.

In a way, Saeli sees Raphel with one eye shut. Sure, there’s darkness in him, but he’s still a hero in that eye. But others in the story keep urging her to look at him with the other eye and see his cruelty, his ambition, the way he manipulates people, his lack of true empathy. In the end, Saeli will learn to look at Raphel with both eyes open, and that’s really the cruel part. If she only viewed him through the eye that sees his villainous side, the decision to destroy him would be justifiable (if not easy). But she has to destroy him knowing he’s at least partially a hero inside. Add that to the fact that she loves him, and saving her world will quite possibly be the agonizing choice she’ll ever have to make.

Not something I could do without a narrator bias. Thank you, Writing Excuses.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Or maybe it’s because I’m writing a Saeli/Brendan conflict scene, and that’s harder to do from Saeli’s head. I dunno. It ought to be easier, because I’ve got a solid pipeline to Saeli’s internal state of mind. But for some reason, I’m having a hard time generating the necessary emotion to make this scene work. The scene needs to happen, and it needs to happen onscreen. It escalates the tension between Saeli and Brendan, so that Brendan’s later drug experimentation and subsequent explosion at Saeli makes sense. Otherwise, Brendan is going to look like he’s overreacting, and the reader isn’t going to have a clear idea why.

However, maybe I’m trying to milk it too much. Maybe it needs to be extremely short, and maybe Brendan actually holds back a lot of what he’d like to say. I was going to have this fight undermine a lot of the confidence Saeli has just gained in Raphel…but reading that just now, I’m realizing that I can’t do that. I mean, we’ve just had a big reveal in the story. I’ve turned Saeli’s world upside down, and she needs to ride that for a while. Her thoughts need to marinate before I dump the next big thing on her.

And to some extent, I want Brendan’s blow-up at the graduation party to shock Saeli. She needs to know he’s upset, but I don’t think she or the reader needs to know just how much the boyfriend thing has been eating at him until it all comes out. Brendan’s pain is a major consequence of her joining forces with Raphel, and as such, it needs to hit her at the appropriate time.

So this little fight needs to be short and bitter, but not too intense. What needs to be revealed at this point?

-Brendan thinks Saeli has a boyfriend. Because:

-Brendan ran into Cara while looking for Saeli. Cara, concerned because Saeli hasn’t returned to campus yet, and feeling guilty about lying to Brendan in the first place, tells him the truth and sends him after her. This, perhaps, will also create a little tension between Cara and Saeli. Saeli’s going to have to keep lying to keep Raphel a secret, and this will have the effect of isolating her from her Mantle friends.

-Brendan was coming to tell Saeli that he’s earned the gold and white, and that they’ll be Anjahel together. Finding out that she tricked him in order to sneak off campus to meet a boyfriend has completely ruined this much anticipated moment for him. Thus, he is not happy.

However, the crux of his anger is not specifically that Saeli has a boyfriend. Rather, he thinks she had a boyfriend when they talked in the infirmary, and he thinks she deliberately kept it from him. He also assumes that’s why she tricked him in order to sneak off campus. Brendan is feeling like he’s being played by the girl he likes, and that really hurts. I think that’s the reveal I need to save for the graduation party. Let Saeli assume Brendan is mainly mad about the sneaking out, and then let the truth come out later, at the worst possible moment.

I think I know where this scene needs to go now. Note to self…if a scene is going slowly, maybe there’s something functionally wrong with it, and I need to step back and analyze what I’m doing.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

piglet

Once again I’ve laid out Raphel’s explanation of why he needs Saeli, how the war started, and his idea of how to bring down the gods. During the last draft, I had done some brainstorming on Verre’s history, specifically about the Cursing, because I needed more information on Scisaxar’s character. One of the ideas I had come up with was that there existed a group of majahel who belonged to neither Scisaxar nor Yuril, and they could use both sattva and rashas qi. The gods destroyed them. The war between Mantles and Cowls began soon afterward.

Raphel thinks that the gods were threatened by the grays, because the grays knew how to travel to other worlds and they knew about the Keeper. He thinks the gods started the war to cover up the true reason for the Cursing of the Midplains.

What he doesn’t know was that the grays were actually delving in some very dangerous things, and the gods had very good reason to step in and stop them. However, due to some personal drama, the gods admittedly did not handle the situation very well. That’s info for the sequel, incidentally. Saeli actually reestablishes the Grays as an actual Order at the end of Shades, and makes an effort to uncover their lore. Or course, some of the new Grays rediscover the dangerous stuff the old Grays were doing, and try to recreate it. As creator of the new movement, Saeli has to uncover the truth of the movement she’s been emulating, which will mean revisiting some of her pain with Raphel. Anyway…back to Shades.

The gray majahel are new to this draft, and that’s become the primary hook Raphel is using to entice Saeli into this plan to overthrow the gods. Secondary hook: ending the war is all about justice, and knowing the truth. That’s a big deal to Saeli, who’s never really liked the war. Raphel is giving her reasons to hate it. Third hook: Raphel is seducing her. It’s subtle, but it’s there. He’s observed her weak spots. He knows she’s intrigued by him, so he’s playing up his atypical-ness as a Cowl. He knows she’s an outcast, so he’s enticing her with a grand vision of saving the world from itself. He knows how she’s struggled to earn the Mantle, so he uses that to undermine her loyalty to Scisaxar. He knows she has a compassionate heart, so he throws out some of his own painful history to illicit sympathy from her. He also knows how to touch her hand or face in such a way as to deliberately make her stop thinking too hard.

Anyway, they are having this conversation in a cafe, where Cara had previously ordered tea. So the teapot and cups are still sitting there on the table, and once or twice I had Raphel messing with them. Just for something to do with his hands while he’s talking. There was one point where Saeli was considering how logical Raphel’s arguments were, and simultaneously watching him trace a circle on the rim of the teacup. The symbolism of that really struck me: how Raphel can sound all logical and straightforward, and all the while he’s actually leading you around in a circle.

So all of a sudden I had this really neat, subtle metaphor I could use during this scene. The teacup is actually a gauge of what Raphel is mentally doing to Saeli.

When he tells her he’s going to teach her rashas qi, she jumps up, bumps the table, and accidentally knocks the cup off its saucer. If you think about it, Saeli has literally been knocked off her Mantle foundations, and the last straw would be her learning rashas. And who picks up the cup and sets it back on the saucer? Raphel. Because what is he doing but setting up a different foundation for Saeli to rest on?

He plays with the cup some more while he’s telling her about the gray majahel. When Saeli finally asks if he can prove he isn’t making stuff up, he sets the cup back down on its saucer and says “Yes, I can prove it.” (He then proceeds to pull out an old scroll and do just that.) Foundation, again. He’s plucking her out of her old beliefs and setting her back down in his.

When Raphel claims the gods destroyed the grays, he spins the cup on the table. That’s because he’s departed from actual history and is conjecturing. That’s what he thinks happened. He doesn’t know what really happened…no one does…but he’s spinning the story that way because he knows Saeli will fall for it.

Raphel points out that the gods fear the Keeper, and knocks the cup over again. He says he thinks the gods were afraid the grays would bring the Keeper to Verre. This time, Saeli picks up the cup. Because ultimately, it’s Saeli who is going to save the gods, not from the Keeper…but from Raphel.

While Saeli is wondering how Scisaxar could have been part of the Cursing, she’s studying the dregs in the teacup. When Raphel finally tells her that they’re going to overthrow the gods, she drops the cup and it spills. This time it stays spilled for a little bit. This is no small thing he’s just told her, after all.

He picks it up while talking about his past, and grips it hard enough Saeli is afraid it will crack. That’s the part of Raphel that could destroy her, after all…his anger over his past. It’s what ultimately forges him into the villain of the story. In her sympathy, she takes the cup away from him…because she will, at the end of the story, pull herself out of his clutches, and she’ll do it out of love.

He finally pins her down with a question of whether she loves Scisaxar or not. To give herself time to answer, she mops up the spilled tea on the table. White cloth, brown stains. This is what her view of Mantles has become. What she thought was pure is actually stained.

Raphel takes the napkin away from her. He folds it up into a little square, and clinks the teacup down on the saucer. Pretty decisive. It’s after this that he really ramps up the seduction bit, cupping her face and telling her he can’t do this without her, that sort of thing. He switches from “you’re going to do this because it’s a good idea” to “you’re going to do this because you really like me”.

Who knew you could pack all that into a teacup. I love symbolism.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

I think, I think, that the scene I’m currently working on will be one of the last to involve significant changes to the storyline itself. It’s the scene where Saeli meets Raphel in the Sari Cafe…only now she’s already been given her Mantle, she has to sneak off campus in order to meet him at all, she and Cara had to deceive Brendan in order to pull off the escape, and she’s got a two hour time limit to get back (before the school gates close for the night). Thus, the whole dialogue will have to unfold in a different order to accommodate the changes. Plus I’m bringing over a shortened version of the dedication discussion, since the first thing out of Saeli’s mouth is going to be something along the lines of “Uh, they kind of made me a Mantle”…which isn’t going to make Raphel happy.

The next major event is the graduation party. I’m sure Saeli will be able to get official permission to go to that. She’ll also be able to tell Raphel about it, since she’ll have a sorarc by then. Plays right into his hands, that…

At the party, Saeli has to have her confrontation with Brendan. I think I still need to have a short scene with him after Saeli gets done talking to Raphel at the Sari…if only to establish some complication in their relationship. First of all, Saeli and Cara had to have his help in getting Saeli through the gates. The school gates have student guards to keep track of who goes in and out, and the High Priestess has given orders that Saeli is not allowed to leave. The gates also have a pair of qi-sensing panels embedded in the school-side entrance that glimmer if qi is used near them. (Of course, they are only set up to recognize sattva qi, because they were designed to catch students sneaking out, not Cowls sneaking in. The school assumes that any Cowl sneaking in is going to be caught by the anti-intruder ward, or the Anjahel guards on duty [who can sense the presence of rashas qi in a person, not just when it's in use]. That hole in the system allowed Raphel to sneak in cloaked, with a student’s name on his lips.)

However, Saeli doesn’t know any rashas qi yet, so she’d have to use a sattva cloak to sneak out. That’s where Cara comes in. Cara is also going to cloak and try to sneak through the gate, but she’s going to purposefully get caught. She’ll then explain that she was sent to test the qi panels, and to make sure the guards were paying attention. Such tests are somewhat routine. While the guards are distracted with Cara, Saeli will slip by. However, both girls know that the guards will report the incident, so they need to obtain actual permission to conduct the test. That’s where Brendan comes in. He’s a senior red cord, and on very good terms with Professor Lo, the Advanced Forms teacher and the head of campus security. He’s also known for his honesty. If Brendan were to go to Lo and say he thought the panels needed testing, and the guards needed a wake-up call, he could probably get the permission they need.

Only problem is, Saeli can’t tell Brenden she’s going to sneak off campus, because Brendan would never allow it. Barring that, he’d never go along with it. So Saeli and Cara go to Brendan and pretend that they saw the guards goofing off, and that it’s making Saeli nervous. Saeli suggests sending Cara to test them, but they need permission. Brendan, already vulnerable to any plea from Saeli and already worried about her safety, agrees and gets the permission they need.

The sneaking out goes over without a hitch, except that Cara ends up going with Saeli to the Cafe. Saeli just can’t persuade her otherwise. They get to the cafe, and Saeli doesn’t see Raphel right away. She gets more and more nervous, especially with Cara there, and finally needs a moment to herself. She excuses herself and goes to the hallway outside the bathrooms, and of course there’s Raphel, dressed in street clothes and waiting for her. They have a kind of frantic, whispered conversation, which is interrupted by Cara, who comes looking for Saeli. So Cara meets “Aiden” and is completely and utterly charmed. She now completely understands why her roommate would risk getting in trouble to see this guy again. I need Cara to not be suspicious, because Brendan is about to become suspicious enough for both of them.

Brendan, meanwhile, is pulled into the High Priestess’ office that evening and given the gold cord. The first thing he thinks to do, of course, is to tell Saeli, so he goes looking for her. He doesn’t find her, and he learns that Cara went on into town after testing the gate guards. Well, Brendan’s a pretty smart fellow and he quickly realizes that Cara must have been helping Saeli sneak out. That pisses him off, because not only is she endangering herself by going outside, she tricked him into helping her do it. So he goes into town looking for her.

He finds her inside the Sari, just as she’s about to leave (time’s almost up). Saeli tries to shoo Raphel away before Brendan sees them, and Raphel is quite willing to leave, but Brendan’s already spotted them. Raphel leaves without speaking, and Saeli and Brendan are left alone. Well, now Brendan is triply pissed, because apparently Saeli tricked him into helping her sneak out so that she could meet a guy behind his back. Ouch. And there really isn’t much Saeli can do to persuade him otherwise, without revealing who Raphel is and why she was really meeting him. Problem is, there’s just enough truth to Brendan’s suspicions that Saeli feels too guilty and wretched to tell the truth. Confronted with Brendan’s hurt, the truth actually starts to feel like an excuse. She does like Raphel. She did meet him before she and Brendan spoke in the infirmary. And her own fascination with Raphel was part of the reason she met him again.

So that’s where Saeli and Brendan stand going into the graduation party. It’s probably enough to push Brendan over the edge enough to indulge in a little tanathe weed.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

So a month or two ago, there was this author that had been recommended to me, and I kept telling myself I should check her out. Then, at the Cassandra Claire and Holly Black event in Vero, that same author was recommended yet again, by those two no less. I said to myself, “I really do need to look into that.”

Then, of course, I completely forgot the author’s name. I knew she had two books, and that the second one was called Fire. Let me tell you, there are a whole stinking lot of books on the market with “fire” in the title…which makes searching in the library almost impossible. Especially without an author. So…I gave up, in the hopes of eventually running across the name again and remembering it.

In a completely unrelated series of events, I ended up checking out a book called Graceling from the library. (Are you laughing yet?) It was one of those few books I pick up, not because I know anything about them, but because the back cover sounds interesting. Most of those are disappointments. This one was not.

It was imaginative, and exciting, and unpretentious. I would have built up the world a little more, if I’d been writing it, but the story didn’t suffer for lack of detail. Reading the inside flap, I was surprised to discover that the author lives in Jacksonville, FL. Yay, fellow Floridian! I enjoyed Graceling enough that I went online to see if the author had a blog or something. I started on Amazon, where I was excited to discover that there is apparently another book in the series.

Can you guess what that second book is called? Yep.

Fire.

Proving that yes, apparently I really should have checked Kristin Cashore out when I still remembered her name, because her first book was interesting enough for me to pick up AT RANDOM. Craziness.

In other news, I’m about halfway through the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Those are the books that apparently inspired the TrueBlood series on TV, which I know nothing about. But I’ve discovered that if a book spawns a movie or TV series, the book is at least worth checking out. (With the possible exception of Vampire Diaries. I tried to read those and it was like reading Twilight all over again. It was just…meh.) Anyway, I’m quite enjoying the Sookie books. They have a nice balance of mystery, sensuality, solid worldbuilding, and fun, and I really like the protagonist. She’s one of those perky southern women who don’t have a lot of “book larning”, but has a good head on her shoulders nonetheless.

I really need to update my to-read list, as I’ve finished a lot of what’s on it, and have added some stuff. I’ll probably do that in a different post.

The Shades rewrite is going very well. First person works a lot better than third ever did, I’m discovering. Much easier to introspect. But really, I think the best thing I did was starting at the fight scene. It just makes everyone’s motivations and conflicts so much clearer, and make so much more sense. Saeli, instead of starting things off with a dubious and rather stupid plan to meet with a Cowl, is immediately thrown into a conflict with one through no deliberate fault of her own. Yes, she ends up in a mess because of her decisions, but one could argue that there was little else she could do in those circumstances.

No, she didn’t have to sneak into the Temple to get a better look at a Cowl. But her doubts drove her there. No, she didn’t have to jump out to defend the High Priestess against Raphel, but her good heart wouldn’t let her do otherwise. It’s actually the only thing she does all night that a real White Mantle would also do.

She didn’t have to get into a conversation with Raphel, but her own doubts and curiosities, and Raphel’s strange manner, made it inevitable. This is where Saeli’s sense of what’s right departs from White Mantle philosophy. A Mantle would attack, and never give the enemy a chance to speak…no matter the circumstance, no matter how different or fascinating the enemy was. If Raphel had attacked her the second she appeared, that’s probably the course she would have taken, because it’s what she’s been taught. But Raphel tried to talk her away first, and that was enough to shock her out of reacting. Saeli’s own doubts compel her to try and find out why this Cowl is different.

She certainly didn’t have to take Raphel up on his compromise, and let him go when he asked…but it was the only thing she could do to save herself and the High Priestess’ life, given what she knows. (If she had known how much Raphel would risk to keep a gray her age alive, she might have been in a better position to bargain…but as far as she knows, Raphel’s going to kill her unless she does what he asks). She chooses saving lives over the morals she’s been taught, and that is significant. She’s willing to take circumstance into account. She follows her own inner sense of what’s right. This is what makes her so vulnerable to Raphel, but it’s also what will ultimately allow her to break free from him.

Raphel, instead of for-some-mysterious-reason deciding to meet an unknown student just because she asks, is thrown into a conflict with Saeli because of where he was and what he was trying to do. He spares her initially because he’s just killed Denys and is not happy about it, and he really doesn’t want to do it again. And before you start thinking that Raphel isn’t really such a bad guy after all, as Saeli does, know that Raphel objects to killing bystanders not out of the goodness of his heart, but as a matter of pride. He’s an assassin, and normally he’s good enough to get in and out of a place without having killed anyone other than his target. He’s more annoyed with himself at this point, because having to kill a student is embarrassing. Killing two would be unbearable, not to his conscience, but to his pride.

When she follows him up to the tower, he admires her for her tenacity. Mind you, he’s still going to kill her…perhaps even more so at this point, as it’s obvious she’s not going to leave him alone. But he’s curious enough about this Mantle who is acting so un-Mantle-like that he’s willing to hold back for a few minutes and see what she does. It’s when he figures out that she’s gray that the stakes change for him.

He realizes that he has a golden opportunity in Saeli to realize a plan that he’s been concocting for years. But, of course, now he can’t kill her. Hell, he can’t even hurt her in any significant way, as that would destroy any future trust she might have in him. But if he kills the HP, he knows he’ll have to fight Saeli, and thus probably hurt or kill her. However, if he doesn’t kill the HP, he’s going to face hell from his cabal, who are counting on him to take down the Mantle leader. And if he doesn’t choose quickly, he’s liable to get caught anyway. Saeli’s presence in this scene actually puts Raphel in a very difficult position, although of course, Saeli won’t know any of this.

He chooses Saeli, because even a faint hope of taking down the gods is worth the risk for him.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Brendan acted on his own once before, when he kissed Saeli and I wasn’t expecting it.

I just (re)tackled the scene where Brendan reveals his true feelings for Saeli. And found that I needed to completely rearrange the conversation, because about 90% of the things they talked about the first time around have happened differently (Cowl broke onto campus and killed someone, as opposed to Cowl simply broke onto campus and disappeared) or have not happened at all (Raphel hasn’t taken Saeli on their little midnight philosophical walk yet, Saeli hasn’t claimed to have met “some guy” downtown yet).

So my problem was, how do I lead up to Brendan’s confession this time around? My inclination was to do something really simple, like have him say something like, “See, you almost died last night, and that made me realize something…blah blah blah.” You know, when I actually write it out like that, I see that it kind of makes Brendan look like a sissy. Good thing he had other things on his mind.

After a bit of back and forth between Saeli and Brendan, where he both wants to speak his mind and simultaneously doesn’t, and Saeli is getting more and more confused and annoyed…Brendan finally blurted out something that changed the whole timbre of the scene. “What did that Cowl do to you last night?”

And I remember that White Mantles believe Cowls have neither morals nor inhibitions, and that male Cowl raiders are known to (supposedly) steal women and rape them.

And I realize what Saeli’s story up to this point (“The Cowl was going to kill the Priestess, I talked to him, he decided to let us live if I let him go”) would look like to a White Mantle whose feelings are not entirely neutral. Brendan has jumped to the conclusion that this Cowl raped Saeli, and the reason she hasn’t admitted it is because she let it happen so that she and the HP would live. It’s a logical assumption, given what Brendan knows about Cowls (they’re promiscuous), about Raphel in particular (he’s never left a victim alive before), and about the circumstances (Saeli was alone with Raphel, they cut some kind of deal). And Brendan, dear, protective soul that he is, has got to have the truth of the matter…and thus we have this completely spontaneous scene where Brendan basically accuses Saeli of selling her body to save the HP’s life.

And of course Saeli’s first reaction is something along the lines of “Why the hell could he even imagine such a thing?”, which forces him to admit that it’s not the morality of the situation that bothers him…it’s the idea of her being hurt by a Cowl like that. So Brendan gets to admit how he feels without ever having to say the words, which is good. It reinforces him as a strong male and also as a White Mantle (Mantles don’t talk about feelings much).

It also puts Raphel and sex together in Saeli’s head for the first time, and even though she finds the very idea revolting at first, the seed is planted. Plus, right after this scene concludes, Saeli is going to go back to her room and find Raphel waiting for her.

It really is great when my characters know themselves better than I do, and get themselves into deeper messes than I would have come up with for them.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes