ecosophia | Writing Right Out There In Public: Another Scene

Following the last scene I posted, there's going to be a scene that covers several days in which the reader gets hints that something is going sour in Embery's relationship with the village. I'm still working out how I want to handle that, so it's time to do something I do all the time in writing: jump ahead to the next scene that's clear in my mind.

You don't have to write scenes in order. A lot of people get hung up about this. You really don't; you can write them in whatever order you like. I routinely write the scenes that come to mind most vividly, and then fill in the gaps between them. Since Rule #3 always applies -- nothing's set in stone until the first copies come back from the printers -- any inconsistencies can be fixed later on by editing. Don't worry about consistency yet; get a rough draft written, and then deal with the pesky details.

With that in mind, here's the fourth scene from The Road to Amalin:

********************************

The raps came at the door, low and hurried. Embery, who was sewing a waistcoat for Tay, looked up suddenly, set fabric and needle aside and went to answer. Her fears hid themselves when she saw that the only one outside was poor Issa, came back out from hiding again when she saw the expression on the woman’s face.

“Please come in,” she said, managing a smile she hoped wasn’t too strained. “Perhaps you’d like some tea?”

“No,” Issa said, stopping in the doorway. “Thank you, but no. I can stay but a moment. I told you I’d do some good thing for you if I found one, and that’s why I’m here.”

“Why, thank you. What is it?”

“To give you warning.” Issa’s voice went low. “It’s that Doctor Merimer. He heard from Anner’s sons that they’d seen your Tay up on the hills past Creel’s Head, walking with something.” She swallowed. “Something that wasn’t human.”

Embery stared at her, trying to make the words make some kind of sense. “But that’s nonsense,” she said. “And against the Faith, I do believe.”

“Maybe so,” said Issa. “But Anner’s boys aren’t the only ones who say they saw it with Tay, and there’s been stories for years and years about something that walks the hills, you know.” Embery didn’t, but nodded anyway. “But the upshot of it all is that Merimer’s gone to the monks, saying that it wouldn’t be so unless you’d had some dealings with unhallowed things, or you wouldn’t have healed so many—and they listened to him. My Perren came back late from the tavern last night, and he said some of the men were talking about it, bent over the table and quiet. He said the monks sent yesterday for a magister from High Leedaw.”

That could mean only one thing, Embery knew. She tried to keep her reaction off her face.

“That’s what I know,” said Issa then. “I can’t stay a moment longer—if they hear I’ve told you, it’ll be hard on me. But you’ve been so good to me and little Beshy. Spirits keep you, Mistress Embery, and your boy too.”

She turned and hurried away down the trail to the village, leaving Embery to stare after her.

A moment passed, and then Embery closed the door, hurried toward the back of the little shack. You always knew that this might happen, she told herself. It almost happened to Neely that once, and it did happen to her teacher’s teacher, over past Crannach Mountain back when the old queen was on the throne. Her hands shook as she opened the trunk at the foot of her bed, pulled out a few things she couldn’t bear to part with, reached under the bedstead for the little bag of copper and silver coins she’d kept against need.

Then it was necessities, into the same coarse cloth satchel she’d taken down to Sullamy’s: clothing and food, the bent knife she used to harvest herbs, a little iron pot for cooking, flint and steel to light a fire under it. All the while her mind circled around the one story she’d heard from Neely that didn’t have to do with far Amalin: the magister and monks with hard faces, the circle of villagers stooping for cobbles, the old woman crying out in pain and fear as the first stones hit her. Trials for sorcery didn’t happen often, but that offered little comfort if one happened to her.

Behind her, just then, the latch rattled.

She let out a little desperate cry as she turned around, but when the door opened, Tay came through it, panting, as though he’d run far. For a moment they stared at one another, and then he burst out, “Mother—what’s wrong?”

“We need to leave.” She forced the words out. “Now. Come—you’ll need to carry what you can.” When, appalled, he opened his mouth as though to speak, she went on: “There’s no time for questions now! I’ll tell what I know once we’re out the door. Quickly, fill this—” She held out a second satchel, worn but serviceable. “Clothes and anything you can’t bear to part with. Food, too—the last of the loaves. And a knife.”

Without another word he hurried over, began packing the satchel. Embery, hers full, rolled up her quilts into a long blanket roll, found a scrap of cord to tie the two ends side by side. That done, she did the same to Tay’s quilts, finished as he turned to her with his satchel packed. “Here,” she said, got his blanket roll over one shoulder, the ends on his other hip. She settled her satchel, donned the other blanket roll. “Ready?” He nodded, wide-eyed, and she led the way to the door.

A stray thought tried to convince her that when she opened it, she’d see monks coming up the trail with staves and cords, ready to beat and bind her, but luck or the spirits were with her: what of the trail she could see from the shack’s front door was empty, and only the wind in the gorse and heather made noise. Just in case, she motioned noiselessly, and she and Tay hurried up the slighter trail that led away from the village, toward the crest of the ridge and the unfrequented dale beyond it.

Embery’s heart pounded as she scrambled up the rocky trail, Tay at her heels. Her only thought was to put enough distance between the two of them and the shack that anyone who followed them could be put off the track. When they crested the ridge and she found a place where the trail up from the village could be seen, it stretched empty and bare down to the monastery roofs.

“We can rest here a little,” she said then. Tay turned wide baffled eyes toward her, and she went on. “I heard from—from one of the village folk that someone’s been telling nonsense tales about you, saying that you had dealings with something unhallowed. That you’d been seen with it up past Creel’s Head.” His eyes widened further. “The doctor in the village heard of it, and went to the monks saying I must have done the same. Now they’ve sent for a magister for a sorcery trial. They’ll stone me if they catch me, and you too, maybe.”

He stared at her for a long time, then said in a small voice, “Mother—it’s not nonsense.”

Embery met his stare with her own.

“It’s not nonsense,” he repeated. “Below Mollory Edge, there’s a—a thing from the land we don’t name. I’ve spoken with him.” He looked down at the bare ground between them. “Walked with him. I didn’t think anyone saw us.”

She tried to make sense of his words, leapt to the only possibility she could see. “Tay,” she said in a reproving tone. “This is no time for make-believe.”

“It’s not make-believe.” His face turned up to hers, pleading. “The day after you told me the story of Eremon and the faun, I went up toward Mollory Edge after lessons. There’s a story I heard from some of the older boys, that there’s something that dwells up there, and I thought it might be a faun, and so I went there and when I was sure no one else could hear, I sang Eremon’s song.”

Horrified, she said, “No! In the open for others to hear?”

“I made sure no one was near,” he told her. “No one but—but him. And he answered.” Then, all in a rush, he went on. “I didn’t dare tell you, because I knew you’d be angry and forbid me to go there again, and I couldn’t bear to stay away. He—he spoke the name.” Mouthing the word silently: “Amalin.” In a normal voice again: “But he sent me home today. He said you’d have need of me, and I ran all the way.”

A long moment passed before she found her voice. “That was good of him.”

A shake of his head denied it. “He’s not good. He told me that. He’s wise, but not good.” He hung his head. “But I didn’t know anyone saw us. I didn’t think any harm would come of it. If—if I’ve done ill—I’ll go down to the monks and the magister and let them stone me, if that means they’ll let you be.”

“No!” The word forced itself out, and she seized his arm. “Tay, no. How could I bear to let you do that? No, what’s done is done. We’ll go as far as we have to go, so both of us will be safe.”

“We can go to him,” Tay said. “He’ll know what to do.”

Embery considered that. Her thoughts were in chaos, trying to make sense of the impossible—a faun, a being of far Amalin, somehow strayed into a dale of cold gray Raithwold—but if it were true, if it might just this once be true...

“We’ll do that,” she said, and Tay’s face brightened. Then, glancing up at the westering sun, she went on: “But that’ll be in the dawn, not now. The moon’s not bright enough for us to find our way. We need to find a hiding place for the night, and I think I know of one.”

The way down from the ridge was easier, and at the bottom of the dale she kilted her skirts above the knee and had him roll up his trousers, and walked for a long while up the stream—the monks likely wouldn’t send for hounds, but she wasn’t willing to take a chance on that. They left the water only when they reached the spring at its source, hurried through a thicket of hazel and elder to reach the place she’d had in mind, a little hollow sheltered by crags of gray stone where certain roots grew, hard to find if you didn’t know it. From a hidden place beside one of the crags, the king’s highroad from the eastern dales could be seen, and once they’d shed satchels and blanket rolls in the hollow and caught their breath, she led Tay to the place, lay on her belly, looked down at the highroad as Tay wriggled his way beside her and looked out also.

At first the road seemed empty, but a faint murmur came up the highroad from the east, and in time it turned into the pounding of hooves. She reached, pressed fingers against Tay’s lips, the signal for perfect silence, and felt his answering nod. Then the horsemen came into sight below: two riders in buff coats, with steel helmets gleaming cold on their heads and long pistols at their saddlebows; another all in black, wearing the high-crowned hat of a magister; a banner-bearer behind him, with holy symbols on the flag that streamed back from the staff he held; more black-clad riders of the magister’s household, and two more troopers in buff and steel at the rear. They rode hard, and Embery had no doubt she knew why.

Her heart pounded along with the horses’ hooves, kept pounding hard long after they’d gone from sight and their hoofbeats were a dim murmur in the distance. Only when the last echoes had gone and the mournful cries of birds made the only sounds along the highroad did she dare slip back down the slope to the hollow.

************************
Okay. I'll post some notes about what I did here in a day or two; in the meantime, questions are welcome -- once again, though, I'm not asking for critiques. (I don't crowdsource my fiction.) And of course those of you who are writing novels of your own along with me should be working on your next scene, too... ;-)

Current Mood: listless
Current Location: in a hiding place in the woods

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

joelcaris

Well, I got my first scene written, started to work on the second scene (which was probably more the second half of the first) and it all felt a little off. During a long walk on a warm day (I'd take a few more of those at this point) I came to the conclusion that I needed to shift my main POV character--and so, I wrote a new first scene, and I feel pretty happy with it. That new one is here: https://figurationpress.com/2018/04/11/calling-a-mulligan-the-real-opening-scene/

I think perhaps I got too caught up in the focus of my official story seed being on Ren and, even though it was his sister who was taking a greater presence in my mind, I stayed on the idea of the story being from his perspective. I'm pretty sure switching it to hers is the right move. I admittedly am less enamored with writing from the perspective of a young boy, too--I figure I should go with that instinct!

Now on to the next scene. It's interesting to read this new one from you out of order. As I think I mentioned before, it's not something I usually do, instead writing straight from beginning to end. I'm planning to put a little time today into thinking about the next scene in my story as I have a general sense of the next day, but not quite sure exactly what the next scene is. I think I know the third, though; perhaps I'll write that and then back fill the second. It would be interesting to give that strategy a try.

I'm curious to read your notes on the above scene, which I again think you did very well. It's a nice job of stringing out our understanding of the world here. For instance, it seems clear that Amalin is a real place for Embery, but less clear for the rest of the culture; and unexpected that a faun would be here, but it seems not unexpected that a faun would exist at all. How much of this is knowledge exclusive to Embery or not--if others in the culture don't know about Amalin and creatures from there, or if they do but that it's not supposed to be believed due to the politics and religion of their place, or if it's all common knowledge but it's considered wicked--is still a little unclear to me, which I'm pretty sure is the point! Anyway, I'm enjoying the slow reveal.

Okay, off to take care of a few regular tasks and then get back to my own story.

From:

ecosophia

Definitely consider giving the third scene a try. I find that very often when there's a scene I can't work out, jumping ahead to a later scene fixes that, because I realize what has to happen in the earlier scene in order to make the later one make sense.

I'll be talking specifically about the slow reveal when I post my notes! To my mind, that's especially crucial in any kind of story where surprise is wanted -- mysteries, for example, but also fantasy and SF, where the sense of wonder is heightened when the reader figures out a little at a time what's going on. More on this as we proceed!

From:

peristaltor

I'm writing my own brand of non-fiction too much now to participate, but enjoying the unfolding story thus far. Feel free to chastise me as needed, since I may well have forgotten the terms of this exercise.

Your exercise title just struck me as over-long and missing the pun: doesn't "Write Out There In Public" have more impact?

From:

ecosophia

No doubt, but I didn't happen to think of that, and I don't always (or often) worry about impact. Why not use that title for a project of your own someday?

From:

peristaltor

*Snort* I've never had trouble with titles. It's the stuff that follows… you know, the work.

From:

drhooves

Another polished scene, with smooth flow. There's enough content to the story now along with foreshadowing hints that I'm going to be interested to see how the story evolves.

The demonstration of writing a creative, spontaneous scene is clear enough, but I'm still a bit fuzzy on your method of organization (notes, outline, ideas in your head, off-the cuff, draft/rewrite/revise?, etc). So I'll be even more interested in your process of sifting through the drafts and taking the next steps.

From:

ecosophia

I build ideas in my head, then sit down and write it all out in a single burst. That's not what I used to do, but I've been writing professionally now for 22 years and some of the steps are easier than they used to be. ;-) Back in the day, I'd start by imagining the scene vividly -- long walks are good for that -- then write out a draft, set it aside for a few days, and revise over and over again until I got it right.

From: (Anonymous)

Dear John Michael,

Good to see that your fiction writing is a going concern... I’m using this slightly out-of-place venue to contact you because I didn’t know a better way.

I read your “Weird of Hali” books with great pleasure and deliberate slowness... My question: I wrote a story set in the “Weird of Hali” world, which I intend to publish — is that okay with you?

Best regards,
Hannes {Rollin}

From:

ecosophia

Okay, this is complicated. First, much of what's in The Weird of Hali is free for the taking; Lovecraft and his fellow weird-tales authors created it as a shared universe, and it's long out of copyright anyway, so you can do what you want with it, just as I did. That includes all the Great Old Ones, Arkham, Miskatonic University, Innsmouth, Kingsport, the various eldritch books and critters, and so on.

On the other hand, the characters and specific situations in my novels are my creation, under a copyright that's been sold to a publisher, and they're also part of a work in progress. For this reason, I'd like to request that your story use none of my characters, even briefly. If you want to put something in Innsmouth, make up a family of your own rather than using the Marsh family that featured in The Weird of Hali: Innsmouth; if you'd rather set it in Kingsport, make up a different old Kingsport family rather than using the Chaudronniers; and leave my core characters -- Owen Merrill, Laura Marsh, Jenny Parrish, Miriam Akeley -- entirely out of it.

If those conditions are met, sure, you can do a story set more or less in my half-borrowed, half-invented world. If you need help sorting through the Lovecraft literature to find appropriate raw materials for your own creation, let me know and I'll point you to some first-rate sources.

From: (Anonymous)

Understood; thanks for the clarification. And yes, I’d appreciate a few hints where to look for Lovecraft lore, trivia, and realia!

Thanks,
HR

From:

ecosophia

Many thanks.

As for sources, to start with, you want a copy of Daniel Harms' Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, aka Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia (the title of the most recent edition) to stick on your desk right next to the keyboard. My copy gets constant use. The Cthulhu Wiki is also very useful, as is the incomplete (and apparently abandoned) Cthulhu Files website.

Then there are the stories themselves. Lovecraft to begin with -- there are plenty of good anthologies of his work, and you can also read every single story he ever wrote online at The H.P. Lovecraft Archive. Lovecraftian fanfic (even inverted Lovecraftian fanfic) begins with a solid knowledge of the guy's own fiction -- I dare you to read any three of his stories and not come up with at least one of your own, telling the real story of what went on... ;-)

Clark Ashton Smith is the other author whose works are central to The Weird of Hali; his stories are a little hard to find these days, though there's a great new five-volume collected-works edition now in print from Night Shade Books. You can also find all his stories, poems, essays, and more -- including the rest of the poem by, ahem, "Honore-LeClerc Freneville-Forgeron" that Charlotte sings in The Weird of Hali: Kingsport -- online at The Eldritch Dark.

Beyond that? There are the other authors who contributed to the Mythos. I tend to pick and choose there, focusing (of course!) on works by dead people, but Arthur Machen, Robert Chambers, and some others, are grist for my eldritch mill. One good place to learn about what's available is Ruthanna Emrys' and Anne Pillsworth's weekly book review series The Lovecraft Reread -- they've gone through a lot of the literature at this point, and their critiques are always interesting and generally to the point.

Those are the basics. If you don't mind saying, what specific end of the Lovecraft continuum is your story delving into? I can probably point you to some sources of arcane and eldritch lore that will leave you gibbering in a corner, saying "The socks! The socks were of no human shape!"

From: (Anonymous)

Excellent; thank you. Needless to say that I’m looking forward to the release of the next Weird of Hali book.

HR

From:

ecosophia

So am I! ;-)

If you have the chance, three stories to read before the next volume comes out are "The Lurking Fear" by H.P. Lovecraft, "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" by H.P. Lovecraft and William Lumley, and "The Man of Stone" by H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. All three of them are set in upstate New York, and all three ended up providing plenty of raw material for The Weird of Hali: Chorazin. You'll catch more of the references if you're familiar with those stories.

From: (Anonymous)

I'm sure JMG will have more but try https://www.tor.com/series/the-lovecraft-reread/ and check out Ruthanna Emrys 'Winter Tide'.

Coop Janitor

From:

ecosophia

I haven't yet read Winter Tide -- I want to finish my own series before I read what she's doing with Lovecraft -- but based on the other things I've read by Emrys, I'm really looking forward to it.

From: (Anonymous)

Oh, yes, you will like it - very different from what you are doing, but both pro-Deep One - and there's a sequel coming out this summer. -Dewey

From: (Anonymous)

I think I need to reassess my strategy. I'm writing a good amount, but it's going to be a wide range of stories. I need to focus my writing on one project, instead of writing the most prominent scene in my mind.

At the same time, I don't want to close down inspiration too much. If I may ask, how do you handle this? What I'm thinking of doing is setting an amount that I need to write on my main project, and anything after that can be on any of the stories I'm working on.

I may have to adjust the amounts based on how much I can write on a regular basis: I don't want to burn myself out.

Will J

From:

ecosophia

That's definitely something to reassess.

I always have several projects going at once, but then I write full time and it's rarely a problem if inspiration hits and I spend a week or six frantically writing something unexpected. One thing you might consider is to set yourself a certain amount of time to work on the main project, rather than a word count or page count; there's something very freeing, at least to me, in knowing that for the next three hours I'm going to be working on The Weird of Hali: Hyperborea, say, and I'll get done what I can get done in that time.

From: (Anonymous)

I see that they have gunpowder in this world - that says something about the tech we may expect. (Or maybe not. If they have guns but no printing presses, that says something about the culture.) I rather like it when firearms or the equivalent pop up in such a setting just because it emphasizes that this is not medieval Europe and shouldn't be expected to be identical to it! - Dewey

From:

ecosophia

There are printing presses in Raithwold, but not many of them, and they and their products are almost entirely restricted to a few urban centers. As we'll see further on, Raithwold is very much on the periphery of things!

I also like to see things that violate what I'll call "Rule 1066" -- the bad habit in modern fantasy of always using early medieval technology of the kind found in western Europe in or around the year 1066. That was interesting and original when Tolkien did it -- most fantasy before his time took its tech level from the high Middle Ages or the Renaissancd -- but it's become a dreary cliché at this point.

From: (Anonymous)

I wonder if I might ask for a bit of advice?

Sometime between the first posts on this topic, the ones about generating ideas, and the first scene posts, I decided all of the following things:

1. I hate all of my ideas.
2. I don't want to write about any of them.
3. Everything I do want to write about is a cliche or stupid.
4. Why am I wasting my time with this anyway? Nothing I've ever written is any good, and most of the time I never finish it anyway.

And I haven't written a word since.

What would you do, if you were me?

-Steve T

From:

ecosophia

That habit of negative self-talk is very common, of course. If you choose to listen to it -- and of course it's a choice; no law of nature or human psychology requires you to believe whatever thought passes through your head -- then you've made your choice; you're not going to write, and that's that.

If you don't choose to listen to it, one useful way to get past it is to pay attention to the emotional payoff. Every habit of thought endures because it provides some kind of emotional payoff; if you identify the payoff, very often you can find some other way to get that emotional state, and stop a habit that's outlived its usefulness.

But this is your choice to make. Nobody anywhere can make it for you.

From: (Anonymous)

One thing to consider is how much of the negativity is self-talk and how much may be other voices--parents or teachers who criticized or ridiculed your ideas or ambitions. One of my favorite authors, Jane Duncan, wrote of how she felt that writing was for important people of leisure, not a crofter's grandchild like herself. She was sure that announcing she wanted to be a writer would lead to being carted off to the lunatic asylum. Only a desperate need for money finally led her to actually submit a novel for publication. Parents can be mean, or they can be misguided. Teachers can be ignorant or jealous. Sort it all out and figure out which critical voices are worth listening to and which should be firmly turned off.

Rita Rippetoe

From:

stefania

So far I’ve leaned towards just writing the scenes that occur to me most vividly, although they are definitely out of order. I’m trying not to be too terribly concerned by the fact that I only have vague elements of the plot in mind! Hopefully things will sort themselves out as I keep on writing…

A couple more scenes are up here https://stefania.dreamwidth.org/696.html

From:

ecosophia

Don't worry about plot at this point. Rule #3 applies here: nothing's set in stone until the first copies come back from the printers. You can decide on a plot later on, when you've got a better idea of who your characters are and what they want to do with their lives.

From: (Anonymous)

I have never tried to write fiction, but I've read lots of it, from different times and genres.

Having read the scenes you posted, I'm not sure that writing a scene which takes place in time between them is necessary.

The warning in the fourth scene gives plenty of motivation for what the principal characters do in that scene. The scene in which the doctor appeared contained some foreshadowing. Depending on what you plan to depict the souring of the relationship with the village, maybe it could be conveyed later in the story, in snippets of Embery's memories or conversations with Tay while they are traveling.

I'm sure you have reasons not to do that, but since it's a choice, explaining the reasons might be instructive.

From:

ecosophia

It's simple: to my taste, the transition from scene #2 to scene #4 is too brusque. It needs a bit more flow to make it work -- again, to my taste. It may not require a whole scene; I may put a couple of paragraphs on the end of scene #2 to talk a little about the next couple of days.

I've done some stories that have broken timelines -- Star's Reach in particular jumps all over the place as Trey sunna Gwen writes down his recollections all anyhow -- but I prefer to tell stories in a linear fashion, rather than by flashbacks et al. That's a personal preference, of course, and you can do what you want with your own stories!

From: (Anonymous)

This advice, and the example, were just what I needed to get back into gear on my story. I had gotten interrupted a week or so in the middle of a scene by an urgent work priority, and was having trouble getting back into it. The scene I had been working on seemed to have gone dormant in my mind, while I was wondering about another character more and more. I gave myself permission to let the earlier scene lie and go on to the next one, and 2254 words later, the new scene is one of my best and most fully realized yet, and is beginning to tie together some of the earlier ones.

I recently re-read "Star's Reach", this time with an aspiring author's eye, and was able to imagine in some places how the scene-stitching might have been done. You made some very elegant connections as that story skipped around in time and space. While I'm sure I'll need another few decades of writing experience before I can hope to do the same (just, uh, one million crappy words minus 7044 before I can get started), it's such a relief to just write, letting the story tell itself, instead of worrying at this stage about how to craft the plot, and feeling like I need to be in control of it, or even know how it's all going to tie together.

Thanks again for your generosity in this series of lessons. I've always wanted to write fiction, but never thought I could. Now I am, and even if it's terrible, it's immensely satisfying.

--Heather in CA

From:

ecosophia

Delighted to hear it.

In my experience, a lot of people make writing much harder for themselves than it has to be, by trying to get it all to come out right on the first draft. Letting it flow, and then shaping the mass once it's all out there, was the trick that made writing a consistent delight for me, and I'm glad to hear it seems to work for others, too.