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Glynn Stewart

Science Fiction & Fantasy Author

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Writing

Moving conitnues, excerpt in place of post

Move continues, and is almost complete.  In lieu of a proper post, here is the first major action sequence from ‘Shadows of  Grey Tower’

[he was brought through the house to] a cleared area in the center where old walls had been removed to create a meeting hall.  Footsteps and excited whispers echoed through the House’s wooden walls as Carrick was hauled into the Hall and dropped before the Head of House.

The Head was older than Carrick’s Head had been.  Age had worn him down to a wiry thing not much taller than Carrick himself.  The same time had worn any warmth from his worn face or blue eyes, which were cold as they focused on the boy.

“Edain!” the Head snapped.

Carrick twisted in the grip of his captors to see the boy from his house limp out of the rapidly gathering crowd.  Edain was walking again, but from the way he moved he’d never quite recover from the broken bone Carrick had given him.  The boy now wore a charcoal grey robe like many of the older boys Carrick could see.

“Is this boy ofs your House?” the Head asked Edain, who looked at Carrick with beadily eager eyes.

“That’s Carrick, Head,” Edain said sharply.  “That’s the one as broughts the Mage and the guards downs on us.”

“I thoughts I recognized him froms your description,” the Head replied, a satisfied tone in his voice.  “Kneels,” he snapped at Carrick.

When the thief did not instantly comply, the two men holding him forced him down.

“You caused the destruction of a House,” the Head told Carrick.

“It wasn’t my faults!” Carrick objected.

“Silence!” the Head barked, and one of the thief’s captors cuffed him across the side of his head.

“You caused the destructions of a House,” he repeated.  “Four and two score thief brethren and sistren killed.  House Tormals burnts to the ground, and its elders too scattered to rebuilds.

“Not bys choice or will,” the Head continued, “but the Houses can affords uselessness no more than lies.  Strips him,” he ordered.

Before Carrick could say a word, his two captors grabbed his robes and tore them apart, leaving him shivering on the floor of the House in a loincloth.  The purse in his robes clanked against the floor, and one of the guards tossed it to the Head.

The old thief opened the purse and grunted.

“If you thought to buy your way back into the House, you brought too little coin,” he told Carrick, his voice almost gentle.  “The life price for evens a child thief is silver.  For all you burnts, tens of gold woulds barely count.”

“Edain surviveds your failings,” he continued, gesturing once more to the grey clad boy, “and has beguns his trainings as an Enforcer.  I thinks that to him should goes the honor.”

The Head drew a short sword from under his own robes and offered it, hilt first, to the boy who Carrick had shared a home with.  Edain took the blade, and his eyes glinted as he stepped towards Carrick.

“Fors the deaths of four and twoscores thieves, and the burnings of House Tormals,” the Head told Carrick formally, “I claims blood price of you.  You cannot pays with gold, so you will pays with blood.”  He nodded to Edain.  “Kills him.”

Fear gave Carrick strength and he broke free of his captors, diving to the side as the sword stabbed down where his neck had been.  The crowd backed away slightly, and then joined arms, leaving Carrick in a circle of bodies with only Edain and the sword for company.

Edain slashed at him again, and Carrick jumped backwards.  He was faster, but unarmed.  Another slice came perilously close as the younger thief dived sideways.

The crowd was silent.  No cheering, no cacophony as there would be for a normal fight.  This wasn’t a fight.  It was an execution.

One Carrick intended to survive.  Edain drove at him again and Carrick stepped sideways and grabbed the other boy’s wrist.  With a twist, he used the bigger boy’s momentum against him and Edain’s wrist snapped with an audible crack.

The sword hit the floor and Carrick dove for it.  A boot intercepted him and he was tossed away as two dark robed Enforcers stepped into the circle of bodies.  They bore similar short swords and stood far taller and faster than Edain.

Carrick dodged the first strike but the second Enforcer drove his blade into his shoulder.  Pain flared through him as the blade slashed his flesh open.  He stumbled backwards, feeling blood course over his skin as they two Enforcers closed on his, their grins evil.

He stood up, facing them.  He would die on his feet.  Then he felt it.  His skin tingled, as it had before when he’d used magic, and he remembered.

He didn’t know enough runes to make a living, but he knew one to defend himself with.  He grabbed that tingling, fed it his fear, his pain, and drew it up through him as he pointed his uninjured arm at the Enforcers and spoke a single syllable.

“Dur.”

Magic blasted through him, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.  Carrick was never sure afterwards what he’d meant to conjure, but it wasn’t what he got.  Instead of a bolt or blast of flame, an inferno blasted out of the ground, a pillar of green tinged flame that incinerated the two Enforcers before they could so much as scream.

The crowd around did have time to scream, as Carrick watched fire blaze into existence all around him, the green tinged flames lighting the wood of the old structure aflame before finally winking out as the boy slumped in exhaustion.

The smell of burning flesh filled the air and Carrick gagged.  Heat flicked his flesh and he looked around him to realize the House was aflame.  People ran for the exits, shouting and screaming fighting with the crackle of the flame as the fire spread, far more rapidly than it should have.

Still mostly naked, Carrick tried to follow people out of the building, but smoke confused him.  No House was a logical structure, and right now he cursed that.  Fire rose up around him, though none of it touched him as he ran through the House, trying to find an exit as people screamed and the building burned around him.

Fire blazed around him, but while he felt the heat none of it came close enough to him to burn him.  From the smell of smoke and burning flesh, others were not so lucky, and he knew he’d killed them.

Finally, finally, he spotted a shuttered window leading to the outside and ran towards it.  As he passed through the door he heard the cracking of burnt timbers giving way.  The collapse started behind him, and he heard it gaining on him as he ran for the window, and knew the building would fall before he made it.

Some power had guarded him from the touch of fire, but nothing protected him from the burning roof truss that crashed through the flimsy ceiling and smashed into his wounded shoulders.

Fire seared into his flesh as splinters and nails pierced it.  All he knew was pain, and the smell of his own blood burning.  He was going to die.  What strength he could muster in his uninjured arm wasn’t enough to dislodge the timber searing into his muscles.

Then a voice spoke, cutting somehow through the chaos of the House with a power born of fear… and power.  Mage power.

The timber was torn from his back, and chunks of his flesh went with it as it crashed into a wall, and strong arms picked him up as a runeforged shield of chilled air swept around him, the cold sending stabbing pain through him as it flowed across the gaping wounds on his back and shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” Master Seeker Eltar told him as his spells carried them safely from the burning building.  “I’ve got you Carrick.”

Then pain carried Carrick into darkness.

Surroundings and description

When I first started writing, I wrote in a way one of my editors (one of my first year university english teachers) described as ‘writing like an engineer.’

I described actions, persons, thoughts and conversations, but I wrote very tersely and often missed vital description.  It is a habit I have tried to break myself of, while also being careful to avoid the pitfall of too much description.

Little things around your characters and events are important.  What time of day is it?  What time of year is it?  What’s the weather?  What can they see, what can they hear?  What can they smell (this is the one I find I miss a lot).

Weather is an awesome tool, though.  Dramatic thunder and lightning are awesome and traditional, but don’t forget the simpler uses of weather.   Rain can add to the dreariness of a long ride, or can enhance the privacy of a conversation.  The end of Blade Runner, for example, would be at least a little bit less dramatic without the rain.  But a warm gentle rain, such as you get in some more southerly parts of the world (I’m not much used to it up here in Canada), could be exactly what your character needs to calm them after a stressful conflict (hey, there’s conflict again) – or add that extra bit of intimacy to a romantic encounter.

And other uses – why didn’t the Empire’s huge army catch our rag tag bunch of misfits this time? Simple – it rained, and our characters slipped away while the much slowed them down.

Of course, like any other story tool, this is best used in moderation – and be careful that weather doesn’t only show up when its convenient.  Mention the rainy days, and the sunny ones.  Try and give the reader an idea of the climate.  Don’t have the time the rain saves our plucky band be the only time you mention water falling from the sky in the entire book.

Weather, of course, can also provide conflict.  Lord of the Rings, trying to cross the mountains.  Its snow and wind, as much as Christopher Lee or giants (depending on whether you’re looking at the book or movie) that turns them back and forces them to take the fateful trip through Moria.  Man vs. Environment is one of our core conflicts, and weather is an amazing provider of environmental conflicts.  Winter is one of the worst natural killers we know.
So don’t forget to look outside when writing, and see what inspiration Mother Nature has for you.

(and in the obligatory goals update, Shadows of the Grey Tower is now at 27,393 words :))

Glynn Stewart

Conflict

Today’s post is about two different kinds of conflict.  One is the conflict between a writers goals and the realities of life (calling back to last weeks post), and the other is on conflict in your story.

First, on goals.  Like I said last week, goals are awesome.  Set them.  Small ones are good until you know you can meet them.  I thought 500 words a day was great.  I’m still going to try to hold to it, even though Ive failed miserable this last week *grin*

Inevitably, life is going to interfere with your goal.  Work, moving, life, small children, crazy animals, the next door neighbours decision to play Eminem at 130 decibels at 2am… all of these things can affect you meeting your writing goal.   This is why my goal also has a per week amount, as I can make up the words on the weekend.  As long as I’m making the secondary goal of 2500 words a week, I’m still achieving something.

Now.  Conflict IN your story.  Do you have it?  If you don’t, why are you writing this story?   Note I’m not asking if you have fighting or action in your story, conflict is very different.  What are your characters goals, and who is opposing them and why?  The usual spiel of options for conflict is man vs man, man vs society, man vs environment and man vs self (please replace man with woman if that is appropriate for you).

Conflict drives stories.  Without conflict, your main characters happily lolligags his or her way along to achieving all their goals and getting everything they want.   That degree of escapist fantasy is probably best left to video games with cheat codes active.  Sometimes its fun, but its not the most exciting thing to read.

Your character has goals, and something opposes them.  The goals may change over the course of the story.  Who opposes those goals may change.  But at each point in the story, there needs to be some conflict driving your plot.

For example, Shadows of the Grey Tower is about a young street thief turned mage.  During the course of the book he receives several permanently crippling injuries.  For the early part of the book, he has a Man vs Self conflict about his origins and some of the habits he picked up there, and his worth to be a mage.  For most of the book, he struggles with a Man vs Self conflict over his being a cripple, something it takes the character years to reconcile himself with.  At the end of the book, he faces a significant Man vs Self conflict with his own arrogance, as he slowly grows into one of the greatest Mages alive.

There are also huge Man vs Man conflicts (there is a war that rages throughout the book, weaving in and out of the foreground of the story, as well as personal opponents who target the main character for various reasons) and a couple of Man vs Society conflicts and at least one sequence where its Man vs Environment to stay alive.

Each of these conflicts helps define the portion of the plot its involved in, and the story in general.  The development and resolution of these conflicts is key to the character development of many of the characters.

Without conflict, nothing and no one changes.  If nothing changes over the course of your story…  well, who cares what happened, it obviously wasn’t important!

Conflict, of course, in many stories (especially mine) leads to combat.  Which will be the subject of a blog post sometime next week.  Possibly even this weekend if I make my goal.  We’ll see.

Glynn

500 Words a Day – Goals and Discipline

So, of those of us who have tried to write a novel, who has reached a point where you are having problems finding the motivation to go on?  Yes, you in the back.  You in the front.  You in the second row, with your hand down?  You’re lying.

It can be hard to keep writing.  It tends to come in dribs and drabs, a spurt of a few thousand words here, a good week there.  Most of my completed books were written in four or five spurts of really good inspiration.

There are writers, who will remain nameless, who can decide on Friday that they have this story idea they’d like to work on, and have 60,000 by Wednesday.  Notably, they are already full time writers.  I spend 45+ hours a week at a job that, while I enjoy it, is not conducive to writing.

This, combined with the issue I was having with transitions, meant I nearly went two months without writing beyond a single short story.  So, around when I set up this blog, I decided to try for a goal.  Five hundred words a day.  2500 a week, because Gods know there are going to be bad days in any week.

It’s helped.  Grey Tower is now at18,500 words, up 2700 since I started this site.  Obviously, I’m not meeting my goal just yet (500 words a day since the 15th should be closer to, um, 6,000 *embarrassed grin*) BUT… I had a goal.  I failed to meet it.  I don’t know about anyone else, but failure makes ME determined to succeed.  Especially when its something I can keep trying on.

Advice to anyone looking to write a book?  It’s trite, its old, but set yourself a goal.  If you can’t do what many ‘how to’ guides suggest of ‘set a time and always write at that time’ – and its harder than you might think to do that – at least set a ‘I will write this much in a day and a week.’

I wrote 1300 words this week, mostly on two specific days.  To make my weekly goal, I need to write another 1200 words this afternoon.

Excuse me, I have a Word document with my name on it.

Glynn

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