Alpennia Blog: Neither Fish Nor Fowl
Dec. 15th, 2015 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjThe passage of time in the Alpennia novels is a tricky thing. Some people write stories that are concentrated into a span of a few days. My novels tend to stretch out over a couple of years, which presents the problem of how to keep the reader on track without making the story drag out tediously. But now we have turned the corner: the climax is less than a year away by the calendar and is galloping down upon my characters.
I drafted (most of) two chapters last week. Serafina is handed some new responsibilities and once again finds herself out of her comfort zone as she straddles the divide between student and teacher, and then gets called on to substitute for Margerit in a role she feels decidedly unqualified for. One of Serafina's problems is that she is far more aware of her deficiencies than her talents. She's spent most of her life aspiring to be a thaumaturgist -- to be able to perform mysteries -- and that is the one thing she has utterly failed at. That failure soured her marriage, it caused her to fixate on an unattainable nostalgia for her childhood, and it has made her discount every accomplishment.
Serafina's driving tragedy is that she has never felt at home in her life, and likely never will. And she has tied so many other things into that quest for belonging that she has a hard time recognizing when those other things have value in and of themselves.
The second chapter (which I'm still cleaning up, even as I continue on to draft the next) comes back around to Barbara. Barbara's fatal flaw is that all her instincts and reflexes were hammered out as armin to the old Baron Saveze, a position in which she had enormous responsibility and almost no power. Now she has the power to try to take charge of the things she feels responsible for, but is only slowly learning how to moderate it. "You really are a bit of a bully," Jeanne once said to her. And it's not that Barbara is, in her heart, a bully but she see and knows so much more than those around her (she thinks), and she sees the potential consequences of everyone's actions, so why are they so slow to understand that she knows what's best?
Princess Annek is one of the few people who sees the need to channel Barbara's talents and frustration to productive purposes, but of course she has her own priorities to consider. She could use someone of Barbara's talents as her eyes and ears -- especially in circumstances where a more official position would trigger suspicion. But she's only slowly managing to lure Barbara's attention with the challenge of intrigues and puzzles. And in the mean time, Antuniet Chazillen unexpectedly presents Barbara with a new challenge to their relationship.
The new chapter I'm working on is #24, and the outline shows a total of 32. So technically at the end of this week, I'll have a quarter of the book left to go. I'm starting to examine the plot to make sure there's a solid *bang* in each chapter. (Not a literal explosion! Just a "what happens next" moment.)
I drafted (most of) two chapters last week. Serafina is handed some new responsibilities and once again finds herself out of her comfort zone as she straddles the divide between student and teacher, and then gets called on to substitute for Margerit in a role she feels decidedly unqualified for. One of Serafina's problems is that she is far more aware of her deficiencies than her talents. She's spent most of her life aspiring to be a thaumaturgist -- to be able to perform mysteries -- and that is the one thing she has utterly failed at. That failure soured her marriage, it caused her to fixate on an unattainable nostalgia for her childhood, and it has made her discount every accomplishment.
Serafina's driving tragedy is that she has never felt at home in her life, and likely never will. And she has tied so many other things into that quest for belonging that she has a hard time recognizing when those other things have value in and of themselves.
The second chapter (which I'm still cleaning up, even as I continue on to draft the next) comes back around to Barbara. Barbara's fatal flaw is that all her instincts and reflexes were hammered out as armin to the old Baron Saveze, a position in which she had enormous responsibility and almost no power. Now she has the power to try to take charge of the things she feels responsible for, but is only slowly learning how to moderate it. "You really are a bit of a bully," Jeanne once said to her. And it's not that Barbara is, in her heart, a bully but she see and knows so much more than those around her (she thinks), and she sees the potential consequences of everyone's actions, so why are they so slow to understand that she knows what's best?
Princess Annek is one of the few people who sees the need to channel Barbara's talents and frustration to productive purposes, but of course she has her own priorities to consider. She could use someone of Barbara's talents as her eyes and ears -- especially in circumstances where a more official position would trigger suspicion. But she's only slowly managing to lure Barbara's attention with the challenge of intrigues and puzzles. And in the mean time, Antuniet Chazillen unexpectedly presents Barbara with a new challenge to their relationship.
The new chapter I'm working on is #24, and the outline shows a total of 32. So technically at the end of this week, I'll have a quarter of the book left to go. I'm starting to examine the plot to make sure there's a solid *bang* in each chapter. (Not a literal explosion! Just a "what happens next" moment.)
