Mist and Shadows

I’ve been toying around with (another) story idea and had the idea of doing up the first chapter and putting it up on the website as an introduction to it.

The scene was all laid out in my mind so I sat down and did up a rough outline of it, including at points as simple dot points. In the end I had expected the final product would be about 5000 words – a good, but not lengthy intro to the story.

When I finally finished the outline it had reached 4250 words already. I can’t see the final, rewritten and detailed scene to be anything less than 10,000 words now, much more than I had expected, and what is more a character who wasn’t really meant to be one sat up and introduced himself.

All he was meant to be was a minor background character who was in the scene to help expand on some plot exposition without resorting to a sheer info dump. Not only is he trying to progress beyond that but, oddly, it helped clear up a few loose ends about why the story was taking place and the broader picture of the shape of the world at large.

Odd how that happens at times.

That didn’t last long.

My initial plan was to choose one novel plot and work on it until it was done. However after just a few days I’ve changed my mind as to which one it’ll be. last time, I promise – and if I do it again, feel free to give me a virtual clip around the head.

I hadn’t actually really done anything with the first idea, so I guess it doesn’t really count, or so I keep telling myself.

I’m switching back to the novel I started towards the end of last year and for a short while made great strides in – 30,000 words in seven days at one stage. I was rereading it and realised it wasn’t too bad, which was what prompted the return to it. Of course I wrote what exists of it so far with no plot in mind, so this time around with more of an idea of what is happening I can fix a lot of the errors that that caused to crop up. I am also planning on cutting some plot lines out and narrowing the focus – maybe those cut plots will reappear in a sequel if it ever gets that far.

Here is the opening of the story as it stands to date;

The herd thundered across the sweeping plains, crashing through long grass that swayed and shimmered. It rippled in a faint breeze that carried with it a hint of chill. Hooves churned up damp soil made moist by the early spring rains, rains that had brought vibrant life to the grasslands after the long, hard months of winter. Stallions, mares and foals, the herd swelling in size with each passing minute, raced backwards and forwards, crushing the grass into the earth in the wake of their passage. Clods of earth were thrown up in their wake, leaving scared patterns in the earth and their raucous, joyous cries echoed loud above the pounding of hooves that caused the ground to shudder as they raced.

To the pair of men watching the herd from the top of a gentle sloping rise that dominated that part of the broad northern plains, the patterns left behind by the herd were at first seemingly random. As they watched though, they began to take on form the longer the herd streamed onwards, swirls within swirls, smaller packs breaking off from the main herd to trample the ground in certain places before flowing back into the herd. They were leaving behind a complex, interwoven pattern, the fresh earth standing out dark against the untouched grass around it.

Atral Hekaras reined in his shaggy horse at the top of the rise, his long-faced companion not far behind. He stared down at the running herd, and the intricate yet inexplicable patterns they were forming across the plains, both marvelling at the complexity of them and intrigued by the meanings they held that were unknown to him. The scent of newly arrived spring was strong all around him, with vivid, newly blossoming flowers dotted amongst the tall grasses, growing thickest along the top of the rise that he stood upon. Bees buzzed, darting amongst the explosion of flowers that lay before them, the sounds of them mingling with the hissing of the breeze as it swayed amongst the grasses. The sun shone bright in a clear, almost cloudless sky, yet the breeze that played across them swept down from the north and carried with it the memories of winter that was cool to the skin. Mountains dominated the northern skyline, towering and broken, clawing at the sky, clouds clinging thick upon their hidden peaks and their shoulders clad in a heavy white mantle of snow.

From the mountains, a number of streams went their way through the grasslands, shimmering ribbons that glistened beneath the blazing sun which fought with little success to rob the air of its chill touch. Fed by fresh melt water, the streams surged forth, tumbling into each other one by one until at last, further south, they roared onwards as a raging river that fed the plains before at last they met the sea that lay out of sight to the west.

It may have been spring already, Atral reflected as his dark, fur-lined cloak flapped out behind him, but this far north the weather could change without warning as howling storms descended with terrible fury down from the mountains.