{"id":902,"date":"2010-10-02T12:03:58","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T18:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=902"},"modified":"2010-10-02T12:03:58","modified_gmt":"2010-10-02T18:03:58","slug":"question-for-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=902","title":{"rendered":"Question for Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Kings of the North<\/em>, which only the alpha readers among you have yet read,\u00a0 the POV characters leave Aarenis at the end of the campaign season, so whatever happens there between, say, a few tendays before the Autumn Evener\u00a0 and Midwinter is offstage for that book.\u00a0\u00a0 And in that book, what happens in Aarenis isn’t relevant to that book, but it is relevant to the next…the one I’m on now.<\/p>\n

In this book (and subsequently) quite a bit goes on in Aarenis that isn’t known to Arcolin (who returned to the north for Autumn Court as he agreed to do in Oath), and there are some new POV characters (introduced as POV characters in Kings) who are on the scene.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Readers need to know some of it, and they don’t need it as “As you know, a quarter year ago so-and-so did such-and-such, and then this other guy did this other thing…” They need it as story, which means in POV.<\/p>\n

But there is a temporal gap, with the Aarenis sequence lagging well behind the Eight Kingdoms sequence.\u00a0 Once snow closes the pass to Valdaire,\u00a0 almost no news passes either way until spring.\u00a0\u00a0 For future books (and the end of this one)\u00a0 the Aarenis sequence and the Eight Kingdoms sequence need to be back in synch by the start of the next campaign year, if not earlier, so that Arcolin’s return is into a situation that the reader knows enough about.\u00a0 (Arcolin can be briefed by his people in straight narrative infodump that you don’t have to read.)<\/p>\n

As a reader myself,\u00a0 I would be picky about how I wanted that handled in a book I was reading.\u00a0\u00a0 I would want to be sure–or at least feel<\/em> sure–that the writer was being honest with me–that there were no “gotchas” hidden in the folds of that temporal discontinuity.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are two ways to go at it (more than two, actually, but let’s deal with the major branch first.)<\/p>\n

There’s straight chronological–which means starting the book in Aarenis, clearly before the events in the last part of Kings<\/em> but far from them–and requiring readers who are dancing from foot to foot at the end of Kings<\/em> to wait to see what happens next with the people in the north until Aarenis has been brought up to equivalency.\u00a0 (Readers who start with Book III, though, would be offered a sequential chronology from the start, very little backtracking anywhere.\u00a0 What they’ll lack is any leadup in the north to a “combat in the snow” chapter or two…they’ll get a sudden leap over the mountains and be dumped into the mess without knowing diddly.\u00a0\u00a0 Though I guess that would happen anyway)\u00a0 The great advantage is that the big fat transition is between books–not something that jolts readers out of the story arc of the individual book while inside it.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, there’s a one-time doubling back after the “combat in the snow”\u00a0 opening chapter (originally intended as the opening chapter, when I thought I could shove the Aarenis stuff into Kings<\/em>…which did not work for a variety of reasons)\u00a0 that’s just about seamless with the end of Kings<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That’s the big advantage–that smooth, easy transition from Kings<\/em> to Book III (will a title please<\/em> fall into my lap now?)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The disadvantage is having that big temporal and spatial transition somewhere inside the story arc of this volume rather than between volumes.<\/p>\n

I am leaning toward the “stricter chronology” tradeoff, because of the multiple POVs and the possibility of losing some people entirely with such a big backstory\u00a0 transition. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, I’m inquiring for reader preference, too. \u00a0 The final decision is likely to be Editor’s (though the alpha readers, if ever get this thing remotely in shape for alpha readers, will certainly chime in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Kings of the North, which only the alpha readers among you have yet read,\u00a0 the POV characters leave Aarenis at the end of the campaign season, so whatever happens there between, say, a few tendays before the Autumn Evener\u00a0 and Midwinter is offstage for that book.\u00a0\u00a0 And in that book, what happens in Aarenis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,5],"tags":[106,62,58,51,107],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revisions","category-the-writing-life","tag-contents","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-reader-help-wanted","tag-revision","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902"}],"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=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":904,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions\/904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}