{"id":3046,"date":"2023-10-25T18:18:49","date_gmt":"2023-10-26T00:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2023-10-25T18:58:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T00:58:10","slug":"sketch-snippet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=3046","title":{"rendered":"Sketch-Snippet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instead of a snippet in words, a sketch–the kind of thing I often scribble on the back of an envelope or letter or any paper handy…this time the back of a 4×6 card, first with the gel pen and then colored in with colored pencils.\u00a0\u00a0 I made it Tuesday evening to clarify the terrain and situation for members of the Discord writing group I’m in–most of them not familiar with my work so not at all with Paksworld.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t submit something every week, because they like shorter chunks of things, and that means fragments.\u00a0 But what I often want most from a first reader is not detailed comment, but whether or not the flow of action makes sense or is jumbled.\u00a0 In the first draft, I don’t worry about stuff that may not even be there in second draft.\u00a0 (in fact, in this case I was editing right up to it being my turn because I knew they might have a problem visualizing the terrain without a lot more words than I wanted to spend…this area was described when the allied forced came in several days ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This doesn’t cover the entire area of the ambush sequence but the most relevant bits.\u00a0 The card was white, but messing with the white balance enough to make it look white wiped out the other colors.\u00a0 I need better light in the study.\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway.\u00a0 North is up.\u00a0 The Pliuni Road leads west and up to the citadel, or east\u00a0 about 10 days’ travel through rows of hills (think the rumples of a kicked rug) to the walled city of Pliuni, about 5-7 days south of Valdaire.\u00a0 That steep cliff on the left (contour lines close together) is the base of one of the “horns” of Horngard.\u00a0 That lower hill on the right (contour lines farther apart) is the first hill east of the big cliff.\u00a0\u00a0 A waterfall comes down the cliff into a pool (out of scale)\u00a0 with a bar at the east end that makes an easy ford for horses or people.\u00a0 The stream flows east (and is also out of scale).\u00a0 The red-brown seed-shaped ovals represent the horses of Clart cavalry exiting the citadel valley right before the ambush attack from across the stream.\u00a0\u00a0 Halveric Company (2 cohorts) is camped on the left, and Fox Company on the right.\u00a0 Those triangular pointy bits are tents.\u00a0 Green with squiggles inside is thick vegetation.\u00a0 Ambushments include across the stream, from head-high bushes and young trees, and down from the end of that hill.\u00a0 On the far side of the creek, there’s a hill like the one on this side; the attackers are armed with bows (blackwood longbows, a few crossbows, a few recurved bows) and the brush has been “sculpted'” by careful pruning to allow clear shots with maximum cover.\u00a0\u00a0 The distance across the creek is only 10-15 yards.\u00a0 The vertical distance from the hilltop is somewhat more, but gravity adds punch.<\/p>\n

In version 1 of this sequence, Nasimir Clart and his horse were wounded; in trying to dismount from his horse, an archer on the hill got a lucky hit into the back of his thigh.\u00a0 However, that contradicted the sequence in “Bank Transfer” when he comes cantering across a ford some distance from here (not this ford) and is feeling great.\u00a0 A deep wound in the back of the thigh would not let him ride again that soon, so the first major change in the story was changing out where he was and giving the injury to someone else.\u00a0 (Sorry, Reassigned-Victim.)\u00a0\u00a0 Clart has not been a POV character before, and once turned loose he proved a superb one, producing good plot faster than I could write it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Instead of a snippet in words, a sketch–the kind of thing I often scribble on the back of an envelope or letter or any paper handy…this time the back of a 4×6 card, first with the gel pen and then colored in with colored pencils.\u00a0\u00a0 I made it Tuesday evening to clarify the terrain and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,61,128,5],"tags":[40,51,107],"class_list":["post-3046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artwork","category-craft","category-horngard","category-the-writing-life","tag-artwork","tag-revision","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3048,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions\/3048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}