March Recent Efforts

Today’s wordcount: 6011
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 108569
Total word count for the week so far (day 1): 6011
Total word count for this retreat: 37380
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, “Poppy”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: an hour

Classes that are coming up soon and still have room! All times are Pacific Time.

• July 15 (Wednesday), 7-9 PM ““ First Pages Workshop Section 1
• July 17 (Friday), 2-4 PM ““ Writing Your Way Into Your Novel, Section 2
• July 19 (Sunday), 9:30-11:30 AM ““ First Pages Workshop Section 2

Got up early, fed the chickens, ate my yogurt and drank my (overly-trendy kombucha). For those following along with interest regarding the sourdough adventures, the pancakes were divine but the bread was densely textured to the point where it sat in one’s stomach like wet gravel. I do know what I did wrong — I tried to adapt my no-knead bread recipe to use sourdough starter and I need to go back to square one and try a traditional recipe like this one or this one.

Those pancakes were awesome though. Here’s the recipe I used.

Here’s today’s excerpt, taken from Hearts of Tabat:

The Duke’s bedroom has pieces in it that are over 300 years old, imported from the Old Continent on the original Duke’s ship, so long ago, and were old even then. There is a little cabinet made of silver and a dark wood that no longer grows anywhere in this world, for sorcerers eradicated it. There is a table inlaid with opals and in its center a great crystal, once used by the sorcerer Baltazar to spy on his enemies, and looped around it the crystal Baltazar’s general and queen, Aiofe, had worn until the day she was destroyed by grinding the bones that were all that were left of her between two great millstones. That dust had been released far out to sea, and no one had ever heard of Aiofe again, so perhaps her soul was at rest now.

There is a single armchair, a great brooding red thing of velvet, with gilded arms, its echo of a throne not at all accidental. There is no accompanying armchair, just a little stool onto which someone could sink if necessary, but the message is clear that one stands in the Duke’s presence. This room is an entire floor of the south-east tower “” above it is only storage, and things that he prefers stay hidden. The windows on the floor above have been blocked off, secured against entrance, and where they are physically stoppered, the windows here, on all sides of the chamber, are spell-warded, invisible barriers that will halt any intruder, strong enough for even the most intrusive magic.

On the floor is a medley of beast skins: manticore and hydra leather seven-timed tanned into a buttery suppleness, the splotched palomino hindquarters of a Centaur (its human section elsewhere), a Unicorn’s pearly hide, the curls of its mane like sea foam; pelts dark-furred and light, enough of them that the stone floor is not visible. They are cleaned whenever his Grace is not in his chambers, a hurried cleaning, beating the hides out in an inner courtyard and combing out the long-pelted ones, stroking the undersides with sandalwood incense and then putting down a layer of sweetgrass below the layer of hides, so they gave underfoot.

The aetheric light hanging in the center of the chamber is one-of-a kind, a chandelier of liquid light, flowing back and forth between the arms of the light, the light the clean crisp blue-light of the lanterns lining the streets of the city far below. Most spell work cand be seen in that light, and that is another layer of protection for the cautious Duke.

The bed itself is like a massive shelf, also pelt-covered, a zoo’s worth of spotted and speckled, striped and solid, the barest hint of hair over hide next to shaggy mats of black and moonlight. A canopy hangs over the mass, swagged in Tabat’s blue and gold, both shades darkened past the norm, to navy and amber, and sagging downward as though to caress and envelop the sleeper.

On either side of the bed, in narrow vases made of slanted angles of crystal, are sprays of jasmine, hot-house forced and luxuriant as only a plant that has never known insect can be. Perfume seeps from them, and contained by the canopy and back curtains, is contained so the sleeper lies in a pool of scent.

There are shelves of things, trophies and ornaments, little demonstration machines created by the College of Mages, which this Duke has sponsored more heavily than any Duke before him.

There is not a single book in the room. Nothing of paper, not even a map, though there are pictures on the wall, heavy oil canvases, all of the Duke, in a variety of attitudes, all of them flattering. There is a common tone to all these pictures, a palpable obsequiousness and eagerness to please that deepens the eyes, making them see wiser, and clefts the chin just a notch, in the way that is currently fashionable. There are six of these portraits.

We’re currently covering characters in the Writing F&SF class, so I thought I’d pull out a little from my notes.

Some simplistic stories have characters that seem like placeholders, as though any individual could fit into that slot. Fairy tales, for instance, tend to have generic characters: the princess, the prince, the witch that have little dimensionality to them. One delightful strategy for working with them, in fact, is to pick a character and flesh them out to the point where they shape the story.

That is the most important thingL: characters must shape the story. They need to influence the action and make the narrative one that could only happen to them.

Let’s take a simple plot: a character must escape zombies. Our first character, a survivalist, keeps two shotguns in her apartment and is steel willed to the point where she is capable of cutting off a limb to avoid infection by zombie bite. The second is a meek-mannered scientist who faints at the sight of blood but is capable of building marvelous devices. The story and what happens in it is very different depending on which character gets put into the situation.

What happens in the story should be the result of what your character does, and her/his actions are dependent on both their personality and what they want. Vonnegut tells us every character in a story needs to have something they want, even if it’s just a glass of water. Because what they want dictates what they will do while their personality decides how they will go about doing it. You’ll also want to keep in mind that humans, like water, follow the path of least resistance. They will usually pick the easiest way before moving onto to something harder if it fails them.

Stuck and wondering what your character will do next? Think about what they want and how they might try to get it. (Then how you will thwart them, because the more you put that character through, the more your reader will come to know and identify with them.)

Look at your favorite characters and see how the writer communicates their nuances. Some of my favorites:

• Richard St. Vier in Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint
• Isyllt Iskaldur in Amanda Downum’s The Drowning City
• Mapp and Lucia in E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series (and you can get all of the books in one delicious heap for $1.99 on the Kindle, which is a great deal)
• Phillip and Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett’s marvelous Lymond Chronicles

Who are your favorite characters and why?

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.