Paksworld

I was reminded again this weekend of the way death comes seemingly out of nowhere to shatter relationships new and old.   A friend of mine in another state was participating in a serial transport of a rescued dog from the shelter where it was first found to its future home, some two thousand miles away.   The puppy stayed at her house overnight, and the next day she drove it to the next person in the chain.   The person set off…and she and the puppy were killed in a weather-related road accident.  You can read about it on my friend’s blog, which includes a beautiful tribute to the remarkable woman who was killed.  Please do, in fact.

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If you have over a million words of fiction set in the same world, you’re very likely going to have a lot of characters and those characters need names.   The names have to fit the world, and each other.  In real life, many people may have the same name (which is how the innocent get blamed for crimes they didn’t commit): there are dozens of Elizabeth Moons across the country, with at least one in most states and at least nine in Texas.   But in a book (as I discovered in my first one, when I didn’t know better) readers expect one name per character and one character per name.   They need those names to be easily pronounced (and “easily” varies with the reader) and distinctive.

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I am deep in chronology now, maybe halfway through, and discovering that I have duplicated some events (though the way the scenes are written varies a lot) and completely left out some very important ones.  Last night’s work session was on one such scene (a plot-mover for sure.)    Getting the others into even rough order helps a lot in seeing overlaps, duplicates, and gaps.

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Along with finding a major blooper in Book IV when I went back to it after page proofs….I’m now at 125,000+ words.    As mentioned back when (Oath or Kings, can’t now recall which) at some point Arcolin has to consider his succession.   The other dukes strongly prefer that he marry and get an heir, and that quickly; they never liked Kieri’s plan of not marrying again and letting the domain lapse.   The king feels the same way–he wants things settled.

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I was determined to keep on schedule as much as possible before husband’s surgery, so my goal for this week was to make it to 120,000 words.  Which I did.   Today I went back to an unfinished chapter (it had stopped in a sort of lurch awhile back) and it took off a bit.    A certain teary widow has pulled up her socks and had an idea I certainly had not anticipated when I quit on that chapter.    I’m impressed.  Kieri’s impressed.

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Some people like to write villains, just as some gamers really like to play evil characters.     For writers who like to write villains, writing non-villains can be a challenge.  And the same is true for writers who don’t like to write villains.

Before we can talk about this, a few caveats.   Characters are not the writer.  All competent writers can create characters very unlike themselves (and not just taller, stronger, more physically attractive, either!)  Much of a writer’s research is “people-watching”–observing people of all walks of life, in different settings.    So someone who’s never been a doctor or a helicopter pilot can–with research–write believable doctors or helicopter pilots.   Similarly,  writers who are not nasty themselves can write nasty characters, and writers who aren’t saints can write good characters.

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This evening I’m struggling to dry (somehow) a shirt I meant to wash in the hotel room washbasin Saturday but forgot in a drawer…and now it’s a damp pink lump.  So far the hair dryer has made scant inroads on its dampness (yes, yes, it was rolled in towels before ever being hung up.)   I shouldn’t have washed it.  I should have carried it home dirty.  Sigh.   Nobody bugged Paks about putting a dirty shirt in her pack on the way back from a foray.

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The struggle with tangled plotlines and histories is now showing clear progress.   I don’t think even the most spoiler-phobic will think being told the categories of revelations are spoilerish…but just in case, I’m putting a break between this first paragraph and the rest.

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So as I’m slogging, lurching, struggling through the mental swamp that is this part of Book IV,  I realize that what keeps tripping me up is the E subplot.  (As opposed to A, B, C, and D.)    What the heck is going on with E-subplot (or, to shorten things, Eplot.

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Since the previous snippet was supposed to be posted Monday (but, fooled by DST, I sent it after midnight) here’s the snippet that *should* come today.

I’ve previously posted a snippet that comes shortly before this one, about Stammel’s first experience in unarmed combat drill after his blinding.    Those who haven’t read the earlier snippet might want to look at it before reading this one.    They’re both in Chapter 9.

And spoiler warnings do apply:  don’t read below the line if you don’t want to know what happens.

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