Alpennia: Exploring Complexity
Jun. 30th, 2015 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjLast week I opened with, "Having finished the draft of chapter 6, I'm feeling a bit as if I have all these tangled threads being dumped on the table and they have yet to be woven (or braided, or knit, or...) into a coherent fabric." My alpha-reader confirms this impression. So I already know that the first big job I'll have during revisions is to make sure everything connects up a lot better. (Of course, at that point I'll know what-all I'm trying to connect up.)
I've actually been having thoughts about one simplification: removing one of my points of view. (Not any of the events, just showing them from a different angle.) In the current outline, I have three chapters earmarked for Antuniet's point of view, and at least one of them felt a bit forced. The critical events in the other two could easily be experienced through Jeanne and Barbara respectively. And though I love love love Antuniet, I'm coming to the conclusion that paring the current story down to only five POVs rather than six may be the right decision. (Once upon a time I had a thought to limit any given story to no more than four.) Continuing to think in this line, it occurs to me that Mistress of Shadows (which will be the "main series" book that comes directly after Mother of Souls but is actually third in line to be written after it) might pare down to four POVs or perhaps even only three. (Margerit has a subplot in that one that is almost completely independent from the "main story" and I've been starting to wonder whether it might make sense to split it off as a separate story and only allude to it in passing in Mistress of Shadows.)
But at the moment I'm dealing with the fact that I missed my arbitrary self-imposed deadline to finish a chapter a week and am still finishing up Chapter 7, which belongs to Serafina. I've identified several chunks of the info-dump currently in her first chapter that are being duplicated here (and so can be trimmed from the previous section). And we're getting to see more of her personal insecurities, especially how much of a fraud she feels when dealing with anything outside the scholarly community, which comes to a head when she's invited to the pre-Mystery dinner of the Royal Guild as Margerit's special guest.
This chapter is also about Serafina making connections. She needs an appropriate gown for the Royal Guild Dinner and so Jeanne drags her off to that sartorial wizard, Mefro Dominique. While it hadn't entered into Jeanne's consciousness in throwing them together, this is Serafina's first professional connection with other people of color in Rotenek. She befriends Dominique's daughter Celeste, who has talents in the thaumaturgical line, though purely in a practical "market charms" context and with none of the philosophical background that Margerit and Serafina deal with. This connection serves two purposes: it gives Serafina another angle for thinking about how mysteries work, and it introduces us in passing to Celeste who will be a significant secondary character in Floodtide.
The Guild Dinner also presents an opportunity to re-introduce our favorite Austrian villain (or is he?) Kreiser, who is clearly on the trail of some politico-magical concern centering on weather conditions in the Alps, but being his usual cagy self regarding exactly what that concern is. And in a moment of "OMG I have to get away from all these people for a bit or I'm going to have a melt-down" Serafina bumps into the painter Olimpia Hankez who is off in a corner taking concept sketches for a monumental canvas on the theme "Alpennia astounds the other nations with the power of its State Mysteries." Olimpia has an interesting talent involving the ability to see and portray the inner truth about people. (Fortunately for her career as a society portraitist, she is able to suppress the latter when necessary.) She asks Serafina if she'd be willing to sit for her.
Complexity? Well, Olimpia and her talents will be involved in a minor but meaningful episode at some later point. I'd like to establish them well before that to avoid the appearance of pulling random Plot Coupons out of my ass. And once I'd decided to introduce her at this point in the story, she insinuated herself into several other plot threads. (If I recall correctly, she got a brief mention in passing in The Mystic Marriage, although not by name.)
So far, it's been seeming like the book is all setting the table and cooking the dishes. But this chapter also starts in on the meat of the plot. Serafina SEES SOMETHING during the celebration of the All Saints' Castellum the day after the banquet that brings together all the little hints about something wonky going on with the weather, about why Kreiser might be so interested in it, about whether the flaws Margerit has seen in the mystic protections of Saint Mauriz have had consequences, and what all this might possibly have to do with the unusual behavior of the Rotein River. We don't know all of this right away, of course. But things finally start moving in that direction.
I've actually been having thoughts about one simplification: removing one of my points of view. (Not any of the events, just showing them from a different angle.) In the current outline, I have three chapters earmarked for Antuniet's point of view, and at least one of them felt a bit forced. The critical events in the other two could easily be experienced through Jeanne and Barbara respectively. And though I love love love Antuniet, I'm coming to the conclusion that paring the current story down to only five POVs rather than six may be the right decision. (Once upon a time I had a thought to limit any given story to no more than four.) Continuing to think in this line, it occurs to me that Mistress of Shadows (which will be the "main series" book that comes directly after Mother of Souls but is actually third in line to be written after it) might pare down to four POVs or perhaps even only three. (Margerit has a subplot in that one that is almost completely independent from the "main story" and I've been starting to wonder whether it might make sense to split it off as a separate story and only allude to it in passing in Mistress of Shadows.)
But at the moment I'm dealing with the fact that I missed my arbitrary self-imposed deadline to finish a chapter a week and am still finishing up Chapter 7, which belongs to Serafina. I've identified several chunks of the info-dump currently in her first chapter that are being duplicated here (and so can be trimmed from the previous section). And we're getting to see more of her personal insecurities, especially how much of a fraud she feels when dealing with anything outside the scholarly community, which comes to a head when she's invited to the pre-Mystery dinner of the Royal Guild as Margerit's special guest.
This chapter is also about Serafina making connections. She needs an appropriate gown for the Royal Guild Dinner and so Jeanne drags her off to that sartorial wizard, Mefro Dominique. While it hadn't entered into Jeanne's consciousness in throwing them together, this is Serafina's first professional connection with other people of color in Rotenek. She befriends Dominique's daughter Celeste, who has talents in the thaumaturgical line, though purely in a practical "market charms" context and with none of the philosophical background that Margerit and Serafina deal with. This connection serves two purposes: it gives Serafina another angle for thinking about how mysteries work, and it introduces us in passing to Celeste who will be a significant secondary character in Floodtide.
The Guild Dinner also presents an opportunity to re-introduce our favorite Austrian villain (or is he?) Kreiser, who is clearly on the trail of some politico-magical concern centering on weather conditions in the Alps, but being his usual cagy self regarding exactly what that concern is. And in a moment of "OMG I have to get away from all these people for a bit or I'm going to have a melt-down" Serafina bumps into the painter Olimpia Hankez who is off in a corner taking concept sketches for a monumental canvas on the theme "Alpennia astounds the other nations with the power of its State Mysteries." Olimpia has an interesting talent involving the ability to see and portray the inner truth about people. (Fortunately for her career as a society portraitist, she is able to suppress the latter when necessary.) She asks Serafina if she'd be willing to sit for her.
Complexity? Well, Olimpia and her talents will be involved in a minor but meaningful episode at some later point. I'd like to establish them well before that to avoid the appearance of pulling random Plot Coupons out of my ass. And once I'd decided to introduce her at this point in the story, she insinuated herself into several other plot threads. (If I recall correctly, she got a brief mention in passing in The Mystic Marriage, although not by name.)
So far, it's been seeming like the book is all setting the table and cooking the dishes. But this chapter also starts in on the meat of the plot. Serafina SEES SOMETHING during the celebration of the All Saints' Castellum the day after the banquet that brings together all the little hints about something wonky going on with the weather, about why Kreiser might be so interested in it, about whether the flaws Margerit has seen in the mystic protections of Saint Mauriz have had consequences, and what all this might possibly have to do with the unusual behavior of the Rotein River. We don't know all of this right away, of course. But things finally start moving in that direction.
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no subject
Date: 2015-07-01 07:18 pm (UTC)Without having read anything, I can lend support for the idea of going 6 > 5. I found four difficult enough in MM (my one real complaint), so I can only imagine how much more difficult another one or two would be.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-01 10:33 pm (UTC)As I commented on fb, I may need to give Antuniet a separate story all her own to make up for it. I have plans to write another independent shorter piece in what I'm starting to think of as the "Memoirs of Vicomtesse de Cherdillac" series that will include Antuniet in the framing story, but that's not at all the same.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 03:01 pm (UTC)I don't have any specific ideas for Antuniet-centered shorter stories at this point, but you never know when an seed may sprout.