Graveyard Saturday: Water Town Exposition

Today I decided to make an effort to show not tell. It's a re-up of the intention stemmed from a great lecture about scriptwriting. I'm afraid I get addicted to dialog and I realized my characters are talking a lot and saying nothing - I want the whole book to be really snappy and I just got off a huge chunk of dialog, so I decided to cut this portion out completely even though I like it. So in it goes to the Graveyard. I hope you all enjoy this segment from Chapter 15

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"We should reach the Southern road by nightfall," Peter called from the trailing wagon. "Then it's south to Chalsie Veneer from there."

"That long?" Ildri said and wiped her brow, "It's so hot out here."

"Hold on, I packed an awning." Kindle recovered a roll of canvas from her things and stretched over them on a set of polls, "Better?"

"Yes." Ildri answered in a weary tone, "I guess you knew you were coming all along."

"Yeah, I figured that out the minute you and Mom started arguing. It gave me all night to pack and make stuff." She grinned briefly at Peter then shrugged, "Lucky I'm over-prepared. I didn't think we'd get two Fire Curses. Lucky I made extra booties."

Aiden raised the scab that used to be his eyebrow, "Booties?"

"Oh yeah." She rummaged in her duffel and produced a sack of bags and string. She thrust her foot into one of the plastic pouches and tied it at the knee with a piece of colored yarn. "See? Waterproof!”

Ildri smiled uncertainly, “It's very clever, Kindle.”

Aiden bit dead skin off his lip, "How wet are you expecting it to get?"

"Water Town is super wet!" Kindle replied cheerfully. "Water Curses leaking, you know. They sweat and drool and cry and snot all over the place constantly. I can't wait to meet one!"

"Sick," Aiden sneered, "Do we really need one?"

“We need one of each suit,” Cat confirmed.

"He can ride in your wagon then," Aiden groaned, “Keep the walking pain factory as far away from me as possible.”

"Don't worry, you'll be fine!” Kindle insisted. "I've got enough booties to wear on your hands too!”

Aiden wrinkled his nose, "I'll pass."

"What?" Kindle demanded. "Come on, I've made your life, like, fifty times easier. You can at least say 'thank you'."

“Okay,” Aiden looped his arm out from behind Ildri and leaned forward, “Thank you for making us painful footwear that will take all the skin off our legs, stick to our sores, inflate with hot air and collect puss on the bottom until they're just as wet as the ground we're avoiding.”

"Ew," Kindle scraped her tongue on her teeth, "I think I just gagged a little."

"Nature of the beast, kid," He slouched in satisfaction, "We're Fire Curses."

"You're nasty." Kindle stuffed her invention back in her bag, "Our Water Curse will take Cat's wagon by choice."

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The Evolution of a town

So my little Threadcaster world hasn't gone through a lot of significant changes. It's a very small world - a collection of towns within the bowl of a huge crater surrounded by mountains. In the center is the capital city called Castleton and in the four cardinal directions like a compass-rose are Dire Lonato, Chalsi Veneer, New Torston, and Astonage.

Saying the world hasn't changed through development is a bit misleading however. It's been changing constantly. The towns have changed locations, names, appearances and attitudes, but the things that are have always been; four towns in a compass around Castleton- the center around which this small universe rotates.

I just finished the final revision of Dire Lonato. Sure I'll go back and give it some shine later, but the series of events and what happens there is pretty much set in stone. I thought it would be a nice time to talk about the town's staggered history through the eyes of its author.

Dire Lonato was always named Dire Lonato. It was always Fire aligned and always the first stop on our tour of the Valley. The place was originally sort of a Disney's Aladdin looking place (further emphasizing the middle east and the allegory and ho boy that's another blog post). Square sand-brick buildings with colorful awnings and simple people who make pots and textiles. Cat and co were initially forced to adventure into the bad part of town because there are Curses among them. They left their things with a blind, toothless stable owner and got stuck in the market place on their way to Sharon Fiammetta's house.

I guess I could go back even further - in teh first first draft of this book, the place was an artistic town and we found Sharon by attending her daughter Kindle's school play. Not only was this impossibly slow and dumb but Peter's a liability everywhere we go. His trauma and hardship hinges on the fact that he's not tolerated - and walking into a school auditorium was really obviously misaligned. Instead I had Cat get nabbed in the street and trapped in a burning house. This was also bad so I had her attacked by fire monsters.

It's hard to believe these rough draft ideas ever worked now that I've got the final version - I won't spoil the events for those who will inevitably read the novel - but it does not involve school plays. What it does involve is the strengthening of global themes and the more poignant introduction of a main character. And more than one burning building - I scaled up :)

Past Dire Lonato is Fire Town which has gone through it's own set of changes. Originally it was out in the desert. Then I moved it to a dry riverbed. The final location is wedged in a mountain pass where (and here's some lore for you) the most impressive waterfall in the Valley used to fall. The hidden falls trailed down from the western mountains and carved a deep lake and snaking river out into a forest. The forest is long dead and the lake is now dry and that's where Fire Town is. It's pretty fancy. I'm quite fond of the "lake of fire" pun I serendipitously arrived at through this system. The Curse town itself still looks the same as it always has - and the members that survived the pruning are the same members that always lived there. There are about a dozen other named Curses that exist in town, but it's hard to keep track of a bunch of named characters when there's no time to flesh them out.

Fire Town and Dire Lonato's current incarnation is relatively young, but I feel like its the way they were always meant to be. When you read the book see if you can spot fragments of these old locations in the current ones.. there are more than a couple bones buried there.

30-60

So I'm done with the next 30 pages. I'm using the term "done" in a "I'm SOOOO done with this" sense. I know it's not perfect, but I've changed so much and worked so hard that i'm ready to move on. I'll go over it with the spit polish when I'm done with the rest of it. Part of it hurts my heart - since I have an ingrained sense of perfectionism when it comes with my book - but its time to move on.

I'm on to the next 60-90. I have just as much work to do on these as I did looking at 30-60... these pages were written five years ago and my goodness are they showing their age. It's being made better, and that pleases me. I'm excited to move on to Water Town and getting the next leg of the journey behind me.

For those I've spoken to about possibly querying at the beginning of September I'm sorry to report that I'm not ready to do that yet. I'm going to save it until I'm ready for it to go out. hopefully it won't be THAT long.

Graveyard Wednesday

Graveyard Friday kinda failed, so I'm changing the rule to Graveyard Whenever.

I wrote this really sweet scene today, but I have to take it out because it's filler and filler is bad, so I'm putting it here, because it's sweet. Maybe someday when someone cares, people will find this section and a couple of the details will become fringe canon. Huzzah

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They stopped briefly back at the Fiammetta's inn for supplies. The town gate sat wide in the wake of the mob who'd ransacked the barn and busted open the front door. Sharon and Kindle went in to pack and assess the damage. Cat and the Curses waited in the garage. Ildri sat with her head bowed and Aiden's arm around her back. Cat approached with a heavy heart, "Hey."

Ildri glanced up. Aiden eyed her steely, "Hey."

"Um," Cat cleared her throat. "I wanted to thank you both for being so brave. I know it's not easy..."

"It's not," Ildri said. "But you guys are right. The rest of the world is afraid of the truth but you're facing it. My mother has never been able to cope like that."

"It's a lot to ask of someone," Cat agreed. "We'll make the best of it. You'll see. It won't be too bad."

"Hey Cat," Peter called. He was standing near the broken stable door staring out at the ruined sculpture. "Take a look."

The square was covered in evidence of the fight, but was no longer burning. She checked the rooftops briefly for strangers but saw no one. Instead her eye was drawn to the plume of fire in the Goddess's amputated hand. The base was covered in red jewels invisible from the ground until it fell; a mournfully poetic detail meant only for God. "I still don't think I can do this."

"You can." Peter said. "You were meant to."

"Was I meant to leave a trail of hate and destruction in my wake?"

"Don't blame yourself for that," Peter said. "You're the messenger. People always try to kill the messenger."

"That pretty much sums up Fire Town." She griped.

"Yeah and look how well that worked out!" Peter nudged her encouragingly, "You asked for one Fire Curse and got two. We'll ask for a Water Curse and get a dozen. By the time we get to Wind Town you'll be beating them off with a stick."

"The Brushcasters will try and stop us." She said.

"We'll beat them off with a stick too."

Cat smirked up at him. "You're faith is unshakable."

"Of course it is," Peter answered. "I believe in you."

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Fire Town update: 2

The hard work continues. I'm knee deep in a third drafting of this sequence of events. It's a complicated mess, but I know it's required. The hard part is making it interesting.

Some of the decisions I'm making seem like a stretch to the canon. I'm making excuses and coming up with awkward solutions to make the events fall in line. At what point does logic become lazy? When does watching people argue turn boring? At what point does "okay we'll do it" seem like a logical solution?

I'm at kaldi's right now. I plan to keep going. I'll report back when I can.

Fire Town update: 1

Update on attempted rewrite:

Changes aren't as dramatic as I first thought.  I'm moving the focus from two minor characters who were bogging everything down just to prove a point.

I introduce this little Fire Curse girl: (seen here): to show how tragic it is for kids to be abandoned to different element towns. In previous drafts, Edana was more an adult than a child - forced to grow up and be the parent to her grief-stricken mother who is coping with loss in an unhealthy way. This was very interesting but stretched the time before we get to our first Curse Town out really wide when I needed the plot to start rolling on.

Intermediate plan was to make her cheerful and curious so as to give her the secondary roll of explaining both hers and Peter's symptoms in a colorful way. Her friendship then helps us get to places we couldn't before ... which was all well and good except I found myself stretching for ways to include her.In the end there was far too much emphasis on this tiny character we already know isn't coming along with us for the long haul. It was causing me a lot of stress so I decided to take it out.

New and updated plan is to make Edana very timid. Her mother is a force to be reckoned with... she's a conflicted person who needs to be developed far more than her daughter. I will use Edana to describe how Fire Curses degrade, but Isolde is the one who'll be doing all the talking and making all the decisions. I feel much better about this. It'll take some rewrites, but it'll put the emphasis in the story in a more adult place and keep stuff from getting too cute or confusing overall.

I'll report in again when rewrite on this section is finished. I'm salvaging most of it, I hope to report great success by the end of the day.

Possible rewrite: the trouble with Fire Town

The trouble with Fire Town is that it's a lot of talking and a lot of rehash. I'm wondering if I need to change it... all of it... and very dramatically at that.

This is a horrible time to come to this conclusion. I'm past Fire Town, I'm just putting the spit polish on it... but I'm discontent because It's boring. Its a lot of talking and exposition. The more I think about it the more I don't like it. This is bad.

So this is my new strategy. I'm going to dissect Fire Town out. I'm going to remap replan and rewrite all of Dire Lonato. I'm going to do it tonight and if I don't come up with something promising from the cobbled bits I've built then I wont continue tomorrow and I'll go back to my previous plan. I hope it works. I hope it'll work. I hope it'll work fast.

Author out.... see you all in the morning.