This book…I’ll swear this book wants to drive its writer crazy.\u00a0\u00a0 Where did this new character come from?\u00a0\u00a0 And why, once she arrived, didn’t she behave like a normal character (if Kuakkgani are ever normal, that is?)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not only do I now know a lot more about how someone becomes a Kuakgan (some of it I knew years ago, but I’ve learned more in the past couple of years) but I just found out what can happen to a young (in experience) Kuakgan during his\/her first spring out in the world.<\/p>\n
“The green blood is strong in this one…”<\/p>\n
The cause of all this turmoil and surprise is one of my best friends in the world, Rancherfriend-E (married to Rancherfriend-J).\u00a0\u00a0 Rancherfriend-E was my first alpha reader ever, when I was writing the original Paks books and had never sold any fiction.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s thanks to E- that you didn’t have to slog through yet more mud (or, more likely, that my first editor didn’t have to slog through that much mud, throw up her hands, and reject the book.)<\/p>\n
E- is a voracious reader, well-educated, intelligent, and likes cows.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We have pitched hay together.\u00a0\u00a0 We have helped each other entertain.\u00a0\u00a0 We have laughed and cried and shared a lot of things.\u00a0 I thought of her while writing Estil Halveric, and she is the reason I made so few mistakes with cows when writing Gird’s book.<\/p>\n
Anyway.\u00a0 E- has been lobbying for more Kuakkgani in the current group of books.\u00a0 She really, really, REALLY liked Master Oakhallow in the original group.\u00a0\u00a0 Yesterday I was over at the ranch…she was indoors and I was on the porch, because she has a bad cold, but it was warm enough to have the door open, and so we could talk without risking the transfer of germs (we had the proper airflow–the wind at my back, blowing toward her.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was complaining about\u00a0 scene that wasn’t going well and she was once more bringing up Kuakkgani and saying they would be very useful in that scene and…yes.\u00a0 Yes, of course.<\/p>\n
But I had already written the scene with something else.\u00a0 Someone else.\u00a0 Some other kind of someone, that is.\u00a0\u00a0 Today I tackled it again, and of course it went all weird on me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Where did this short, stout, emphatic young Kuakgan come from, I was wondering, just as her first spring as\u00a0 a Kuakgan overtook her.\u00a0\u00a0 My, my, my.\u00a0\u00a0 C-29 is now very different.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, there’s K-.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 K- is a friend discovered later, also a superb alpha reader but often too busy to be a quick responder.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, K- came through with something else yesterday and today, and I also tried to work on that.\u00a0\u00a0 Something nobody had mentioned yet was a continuity problem between C- 7 and C-25 (yes, people do often make mistakes in relating what happened, but in this instance readers need to imagine the character being honest and making few mistakes–and here were big differences between what happened (related in B’s POV) and what B said happened…OK if B were lying, but he’s not.<\/p>\n
C-25’s version was initially more dramatic…but it was wrong.\u00a0 That’s not what happened.\u00a0 And the drama was mostly physical, but the real drama here is psychological…it’s the emotional change that’s going to drive other things down the line.\u00a0 So C-7 and C-8…and C-25 and C-26…had to be reworked, and back-checked to see that all is now matching.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile C-29 isn’t done, but it’s after midnight and I’m wiped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This book…I’ll swear this book wants to drive its writer crazy.\u00a0\u00a0 Where did this new character come from?\u00a0\u00a0 And why, once she arrived, didn’t she behave like a normal character (if Kuakkgani are ever normal, that is?)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not only do I now know a lot more about how someone becomes a Kuakgan (some of it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,61,52,5],"tags":[22,106,62,20,107],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","category-craft","category-editing","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-contents","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962"}],"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=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}