Paksworld

3061 words today.

That battle I was talking about?  It’s unfolding rather differently than I planned originally, but better.   To argue with the A-Team “I love it when a plan comes together”—I love it when my plot-daemon knows better than I do what should happen.

For instance:  I knew, but hadn’t mentioned, that the troops sent north when nothing was going on were bored (as troops in garrison often are) and that partly to keep them busy and partly to prevent a big rain event from cutting them off, they’d dug a ditch to drain a  low area.   Dirt from the ditch had provided a sort of causeway, and in the fall rains the ditch had indeed carried off a lot of water that would otherwise have made a wide mucky area.

What I didn’t know, when I was thinking “OK, what will the troops up there be doing while the main plot’s going on back here?” back while writing book one,  was that the ditch would prove extremely plot-worthy in book three.  Sometimes you need a ditch to jump into.  Sometimes, it’s handy if said ditch is full of very cold water.    Sometimes writers are very glad they stuck in something mundane (though not mentioned in the books–dang–should’ve done that but decided it was just background and would be infodumpy) because later on it turns out to be very useful indeed.