Adventures in NaNo-land – Going Deep
I’m working on Chapter 12 of 20 now, and this is usually the point in a novel that I struggle with the most. It’s a transition point in the story for me, where I’ve introduced the characters and their situation, I’ve built up the story so it’s well on its way and now I have to start guiding them towards the climax of the tale, but touch on the messages I’m trying to relay as a part of my tale while doing so.
Intensifying the pacing of the story is a challenge in and of itself. Fortunately with this tale, my protagonist and his family have left the security of their village, entered the wilderness with a specific goal in mind and have encountered the worst of the villains in their first face-to-face encounter. I’m fairly certain I have the pacing requirements covered and I won’t have great difficulty moving the storyline (and the characters along with it) towards the climax of the tale. Delivering the messages important to the plot is a different beast altogether.
I like to include a fair amount of emotion in my stories – some would say that’s a female writer thing. I prefer my characters to be multifaceted, flawed and deep. The problem is finding the balance between adding those things to a story in measured doses and pushing them to a point where you’re resorting to melodrama. You want your character’s plight to reach your readers, to touch them, to move them, but you don’t want the readers overburdened by it. It’s a precarious line for a writer to walk, and I’m not so sure I always get it right.
Not that this kind of difficulty would ever stop me. The fun in the writing comes from the challenges, and the more you test yourself, the better a writer you can become. So I’ll keep on digging, plotting and trying to aim for something a little more profound … and hopefully I’ll get there.
Here’s an excerpt from my current chapter:
Dáidu took a seat beside his brother. “I’m surprised Oaván managed to avoid crushing her. He might as well have been a giant bull seal the way he flopped himself on top of her.”
His mother gave him an offhanded cuff at that remark as she approached Oaván with the intent of doctoring his wound. “Hold your tongue. Don’t you dare speak ill of your brother for that. I don’t like that he put himself in that kind of danger, but shielding her like that took great courage. Your father would have done as much for me.” She drew in a hissing breath as she examined the tear in her son’s flesh, the spear point having scored his skin a good three inches across and more than half an inch deep. It oozed blood steadily. “What a mess.” She glanced over at Dáidu. “But at least you prevented it from piercing through to his vitals. That might have been enough to kill him.”
Dáidu’s brow furrowed and his look darkened. “All they saw him as was as an obstacle to their prey…something unnecessary to be cleared out of the way. I have yet to meet a woman worth that kind of sacrifice, her included.”
Oaván didn’t like that remark at all. He cast Dáidu an annoyed look over his shoulder, cringing as his mother daubed blood away from his wound. “What do you mean by that? She’s likely to be carrying my child. She doesn’t deserve to be slaughtered for her skin.”
“And you don’t deserve to be slaughtered in order to preserve it,” Dáidu said, “Especially not for a woman who has already decided to doom your child to the life of a beast for the sake of her own freedom. Why would you care what happens to her? She’s just like most of the women we’ve run into, selfish and self-important.”
“Don’t allow Rana to skew your perspective of my entire gender,” Jaská muttered, peering closely at the jagged edges of her younger son’s tear. She had already begun to thread one of her bone needles with sinew, having brought along noaidi healing supplies in case of an emergency. “You don’t see me as selfish and self-important, do you?”
Dáidu bowed his head and lowered his gaze. “You’re different, Mother.”
Lifting the needle closer to the light emanating from the fire, Jaská chuckled. “Why, because I’m Haldi? No, that wouldn’t be it, because Lieđđi is too. Well, maybe it’s because you’re biased then. I’m far from perfect, Dáidu. You don’t see me as I really am because I’m a mother to you first and a person to you second. But I’m a woman just like any other. All women are different. We all have our individual strengths and our individual flaws. You just see Lieđđi in a negative light because you know what it’s like to be hurt, and you’re worried she’s going hurt your brother. He needs to face his own trials, ávvu. He needs to make his own choices and learn from his own mistakes.”
“He already makes plenty of those. He doesn’t need someone like her to make things worse.”
More tomorrow J
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