Weekend Writing Warriors – it’s not wrong

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image.

I’m sharing the opening scene from Wrath of Empire, a prequel to my first novel, Ghosts of Innocence. Crown Prince Julian and his bodyguard, Chalwen, are talking about the late Empress Florence, who they’ve just interred. Chalwen is worried that with Florence gone, Julian would have to compete with his uncle Ivan for the throne if anything happened to his father.

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“I know Father's sad.” Julian screwed his face. “I honestly can't tell what Mother's thinking. Josie and Flossie can't stop bawling their eyes out, of course.”

Of course, Chalwen thought. Of all Paul's children they'd had the closest relationship with their sweetly tyrannical grandmother.

Empress Florence had continued a long line of brutal oppression with imaginative savagery, only softening in her later years with the births of twins Josephine and young Florence, two years Julian's junior. Something had changed her then, ending in her declaring Paul her successor rather than the elder Ivan.

Could a last minute change of heart really make up for decades of iron rule?

That’s nine sentences. The scene continues ...

From the corners of her eyes, Chalwen noted the six members of Julian’s escort falling in around them as they entered the shadowed avenue leading back to the residence. Steel-grey clouds chased the last few rays of sun, and a damp chill seeped through the gardens from the ocean beyond the clifftop wall.

“To answer your question, no, it's not wrong.”

 

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That’s the end of the scene. Of course, the question Chalwen refers to is the opening line where Julian asks “Is it wrong of me not to feel sad?”

Happy Christmas folks!

Weekend Writing Warriors – line of succession

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image.

I’m sharing the opening scene from Wrath of Empire, a prequel to my first novel, Ghosts of Innocence. Crown Prince Julian and his bodyguard, Chalwen, are talking about the late Empress Florence, who they’ve just interred. Julian just asked if the old Empress could have resumed the throne in the event of his fathers death.

 

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Chalwen pondered the question. “In theory, if your uncle Ivan didn't beat her to it. But that's no longer a consideration. You're right. As next in line, you do need to prepare yourself.” More than you can know. Chalwen shuddered again. If anything should happen to Emperor Paul, Ivan had little hope of wresting power from a still-formidable Florence. But young and inexperienced Julian? That was another matter.

 

 

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Weekend Writing Warriors

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image.

I’m sharing the opening scene from Wrath of Empire, a prequel to my first novel, Ghosts of Innocence. Crown Prince Julian and his bodyguard, Chalwen, are talking about the late Empress Florence, who they’ve just interred. The last snippet ended with Chalwen saying, “Today, you are only a step away from the Skamensis throne.”

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“Why today? Father has been Emperor for a year now. Grandmother already passed the throne on to him, so surely her death changes nothing.”

It changes everything Chalwen wanted to scream. But it would take years for Julian to navigate the maze of conflicting powers that made up the Empire. “True enough, but while Florence lived, in many people's minds she was still an Empress. If anything happened to your father, she could have resumed the throne.”

“Could that really have happened?”

 

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Weekend Writing Warriors – Wrath of Empire

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image. 

 

 

I’m sharing the opening scene from Wrath of Empire, a prequel to my first novel, Ghosts of Innocence. Crown Prince Julian and his bodyguard, Chalwen, are talking about the late Empress Florence, who they’ve just interred. This snippet opens with Chalwen speaking: 

 

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“Your grandmother was ... a complicated person.” 

“I didn't really know her.” 

Was that sadness in his voice? Regret? Fear, even? 

“I was hoping she would teach me more about statecraft, and ruling the Empire.” 

Chalwen shuddered, then reminded herself that Julian was only nine years old. He was only aware of the last few years of Florence's rule, not the bloody century that preceded them. 

“I'll have to learn one day, and Father is too busy to bother with me.” 

“It's never a bad thing to think ahead. Today, you are only a step away from the Skamensis throne.”

=====

 

As I was preparing to post this, I reached an exciting milestone in this project. I tidied up the last scenes in the story – the first draft is officially done!

I will be reviewing the whole document carefully before putting it through the queue at Critique Circle for a detailed critique, but in the meantime I am also looking for one or two alpha readers. This would be for a full read through to give feedback on the big picture. Does the plot hang together, how do the characters come across, does the story flow and reach a satisfying conclusion ... that kind of thing.

I’m happy to reciprocate if you’ve also got work that you’d like an independent read through.

If you’re interested, send me an email (if you have my email address) or reach me through the contact page on my website.

Wrath of Empire

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image. 

 

 

 

It’s been nearly a year since I last posted to WWW. Last time, I posted scenes from The Long Dark, which was published last Christmas. Since then, I’ve been busy drafting a new novel. Over the next few weeks, I’m sharing the opening scene from Wrath of Empire, a prequel to my first novel, Ghosts of Innocence.

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“Is it wrong of me not to feel sad?” 

The question startled Lieutenant Chalwen ap Gwynodd back to the here-and-now. She'd been scanning the tree line and peering into the shadows, alert for anything out of place, when her attention had wandered. A fine stand of thousand-year-old Veshi oaks spread their gnarled canopy over a walkway leading deeper into the Imperial family graveyard. The play of light and shade had distracted Chalwen, a fatal lapse in a bodyguard. 

But here, of anywhere on the planet, was surely safe, and the hectic few days of the official state funeral had been exhausting. All the same, Chalwen cursed under her breath and carried out a hurried situation check. 

Prince Julian was still gazing at the plain memorial where the family had just interred the ashes of Empress Florence. He tilted his head as if in thought, gazing at the simple inscription carved into the rough stone. Chalwen struggled to read his mood. 

 

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Nearing the finish line

It’s been a while, but I can finally say I’m nearing the end of the line with my first draft of Wrath of Empire.

This one has been much more of a slog than I expected. I’ve had false starts before, where I’ve begun drafting and then stalled and set the work aside for a while before resuming, but once I’m fully productive and on a roll I usually reckon on about seven months to reach the end. This time around it will be closer to eleven months.

There are two obvious factors here. Firstly, in a couple of earlier cases, those false starts gave me a sizable foundation to build on, so when I finally resumed in earnest and ran through to the end I was already maybe 15% of the way there. This time, I set out in January with only a handful of scenes sketched out. Secondly, this is a bigger book than I’ve written before so naturally it will take longer.

But setting that aside, it’s felt much more like I’m pushing uphill the whole way. I’ve managed to keep up a reasonable pace, so it’s not like I’ve ever really got stuck, but there have been times when it’s felt like a struggle.

I blogged about some of the challenges earlier on this year, and since I last posted in August I’ve had some tough spells where I really couldn’t see how to tie things up. But happily things have been clicking into place in the last month.

I’m now at the point of fleshing out the last few scenes, and I’m looking forward to settling down and reading the whole thing through from beginning to end for the first time, to see how well (or otherwise!) it hangs together as a complete story.

Things falling into place

I’ve talked about the difficulties of writing a prequel, where I have a few specific facts and events but otherwise no idea how the story is meant to unfold. But writing this story has been (still is, I’ve got some major sections still to go) a journey of discovery.

First, there is the act of fleshing out the main story itself. Delving behind the big sweeping events and making them personal. Getting down to the individual stories. This has, naturally, been the main focus of my efforts, because the glib statements of “X happens, and that led to Y” need to make sense at the micro level of individuals and their motivations and goals, actions and reactions.

This is the normal act of storytelling, except (as I’ve mentioned in previous posts) I’m generally bad at following a high-level outline. My stories have always – without exception so far – drifted miles away from where I first envisaged them going. But I can’t afford to do that this time, the outline is fixed, and so far I’ve managed to stay on course. And it’s been (mostly) fun filling in that almost blank canvas.

But added in to that process, I’ve found delight in taking opportunities for foreshadowing. In Wrath of Empire we meet people who show up in the later books, and it’s fun to show a bit more of their background.

Finally, there is the joy of things unexpectedly falling into place, seemingly by accident.

Shayla’s nemesis in Ghosts is the rather brutal commander in chief of Imperial Security. There, Chalwen is obese and unfit, and that’s simply presented as a matter of fact. When we see her, years earlier, in Wrath of Empire, she’s a bodyguard, extremely fit and active. I knew I had a contradiction to reconcile but I didn’t fret too much about how to explain this. I figured it was something that happened in the years in between. Then out of the blue, story events naturally led to the answer and we see the start of Chalwen’s physical decline. I hadn’t set out specifically to solve this problem, the solution simply materialized.

Staying on course

In writing Wrath of Empire, I’ve mentioned the need to stay on course and not let the story drift away from the key events already set in stone. That bare-bones outline was mentioned briefly in Ghosts of Innocence, which I first drafted thirteen years ago. At that time I had no idea I would consider backtracking and writing about those times, so they were just convenient backstory. I’d given no thought to how events progressed from A to B to C.

Now, of course, it matters greatly.

To help me, I’ve drawn heavily on a number of tools and techniques I’ve accumulated over the years. Most of them are tools I keep handy to help avoid writer’s block, and which I describe more thoroughly in Breaking the Block.

What

First, naturally, there’s the good old standard outline. In terms of what an outline looks like, I reckon there are as many varieties as there are writers, but to me an outline is a top-down expansion of the story. It focuses on what happens, and starts with the main highlights then expands each into greater and greater detail.

Avid and practiced outliners will map out the entire story in this way so they know exactly what will happen in each chapter and scene before they write a word of actual story. I don’t go that far. My outlines are a combination of bullet-form statements laid out as an indented list, and sometimes more fully fleshed-out paragraphs as if I was trying to describe to someone what is happening in this part of the story.

In the case of Wrath of Empire, the top of my outline consists of the three headings: Empress Florence’s funeral, Imperial family assassinated, and destruction of Eloon (Shayla’s home world). These form the outline's skeleton and are the key events that I have to land on. From there, it’s a matter of fleshing out details to make a story.

Of course, as these events take place over the span of four years, that leaves a lot of empty space to fill. Expanding the outline directly only takes me so far, and I don’t do well with simply laying out things that happen. I need other tools to help figure out what goes into that space.

Why

I find it helps to think not just about what happens, but why. A couple of vital tools for me are Motivations/Goals/Methods, and Stakeholder Stories.

The first tool looks at the key players in the story and asks what motivates them, what are they striving for, and how do they set about achieving their goals. The idea is to write just a few sentence to capture the main drivers for the story. You can’t get too deep into this, because the whole point of a story is for people’s goals to be thwarted, so these notes just form the starting point. After that, characters’ actions will intersect and conflict, throwing them off course.

Stakeholder stories takes this method further and examine what happens when things go awry. They generally start with what a character is trying to achieve and how, but they go further and look at how they react when things get in the way. These stories start off with the overarching motivation and goal, but move into a lot of sentences along the lines of “When X happens, it affects Y this way, and Y decides to do Z”. This tool is also a form of outline, but it exposes how the different story threads weave together in a network of cause and effect. I find this a great tool for brainstorming the “what” because it allows me to delve deep into each character and think from their point of view.

Another tool is the character interview. I’ve used this in the past to ferret out some of their underlying motivations. I’ve not used this technique yet for this project, but I have drawn on interviews I happened to do with my main character when I was writing Ghosts.

When

No matter what form my outlines take, I always lay out the main events on a timeline. This helps keep track of multiple threads, making sure they align and cross at the right points. This is especially important when things need to take time to happen, such as traveling from A to B, or things taking time to prepare.

In all my novels, the story timeline eventually becomes the primary outline, and becomes what I regard as my go-to source of truth, a single reference to which everything else aligns.

My timeline usually takes the form of a spreadsheet, with each row representing a day, and columns for each of the main players in the story. This has worked well for my previous novels, where the stories have all taken place over a few weeks of time.

Here is a part of the timeline for Ghosts of Innocence.

Wrath of Empire posed a new challenge for me, because the story takes place over years rather than weeks. I found the spreadsheet format hard to manage, because I needed more flexibility to handle approximations and to move things around as the outline evolved. For this project I settled on using a drawing tool to capture main events in a more free-form picture.

Taken in combination, these techniques have (so far) kept me on track.

Round numbers

Just a very quick update today.

Every evening, when I wrap up for the day, I tally my word count in a tracking spreadsheet. That may sound a bit nerdy, but I've blogged about this before as one of my motivational techniques. My spreadsheet graphs my progress week by week, and I like to see my "actual" line staying above the "target" line on the graph.

Today, I finished the week on exactly 90,000 words.

Talk about a round number.

Also a significant number, as that is often the starting target I pencil in to say I've reached a decent novel size. 

In this case, I know I've still got a long way to go. I think this novel is going to be closer to 150,000 by the time I finish. Noticeably fatter than my last two books, but not out of this world.

Fluid outlines

After six months of steady progress, I’m probably about 60% of the way through the first draft of Wrath of Empire. And this project is posing some challenges that I’ve not had to deal with before.

As this is a prequel, the bare bones – essentially three major events – were already laid out for me in the backstory to Ghosts of Innocence. The novel mentioned them to varying degrees, and gave some sense of the political climate at that time, but I had given no real thought to what happened in any great detail. It was on the level of saying that someone assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, and a few months later the whole of Europe was at war. OK, but what actually happened to lead from one event to the other?

The task, therefore, has been to add flesh to those bones.

I started off with a straightforward outline. Take those pivotal events and try to fill in the gaps. This added a layer, but it was still couched in very general terms, such as “Thwart Ivan’s attempt to claim the throne” and “Huge public turmoil”. Great. I could probably write a history text off those notes, but it would read like a history text with none of the specifics and personal connections that turn it into a story.

I needed to dig into the “who” and “why” and “how” in specific terms that can then be written out as a scene, and brought to life by the actors on the page.

The challenge for me has been this: In the novels I’ve written so far, I’ve had some kind of an outline, but as the story evolves it has always taken off in directions I didn’t anticipate. In each case, there are whole branches of the outline that ended up never being written, because the story took on a life of its own and the early outlines changed dramatically.

Always!

But that is a luxury I can’t afford this time. The story has to arrive at those pivotal events, and it has to arrive on time. Something I’ve never managed to do before!

Hello 2021

Okay, half the year has passed, and I’ve been largely absent from blogging. It’s been a tough spell. 

Nothing singly too bad, not even all bad in fact, but a lot going on that gets overwhelming at times. We’ve all had brushes with varying levels of health irregularities at times, and we’ve had to support each other through various workplace dramas. 

I largely try to ignore, or at least not get too distressed by, world events. Politics south of the border is still a shitshow, and the pandemic is under control in some countries but still wreaking havoc in others. Closer to home we are reeling from the unmarked graves coming to light at old residential schools. Nobody with a shred of human compassion can fail to be moved by the horrors inflicted on thousands of children over the course of many decades. 

All this has left me disinclined to engage with the world at large this year. 

On the upside, there are rays of sunshine at home and at work, and things are largely stable and happy in our little circle. We’ve all had our first vaccine jab and will soon have our second. Restrictions are relaxing and we might get to go out for a meal in the near future. 

On the writing front, I managed to get the paperback of The Long Dark published back in January, and since then I’ve been wrestling with the first draft of Wrath of Empire. But more of that (hopefully) in future posts.