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The Thursday and Friday were fizzles as far as writing was concerned, and Saturday wasn’t especially good, but did produce something, and this evening the scenes I’d been contemplating while driving to and from church today came alive, so I made both my week goal of 10,0oo words and I’m on track to meet my month goal as of midnight Sunday (yes, it’s after midnight–just finished work at 11:54.)
It’s coils-within-coils time, apparently, another sign that this is the hinge volume of the story. My plot daemon has been busily at work, tunneling away below my awareness and making layers of complexity that I’m now running into in the surface of “Stuff Happening.” This may have been what stopped forward progress cold at the end of the week…I had to figure out what I’d just stumbled over.
If you ever want to write long, complicated stories, it probably helps to be the kind of writer who can lay out the full history of your world ahead of time. I’m not. (And yes, this means I’ll make mistakes. It would take a couple of full-time researchers–whom I could not afford to pay–to keep ahead of my needs. Esp. without the misplaced notebooks, which I’m sure will show up after I’m all done with this story.)
The new stuff involves elven intrigue and murder, a big storm that may or may not be magical (I think it’s not, but at the moment I’m watching the horizontal bludgeoning snow with some concern), and further evidence that there are dangers and plots still not fully understood by those who are going to be hurt. Some of whom we’re all attached to.
OTOH, Book III gives you Kieri’s new love, betrothal, marriage, a terrifying underground experience, an innocent (maybe more than one) under unfair suspicion, and other goodies. Someone who may have seemed weak in Kings is now shown to have great strength; youngsters gain maturity; Arvid finally gets to kill someone.
And unofficially…there’s good news on the whole story front.
Comment by John Hicks — August 23, 2010 @ 12:34 am
This is good news Ms Moon. I take it things are falling into place in the story.
A question. Will this series cover the possible war being discussed by Keri & Paks at the beginning and end of ‘Liar’s Oath’? Or is that later – say 20 years later?
Comment by Margaret Middleton — August 23, 2010 @ 5:54 am
Gotta be later. I just finished ‘Liar’s Oath’ and I distinctly recall Kieri saying “I have heirs enough”.
Unless, of course, THIS story carries-on THAT long.
Comment by elizabeth — August 23, 2010 @ 7:29 am
John: Yes, probably. At least part of it. However, at this point of the new story (it’s actually a multi-volume story, which isn’t exactly the same as a series, in my mind) I’m not sure how far into that we’ll go.
Margaret: I’ve mentioned before on this blog that the Liar’s Oath prologue is no longer quite right and there’s no way to repair the gap it created. There are reasons why my vision of the future was faulty at that time (reasons that caused other problems with the book than the prologue’s apparent projection of time from the Deed to that book. Ideally, I’d have been able to write these books before writing those books, and thus would have had the time “right” in the beginning, but that’s not how it happened.
I still don’t know how far ahead that scene is (the scene is right; the time between now and then is what’s up for grabs) and won’t know for sure until it arrives in “present time.” At the time I wrote the prologue, I had no idea that Dorrin would be a major player–that the Verrakai family had hidden away that crown and so on. I was focused on Paks and Kieri and the Fellowship of Gird, not on the wider picture.
Comment by Larry Lennhoff — August 23, 2010 @ 8:54 am
To me the phrase ‘hinge volume’ implies the book is in the middle. Is this really a 6 volume series, or do you imagine hinges on the end (like on a door)?
Comment by ajlr — August 23, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
Sounds from your mentioning that this is the hinge volume that we may be lucky enough to have more than the 3 books originally planned (together with your saying there’s good news on the whole story front). Or am I reading more into your words than is quite proper? Apologies, if so.
Plot daemon seems like a tricky entity to work with…
Comment by Gillian — August 23, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
Very glad to hear the unofficial good news on the whole story front. Here’s hoping it’s soon official.
Comment by Genko — August 23, 2010 @ 3:30 pm
I’m curious about something. Since you are writing this very long story, and don’t know exactly where it’s going, how do you know that it will have an ending? I mean, is it possible that it will simply keep going with lots of loose ends, etc.?
Of course, it’s true that stories never really end, and sometimes they have a sort of artificial ending that may or may not be satisfying. The great thing about a story (as opposed to “real life”) is that it can come to some sort of conclusion, resolution, redemption, which sometimes just signifies a new beginning, but is no less satisfying for that.
In many things I like quick gratification (solitaire games come to mind — I like them easy and quick), but when it comes to novels, I like long involved plots and intricate characterizations, etc. Go figure.
I guess my question has to do with whether you know this will lead to something that feels like a conclusion. You sense a story arc, and speak of a “hinge,” and that leads me to think you do have some sense of going towards something that would represent a stopping (or at least pausing) point.
Comment by elizabeth — August 23, 2010 @ 6:00 pm
ajlr and Gillian: yeah, it’s unofficial but it is good news.
Genko: Yes, I’m sure there’s an arc and an ending. Sometimes I even know what the ending is…but not how long it’s going to take to get there, or what the trail looks like. How do I know? I just do. So far that’s always worked.
Comment by elizabeth — August 24, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
I think it’s the middle of five. Long series do best with uneven numbers of volumes (in my opinion anyway) because the actual hinge–be it a paragraph in a short-short, a page in a short story, a chapter or two in a novel, or–in a multi-volume story, chapters and chapters and chapters–is always, by itself, the least satisfying section. That middle section needs the sections on either side…a hinge by itself tells you that it could be attached to a door and a frame, but by itself that’s all it can do–flap. In an arch, the keystone doesn’t stand by itself (but is no less right in its place for that.) In an even-number group of books, with a hinge in the middle, the hinge itself is split–half the hinge ends one book and half the hinge begins the next. So two volumes suffer from “hinge-flapping” instead of one, and neither can form an internal arc (as the whole multi-volume has an arc, it’s still possible to give each book a secondary, internal arc.) As the middle book, a hinge volume needs to connect directly and easily with both sides of the arc–so the first part of a hinge volume and the last part of the hinge volume are both clearly “what is being moved,” not the hinge. How much of the book the actual hinge takes up varies with the length and complexity of the whole.
Feeling the hinge beginning and ending is a tricky thing in itself.
Comment by Kerry (aka Trouble) — August 24, 2010 @ 6:03 pm
Five? SQUEEEEEE!!!
There, that’s out of the way.
I would call that very good news indeed.
Comment by elizabeth — August 24, 2010 @ 7:46 pm
It’s always conditional, though. That’s what makes this business so scary…the higher-ups can cancel a series (let alone an editor, an imprint, a division) at any time, and there’s not a darned thing I can do.
So the new Paks books still have to earn their keep…but at least you won’t get the rest of the story crammed into 20 pages at the end. (Or even thirty.)
Comment by APJ — August 25, 2010 @ 7:22 am
My fingers and toes are crossed hoping against hope that indeed 5 will happen 😉
If indeed you were able to write this story in 5 books, would we be able to get more Paks? i enjoy the many POV’s, seeing what is happening in the others lives and how Paks story altered (or brought their stories where indeed they needed to go) and/or affected their lives; don’t get me wrong i enjoy seeing the others story, but Paks is the character i grew attached to and whom i would love to learn how her story continues. Like would she ever be able to see her family, even from a distance…
Comment by elizabeth — August 25, 2010 @ 7:52 am
As I’ve said before, if Paks will kindly return to me as a POV character, I will write her. She is MY favorite character of all. However, I will not fake her. So far, Paks’s opinion is that her story was told–the pivotal thing in her life was told. That’s what she wanted. She has not come back as a POV character (and I’ve tried, over the years) and to try to force the issue doesn’t work. You wouldn’t like the fake Paks, and neither do I. So I won’t do that.
Comment by Margaret — August 25, 2010 @ 10:26 am
At the very beginning of Deed, there are two swords hanging on the wall, one was Paks’ that had been returned. Would she have asked someone to return it, or had someone who knew her well enough to find her family done so on their own? These are not questions that I expect there are answers for, but just wondering and thinking about what her continued thoughts and concerns were about her family.
Paks knew, once she became paladin, that she could never go back, lest evil should find them. So it doesn’t seem that she would have gone back only to observe. That would have been too close.
Throughout Deed there are times when Paks thinks about her family and wonders if she should go back. At one point she realizes that in spite of her father’s anger at her refusal to marry, he loved her and wanted the best for her. She remembers good times with him and comes to believe he would welcome her back.
Paks was called by the gods and such callings take one beyond the normal human experience. It requires a renunciation of attachment to individuals. Not that she can’t love and care for others, but that she must always follow the call of the gods even when it requires that the attachment must be released. She is not free to make commitments to individuals, she is not free to reconnect with any she leaves behind, unless the gods call her to do so.
Paks is not calling for more of her story to be told because it has all been told. Deed is the story of how she grew from sheepfarmer’s daughter to paladin. She is no longer a developing spirit, she is complete in a way that ordinary humans never are in this life. There is nothing more to tell about her inner self. Whatever deeds she may now be called to do are someone else’s story, to be seen from their point of view. Paks is now an arrow of the gods, as unchangeable as the angels or the gods themselves.
At least, that is how I see it.
Comment by elizabeth — August 25, 2010 @ 10:48 am
Pretty much, yeah. Well said. But I think for many people there are defining events, or periods of time, that “set” them for the rest of their lives. I knew WWII veterans, for instance, for whom that was the defining experience. What came after was “just regular life”–nothing special, nothing that–if someone had written a book about them–they’d have thought worth the writing. For a few, it’s high school: that’s the high point, that’s when they felt in the center stage of their own story. (And that, to me, is very sad…someone whose peak is being the quarterback, or the head cheerleader, or Homecoming Queen or King has a long stretch of The Dull ahead…and it’s a choice they make, knowing or not.) For some it’s a piece or body of work, or a position achieved.
Others come to that point later–or keep reinventing themselves and never feel that they’ve finished their story.
Comment by John Hicks — August 27, 2010 @ 1:03 am
Margaret, I cannot agree. The finding of the King was Paks’s first task. It doesn’t have to be her most important – or her only one. Also character is supposed to continue to develop as we age. Paks would to – as would the other characters. Dorrin and Arcolin would surely develop over time with the change in their circumstances. As would the other characters. Paks’s story is not complete – it has really just begun. I hopeMs. Moon can tell us more of her life and the others.
Comment by elizabeth — August 27, 2010 @ 9:15 am
John: Paks’s first and hardest task was becoming someone who could do what she did…and that is what the whole Deed is about…what it takes to become a paladin, a virtuous hero. Her finding out Kieri’s real identity and heritage, and getting him to Lyonya alive to accept the crown, was both the result of, and the proof of, the success of that process. Even then–the entire effect of an action being always more complex than the obvious–neither she nor anyone else knew what other purposes than restoring Kieri to his real identity might have been encompassed in that. She hinted at one of them in her brief conversation with Arvid, when she woke after the ordeal…that the ordeal might have been about more than a bargain to give Kieri a lead over pursuit. A little is shown there, not only in Arvid’s reaction but in the new life she brings to the grange of Darkon Edge.
The new books show more: everyone she touched, in her progress towards becoming a paladin and after she became one, is changed by that contact, sometimes directly and sometimes by secondary processes–when one person changes, those around them change to accommodate that change, or in a determination not to change (limiting their own flexibility, as with Barranyi.) For each individual, the world changes a little because of that person–but for most of us, the change is small indeed, and accumulates mostly through family ties. But some have a larger effect, as if the accumulating change from their ancestry is expressed all at once in their lives. Historians argue about whether the “great man/woman” can actually affect history, or whether he/she merely expresses a trend created by unnamed others…but that some people express change and are seen as the force behind it, is obvious.
You say that character is “supposed to continue to develop”….but that’s a Platonic view, not an Aristotelian observation. It presumes an ideal end point, as well as an ideal progression….and neither need be true. Hitler was an arrogant, angry, bitter control freak when he was young, and he continued as an arrogant, angry, bitter control freak to his death…he never developed large tracts of character, “growing” only those parts of himself that served his earlier self-image as a great hero. Many people develop to a point and then quit (concentrating on other facets of life than character growth) and some who do concentrate on character growth have such a limited concept that they grow in a one-dimentional way. These limited concepts are easily found in various social structures, religions, philosophies, and it’s easier to “color within the lines” and concentrate on the specific traits required and admired for a limited concept than to risk going beyond.
The rare individuals who do go beyond–who break out of their cultural box–often do have a dramatic revelation/conversion experience and complete decades of character development in a short time. After that, they’ve completed their development (or nearly so) at a level much higher than that of the general population. And that is the crisis or climax of their lives. It does not matter at what age, or where in their lifespan, that change comes–they are then the complete person they were meant to be, set free to do what they should do without the need to ‘find themselves’ or ‘grow up’ more.
From Paks’s point of view, her story–the story that interests her enough to come alive in my head–is the story of her transition from a rebellious farm girl eager to get away and have a life of excitement and glamor (as she thought it) to the paladin, the virtuous warrior, secure in the connection to Divinity and unbound from both fear and ambition. Her life from that point on is folded into the intentions the gods have for the people and places she’s touched–she is not a prime mover but an implement of the prime movers. Her will has been subsumed into their will. If her character develops more (and where I am in Book III it’s only a year since she brought Kieri to Lyonya) it hasn’t happened yet and may not (what in it needs to grow? It’s really hard to write characters who are better in character than the writer!), and if she comes back to me as a viewpoint character, then of course I’ll write more about her. She will wander in and out as a non-viewpoint character (though I wish she’d quit riding away just when I think she’s going to participate in a scene…there’s a point in Kings where I was once more disappointed.)
Comment by John Hicks — August 27, 2010 @ 7:59 pm
Thankyou Ms Moon.
That is an interesting way of looking at character development. I will wait for the books with greater interest!!
I also think the way you seem to have the characters running the story rather than the author is fascinating
Thankyou for your time.