Mist and Shadows

I’ve reached an interesting, and unexpected, development in the rough draft of Tears of the Mountain – two characters who actively want to kill each other. I knew they were antagonistic towards each other when plotting out the story, but I didn’t realise just how much until I started writing. The difficulty lies now in keeping them apart. I could just let them off each other, but that would demolish the plot, but on the other hand I need a way to stop them which seems plausible and not heavy-handed.

An explanation of the background may be in order here.

The Amari city of Adranatti Vesa lies across the northern sea, and grew rich on gold and gemstones until the mines dried up, but by which stage it had become an important trading centre. Adranatti, like most Amari cities, is a princedom, under the nominal rule of the Amari King, but in reality most are semi-independent city-states. When the Prince of Adranatti, Tol Venatro, went to war with his western neighbours, his younger and more popular brother, Cantarossi, took the opportunity to usurp him and exile him, leaving him and his army trapped between hostile forces.

Both princes desire to find the fabled lost city that the Amari call Illiatoriun, said to lie in the deep deserts and to house a vast wealth of treasure. When the professor, historian and explorer Halir visit Adranatti, they both try to get him to find the city for them. His curiosity getting the better of him, Halir sets out to find it, and in his party are two men, Tol Marassi and Logawa, who work for the rival brothers.

They don’t like each other. In part because they work for rival brothers, doing the dirty work for them. Also in part because they both come for cultures that have a long history of feuds – think how the French and English perceived each other for centuries and were seemingly always at war. Both men are killers and are determined that their prince should come out on top.

The problem is I still need both of them alive for future events but both seem determined to derail the whole plot with their feuding.

It is certainly making the writing of the draft interesting to sat the least.

I have in the past had a tendency to want to write the whole story in one go no plotting, no rough drafts, just the finished story. It is kind of a bad way of going about things and can explain why so little in the past ever got finished.

Even today when I am actively writing rough drafts, I still tend to try and put too much detail in, rather than just getting the gist of the story down, though it is improving.

The new method I am trying seems to be helping, plotting the story out first and then doing rough drafts from that. They really are rough when looking at them, with scant details. One scene as an exampled has a couple of people entering a room to meet a man. Pretty much all that is written is that they enter and the man is sitting behind a table. No descriptions of the room or the man, nothing about what is on the table or what is is made of, of light sources or anything like that. All that can be worried about later, once the rough draft is completed.

It doesn’t mean though that nothing much is happening. Yesterday I took one of the plot points off the board and started working on it.

The plot point comprised of just 16 words;

-Leave Adranatti.
-Head north through farms and jungles.
-Marassi and Logawa argue.
-Reach pass through mountains.

Somehow from that I wrote 1500 words of very rough draft. Large parts of a two day trip were glossed over, descriptions were exceedingly minimal, conversations were curtailed, yet it came out to 1500 words and included new plot details I hadn’t considered earlier. When it comes around time for a rewrite of it I’ve got no idea how long it will turn out to be. Not bad for a 16 word plot point.

I spent a large chunk of yesterday in finishing up the plotting of Tears of the Mountain and now have a cork-board covered with notes, mostly in order. There are still a couple of scenes that need to be slotted in somewhere, but all the plot details are now written up in note form.

First time I have done anything like it; hopefully it will help when it comes to working on the rough draft, which is the next step that needs completing.