Character Details

Oh shoot, it's been a while since my last post. I've been busy. Particularly I've been busy revising the characters in my story.

On a recent Writing Excuses episode they talked about aksing multiple questions of your characters. A couple they suggested were favourite swear, what scares them, how would you describe them in 10 words. My friend and I have both been trying to improve our character writing so we sat down with our main characters and interviewed them using the following questions.

• How would they curse?
• Boil them down into ten descriptive words (Oily, strong, hungry, etc.)
• What is their opinion and history with magic?
• In what ways do they hold power over others?
• How would they describe their backstory to a friend? To a stranger?
• How do they react in emergencies? What would make them stop in their tracks?
• Who do they have allegiance to and why? Who is their best friend?
• What is their driver’s license appearance? Height, build, hair color?
• What do they do for fun when the plot isn’t looking? Guilty pleasures? Snacks?
• How do they decorate their personal spaces?
• What are they truly scared of losing? Certain people dying, sure, but what other things?
• Are they religious, spiritual, superstitious, realists, etc.? I.e. “Bad things always come in threes.”

It was a lot of work. More than I thought. There were times that I had to stop myself from saying that I'll just write on and see what comes up, my usual method. However, at the end, it was completely worth it. I feel like I can actually tell apart the knights of the round table and they feel more alive than just names on a page. Also writing Gwaine telling his backstory was so much fun.

Of course now I am in the process of going back through the story and making sure that what I have written reflects these choices. Not to mention using the opportunity to flesh them out now that I do know them better. It's proving interesting and self-consistency as I edit the early chapters while writing new chapters is going to be hard. Next steps is to do an abridged version of this for my secondary characters.


Favourite writing from this week:

“You know, he spoke often of you in his letters,” Nathaniel said. “He told me how you were a bright young lad with an aptitude for creative problem solving. And poor research techniques, but those could be improved upon.”

“It’s harder when you don’t already know every book in the library,” Merlin groused.
Nathaniel smiled quickly, but then looked more serious. “It made me wonder if you noticed the flaw in the mage hunter’s plan today?”

Merlin froze with his spoon still in his mouth. Flaw? What had he overlooked? Could Nathaniel tell it had been his own illusion? Merlin lowered the spoon and swallowed his mouthful of soup. Did he notice the slight burns left on Merlin’s wrists? Did he realise Merlin hadn’t slept in his room last night? William would’ve noticed, but he didn’t think Nathaniel would ever wait up for him to come home.

“Besides the illusion dropping when the ropes were untied?” Merlin asked, glad his voice sounded light, untroubled.

“True, that wasn’t particularly wise either. Though I think it was more foolish to imprison a member of the court. If I was trying to tell the king I captured a sorcerer, I would grab a lone peasant in the woods. Someone without a sword.” He stood and brought his bowl over to the basin for dirty dishes. “Although I suppose if I was better at illusionary magic and I had been captured, I would let him continue to court and only escape at the last minute so that he did meet his justice.”

Merlin felt his heart skip. He knew. Maybe not the whole truth but he knew. Hold on, he had said “If you were better at illusionary magic?” Merlin repeated. “You have the gift?”

“It’s very slight. My mother was a hedge witch.” He returned to the table. “And am I right in guessing that you have the gift too?”

Merlin nodded. He trusted William’s childhood friend, but it was still hard to say the words out loud.

On Timelines

Are you writing a story in which time is important? Are you writing a story in which you don't think time is really important but takes place over the course of more than a month? Have you written a timeline yet? Do it now.

I thought I could get away with just keeping track of seasons in this long Merlin fic, but I can't. So 121k words in, I have made a timeline. And oh my gosh it's a mess. I had to totally re-evaluate when evens happened or, more often, how much time passed between chapters. I had tried to avoid putting specific dates in, but every once in a while I found a date, or a day of the week and had to adjust. I should've done this ages ago. I thought I had learned this lesson after NaNoWriMo 2014, but apparently not.

Now I still have to figure out more precise dates on events that happened before the story, but I have an anchor point so this really helps. I expect next week will be a lot of fixing numbers mentioned in the story.

Favourite writing from this week:

Merlin and Aldrich appeared with their horses in a clearing two hours ride from Ealdor. It felt a bit weird, bringing someone else with to visit his mother. Arthur and Gwen had visited once. But that was Arthur’s idea. It was really more of a patrol that happened to take a slight detour. Otherwise, he travelled alone.

“I didn’t know you grew up so far from the city,” Aldrich said.

“It’s not even within Camelot.” Merlin laughed. “Technically Arthur’s not my king.”

“Residency within Camelot for ten years doesn’t change that?”

“Huh. It might.” Merlin thought for a few minutes, mentally running his fingers along the books in the library and flipping through pages. “Yeah, residency in Camelot for seven years makes be a subject of Camelot. Darn. I can’t tease Arthur about that any more.”

After two hours of talking and laughing and riding, they reached the edges of Ealdor. The crops were short as they rode through, but the sprouts looked strong. Merlin let his magic wash over the land and provide a little extra encouragement.

Attuned to the feel of his magic better than anyone else, Hunith immediately came out of her house and ran toward Merlin. He smiled and leapt off his horse to run to meet her.

“Merlin! It’s been so long.” She grabbed him in a tight embrace and ran her hand through his hair.

“Mother. I’ve missed you so much.” He, in turn, rested his cheek on the top of her head.
Then she pushed him away and raised a finger at him. “You have been slacking in your letter writing,’ she scolded. “Gilli has written me more than you have.”

“What?”

“And I had to hear from Gwaine about Arthur’s wedding. Yes, Gwaine wrote me a letter.” Hunith lowered her finger and placed both hands on her hips. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Ah yes, the question for which there was no right answer. He could claim he was busy, she would ask if that meant too busy for his mother. He could say it got lost in transit, she would say he should’ve found another way to send it. He could say any number of things and she would have an instant rebuttal. Better to switch topics altogether. “I brought someone new this time,’ he said, beckoning Aldrich over.

He approached warily, knowing very well the look of the scolding mother.

“This is Aldrich,” Merlin introduced. “He is from Iseildur’s camp. Aldrich, this is my mother.”

“A pleasure to meet you, my lady.” He took the back of her hand and kissed it.

She blushed. “That’s really not, I’m no lady. Look around you.”

Merlin smiled. “Took me three years to stop him from regularly calling me ‘my lord’. I suggest you get used to it.”

Speaking, not telling.

It's been kinda a slow couple weeks of writing. The last week of January, I did WIP week and wrote another two chapters on an old story. It's still not done, but the final battle is planned out which is way better than it was two years ago. I've done some more editing on my other story and wrote a little bit more. I really am not liking this chapter and it's not doing what I want, but I think I just have to struggle through to the end of it and then let it sit before I look at it again.

The writing this week is from an early chapter in Twin Tales. I added more because I need to work on adding dialogue rather than telling the reader that the conversation happened.

Favourite writing from this week:

“Knowledge is never a waste. But you probably didn’t think of it because all the books on antidotes are hidden behind the mirror.”

Naturally. Anything that was an antidote to poisons would be considered too close to magic and thus would’ve been destined for the flames of the purge. Once again Merlin sent up a silent prayer of thanks for his father’s foresight to create this secret room.

Hidden behind a mirror than only Merlin could pass through were seven large bookshelves full of books on magic that William and his father had hid when the Purge began. There had been a logical system of organization on the shelves at one point, but Merlin was awful about putting books back in the right place so piles had built up on the ground.

Gently nudging the self-cleaning sword out of his way, he set down the books he had been looking through and started pulling books off the shelf that might relate to antidotes. When he had filled his arms, he returned to the desk in the main library, and William grabbed one off the stack to help him look. They still had until tomorrow but Merlin would also need to catch up on the other chores he’d missed when out on the ride. Not everything could be done with magic.

“Merlin, look at this one.” William pushed the book he was reading to the centre of the table. “It won’t work for everything, but it’s an enchantment to nullify the effects of the most common food poisons.”

“That’d be great.” He scanned the page. “This looks like it’ll detect most of the poisons I check Arthur’s food for anyway and a couple I don’t.”

“And the book suggests casting it on the plate itself. A simple rune will light up to indicate which poison was detected as well.”

“I can hide that with a concealment charm. It’s not a difficult spell. I’ll need to renew it every couple of months to make sure it’s optimal. But this is definitely what I’m looking for.”

“Better test it out in here before you run on down to the kitchens then and place a faulty enchantment on every plate,” William said, standing up from the table. He took out one of their plates and handed it to Merlin. “Go practice on this one. I’ll ask the physician for one of these poisons.”

“I still can’t believe he trusts you sometimes.” Merlin laughed. “It’s a good thing he believes in testing science.”

William smiled in return, a matching mischievous glint in his eyes. “A good thing indeed.”

A Poem Scene

Prompt: Find a 1st-person poem, and write it in the 3rd person POV. Perhaps even rewrite it as a scene, or a story.

This is a writing prompt from Writing Excuses episode 13.2. The episode was about writing active characters and it was really good, so naturally what I wrote was about a very passive character. To be fair, I asked a friend for her favourite first person poem to use as inspiration, and it's a bit depressing. I will let you decide. Here is the poem she gave me, followed by my writing.

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

Favourite writing from this week:

She stood by the grave every Thursday. For two hours, she spoke of what she did the previous week, a record in a verbal diary. She gave her life to the bones below her feet. And each time she lay a single yellow rose on the long green grass.

One week she did not come. Then again not the next. The following Wednesday, the diggers came. A trench was made where she used to stand, and on Thursday she was lain to rest.

She lay in her grave every Thursday. In their souls, they danced every day. 

Writing Goals for 2018

Oh wow. Have I really not written since middle of November? Oops. Well I won NaNo, but naturally the story isn't finished. I'm also revising last year's NaNo because a good friend of mine gave me the right kind of beta reading and now I am rewriting the beginning and rethinking characters. It's a glorious disaster. Onto the actual point of this post.

I can't tell if Kristina will continue doing the weekly prompts, but a goals prompt sounds like a good plan. So here we go.

1. Complete at least 15 of the Writing Excuses homework assignments.
For those of you who don't know, this is a weekly, 15 min podcast with great writing advice. This year they are focusing on character and I really need that. So I want to do the homework assignments and be more active in my learning.

2. Finish Twin Tales.
This is my monstrosity of a Merlin fic. It's over 100k right now. I want to wrap it up by the end of this year so I can start posting it and giggling at the feedback people will give me.

3. Revise Restoring Faith
This will be slightly dependent on my beta reader, but I do really want to eventually publish this one so getting a proper second draft by the end of the year seems like a good goal.

4. Write something non-fandom
This does not include Restoring Faith. This will probably happen with goal number one, but I want to make it it's own goal so I can keep it a focus.

How well will I do? I don't know. Real life is gearing up to kick my butt this year, especially in the summer which is usually good writing time for me. But I will find a way.

Favourite writing from this week:

But now the glimmer of hope seemed absent. Left alone with her thoughts, prospects were bleak. Not even the chocolate croissant she had saved was cheering her up. It only reminded her how far she had traveled since the tube station. She set it back on the wrapper. It was meant to be a ten minute ride home.

Yet now she was stranded in a foreign city, surrounded by aliens and in a time far removed from her own. Even if she was able to travel to Earth somehow, it wouldn’t be the same planet she left.

No family, no friends, no series finale of Bakeoff and wow she hadn’t realised how much that one hurt. She didn’t even like cooking. So why were her eyes filling with tears?

But now that they started, she couldn’t make them stop. Her family were dead. Had been for who knows how long. How long did it take them to start looking for her? How long until they gave up?

And what would she do? Try to go to uni? Applications were hard enough the first time around. Now she had no paperwork and only her previous student ID as any form of identification. Even if she somehow was accepted, she would have gaps in her education. She wouldn’t have money to pay tuition. Hells she hardly had food for the next day.

Hannah grabbed tissues from the bedside table and noisily blew her nose.

“Destinies are troublesome things,” an accented voice said. It sounded oddly Irish. The first recognisable accent she had heard this entire trip. “You don’t often understand why things happen until many years later.”

Hannah looked around, but couldn’t see anyone who could have spoken to her.

“To your right, above the table,” the voice said. She looked up but all she could see was a drawing of large stone gateway similar to the one she had fallen through. “There we go.”

Hannah blinked, rubbed away the tears that were blurring her vision. Maybe she had fallen asleep because she thought the artwork was speaking.

“You aren’t going crazy.” The drawing changed, shifted. A gargoyle that had been perched on top of the arch flew down into the foreground of the image, all the detail of the pointed teeth and large ears become clearer.

“How? You’re in a drawing,” she protested. “Drawings don’t move. Or talk.” She pinched her arm again, but just as before it hurt. No waking up from a weird dream.

“Magic, Mistress Osta,” the gargoyle replied. “You had best get used to it.”

“Right, magic.” She nodded, then shook her head. “No. This is crazy. Pictures that move, I’ll accept. Crazy arches that kidnap you from tube stations, fine.” She crossed her arms. “But no way is it normal for art to hold a conversation with someone. There was other artwork in the hotel lobby and none of those paintings moved. Something tells me this isn’t normal.”

“Now you are catching on.” It seemed proud of her. “We will make a proper adventurer of you yet.”

“Adventure? No, this has been an adventure enough. I just want to go home.”

“That’s not possible at the moment.”

Hannah felt her breath catch. “No. Saraahm said she knows someone who might know how to get me home. There has to be a way.”

“There is a way. You have to create your own path home.”

“What?”

“Talk to Father Carame, he will guide you to the right path. But there are things you need to learn before you can return home.”

Hannah was still having trouble processing the fact that she was talking to a gargoyle in a drawing on on wall, but something in it’s tone made her believe it. “What, do I have to take a class?” That didn’t mean any of this made sense.

“Father Carame will tell you more about your destiny. Think of it as your letter to Hogwarts.”

“I’m going to ignore the fact that you just made a “Harry Potter” reference and focus on the rest of that. How do you know my destiny?”

“Magic.”

“Of course.” Hannah shut her eyes and rubbed a hand over her face. Magic, destiny, and kidnapping. Just your average Friday. But apparently this was the reality she had to live with right now. “What does my destiny have to do with finding a way home?” She adjusted her glasses and looked back up at the drawing, but the gargoyle had retreated to the perch atop the portal.

“I have faith that you will stumble upon the connection,” its voice said into the stillness before some intuition Hannah never knew she had, told her that the creature wouldn’t be saying anything else.

“Okay. I am officially in an adventure story. Magical creature who gives advice then disappears with a riddle. Got it.” She looked down at her croissant. She needed chocolate and then she needed sleep.

NaNoWriMo Update

Just a a short update today. NaNo has been going well. I was able to write a lot of words while I was remote observing. Turns out the spectrometer involves a lot of hitting a button then waiting half an hour. So there was plenty of free time. And I was leading up to a battle which turned out really well. Or at least I humbly think so.
I have also confirmed who will be the ten individuals at the Round Table in my story and it is very exciting. Only one of them has not yet been introduced. I also made a new planning document since the previous one is mostly crossed off and it was getting hard to find the things I had not yet written. So a clear sign of progress. As if the 40k words written just this month didn't indicate that already.
And as soon as I finish this chapter I will have 52 chapters. That means that I can post once a week for a year and readers will still have not finished the story. I still intend to finish writing before I start posting, but it is nice to know that if I get impatient for feedback I have a large buffer.
This week I am sharing with you a section of my story leading up to the sword being pulled out of the stone. I loved writing it and I am pleased with how it turned out.


Favourite writing from this week:

“Is this another story you found in a book in the library that should’ve stayed buried? Because the last one you told was not nearly as interesting as you claimed.”

Merlin gaped at him. “I’ll have you know when I told Gwen the tale of the hydra she loved it.” He continued marching ahead, knowing Arthur was following even if his steps through the brush were quieter. “And no. This book was not buried. I think you will be familiar with some of it. It is about Brutus, the first king of Camelot.” He pushed a low hanging branch out of his way. “He conquered the land of Camelot from local nomadic groups and united them under one banner and securing the roads of trade. He had the citadel built up to present a show of force against invaders and prove that he and his descendants were here to stay.”

“Yes, Merlin I know the story. Everyone in Camelot knows the story.” Arthur shoved at a bush in his path. “I don’t see why this is important. And where are we going anyway?”

Merlin looked over his shoulder. “For once, just be patient and listen.” He faced forward just in time to duck under a thick branch. “Since you say you know the story, I will skip to the part you may not have heard. Laying on his deathbed, there were many who were praising the king, telling him that no king of Camelot would ever do as much for the land as he had done. Even his own son spoke of how he could never live up to his father.

“But the king spoke and he told them that he had been gifted with a vision of the future before he died and he wanted to share it with them. He said that someday in the future, a descendant of his would rule Camelot and this King would make Camelot a shining kingdom to be remembered throughout the ages. He told them to take him out to his favourite lake and there, with the last reserves of his legendary strength, he drove his sword into a rock. He said that one day a man would come to claim this sword, and that man would be the rightful king of Camelot. The one to be remembered.”

Merlin stopped speaking, letting the magic of the linger in the forest air. It felt like the world was waiting, holding its breath.

“That’s rubbish.” And the world was just punched in the gut. “Who would believe that?”

“Plenty of people,” Merlin retorted. “Are you calling the people of Camelot stupid?”

“A sword stuck in a rock? That’s impossible.”

Merlin smiled internally. He couldn’t have planned it any better. “Then what is that?”

Arthur stepped up beside where Merlin had stopped and looked into the small clearing. The land sloped gently downward to a sunlit circle of grass, within which laid a large stone. And in that stone, a sword.

90 min stories

There haven't been prompts for the past couple weeks, but I haven't been shirking the writing. I have been grabbing some Halloween prompts and using those. Mostly in an effort to work on my short story skills, I have been writing stories nearly entirely in the one class I help out with.

It's been a fun exercise in trying to have snippets of life rather than big plots. I wrote one on supernatural beings hiding in plain sight on Halloween. (And then realized I maybe want to revisit that universe later.) Another on the Greek Fates in modern day. And then today I finally planned out a scene I have been stressing about in my Merlin story. Oh and I wrote one about a ghost in the tunnels. That was last week. This week's snippet is from that story.

Favourite writing from this week:

Karen jotted down the part number and walked to the storage tunnel entrance. She grabbed a torch from the shelf and entered her ID. The keypad lit up green, she pushed open the door, and entered the tunnel.

Now she was sure that she could hear the Thames. She didn’t like it. It was too close. Part K332. She had a ways to go in the tunnel. The further she walked, the less she liked it.

Every step echoed. A...B... Her torch beam was the only light available. C...D... The walls felt like they were getting closer. E...F... She tried humming a song, but the bounced noises were worse. G...H...

Something furry brushed her leg and she lept away with a gasp, dropping her light in surprise. It went out.

“Who is responsible for designing that?” she asked of the darkness.

She didn’t expect the darkness to reply.