Arrant Nonsense

Yes, I'm late, sue me. Here's something I scribbled in the Chains story in Moab...

"At least when you roast someone it's fast and clean." Her ruff flattened. "Also tastier, but that may be impolitic for me to say."

"No, no, go right ahead, why should you be any different from anyone else around here?" I slumped to the floor. "At least you say what you mean instead of pussyfooting around issues until I'm ready to scream."

"Don't judge all dragons by me. Some of them talk so much they'll make your head spin right off your shoulders with frustration."

"They want me to get married now! How am I going to get married with all this going on?" I lashed my tail. "How can I court a girl when I'm randomly leaving my body and switching consciousness with a bloody--excuse me, no offense--dragon?"

"Don't you like girls?"

"Oh, of course I like girls, they're very nice, but this is going to turn into politics again, because it won't do for me to marry just any girl, oh no. Not only must she be of royal blood, but the alliance must strengthen our ties to some other kingdom without sending the others into a tizzy because they were rejected."

"Dragon matings are much less complicated," she said sympathetically.

"Most human matings are as well. It's just when you get into royalty that it gets muddied up. Just once I'd like to dance with a girl at a ball and not worry that I'm making some sort of statement by doing it." I was venting to a dragon and should probably stop.

I really do love this thing.

And they are good.

I have to keep reminding myself that This Is Epic Fantasy, Dammit, and thus I may be a wordy bitch and toss important exposition onto the page if I want to. But I'd forgotten how much actual fun this thing is to write. When the characters are frustrated and yet being snarky in that nice understated way, it's a blast. And you know, I didn't give you a snippet last week because of my computer woes, so have a (tiny) bonus snippet:

Before I could complete the thought, I found myself in my own body once more. I staggered against the wall and slid down it until I was seated on the floor with my head between my knees. "I'd like very much for that to stop. Now would be ideal," I wheezed. But at least I wasn't bruised like before, and my shoulder, blessedly, was still in its socket. "What happened while I was gone?"

"Your two dragons," said Malcolm, his tone long-suffering, "had a fearful bloody row. The lady dragon here nearly roasted your body where it stood before I reminded her that she'd be cooking the wrong person."

continue apace. I have nothing in mind for a short story, and the new novelthing is trying to go "funny" on me without me wanting it to because it deals with Dark! Serious! Issues! that are Not!Humorous!At!All.

Which may be why it's trying to go funny on me. My brain is wired to be contrarian, and it's entirely possible that it's sick and damn tired of smacking the snot out of my characters and wants them to have fun for once.

Which would be fine.

In another story.

But I have a dragon snarking at the humans, the humans are more frustrated at the situation than afraid of it, and my entire plot has come down around my ears in a welter of THIS DOESN'T WORK IN THIS GENRE. Not that I'm particularly stuck in genre conventions per se and as a general rule, but High Fantasy does have its Rulebook and I can't do this the way it seems to want to shake out, dammit.

So. Clearly. I need to raise the stakes. What is Brock more afraid of than losing his Dad?

And no. "Getting married" is not an acceptable answer. It's the funny answer, but it's the wrong answer when his Dad is lying there, slowly dying of dragon venom poisoning.

You know... *ponders* I could save the Dad and then have him abdicate the throne. Run off and marry the Head of Protocol or something as he figures out what's really important in life. That would be funny and get him out of the way...

Not only that, but it's trying to turn funny on me, or at least trying to ramp up the snark and sarcasm. I'm not sure that's suitable for an Epic Fantasy setting. Or suitable for this story.

*headdesk x 1000*

NOT ONLY THAT. But I need to weave in about three plotlines here. I'm not sure they're weave-able. AND. I desperately need to outline it. Have I ever outlined a damn thing before in my life? Oh, hell no. Do I need to start with this? Oh, hell yes, because how else am I going to keep track of all my plot threads and where they go?

I should buy a set of index cards. Or something.

WHERE'D MY SHORT STORY MUSE GO? I'D LIKE HIM BACK, PLEASE. NOW.

It would help if I wasn't trying to do this while I'm sick.

Have something new! Like I said, working on the new thing now. I made a few notes last night and at least have a better idea of where the so-called romance in the thing is going. *evil laughter* What is it they say? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?

Anyway, have a snippet from the beginning:

Robes swirling, Malcolm swept into the corridor in front of my cell with all the officiousness his station permitted him. He crashed to a stop, crossed his arms, and fixed me with a glare. "This is a fine mess," he said as Tiana and Armand backed warily away from him.

"It's good to see you too, Malcolm," I answered. "Do you have a solution, or have you just come to shout at me? Because I'm really not in the mood."

"Do you know what your rashness has cost us?"

Right, he'd come to shout at me. My legs decided that now would be a fine time to give way, and I dropped heavily to the floor with my face in my hands. "Yes, Malcolm. I'm not stupid, no matter what you may think of me at this particular moment. Armand, Tiana, you're dismissed. If Malcolm's going to give me a telling-off, I'd rather you two not witness it."

They bowed and retreated, leaving me to Malcolm's tender mercies. "What am I going to do with you?" he sighed, deflating.

I closed my eyes. "I saw Kev cut down. I lost my temper."

"And turned what was a simple loss on the battlefield into an absolute bloody disaster." Only Malcolm could get away with addressing royalty this bluntly. His power and station, not to mention the fact that he could turn us all into toads, made him an excellent advisor who didn't sugarcoat his opinion.

OMG WRITING IS HARD.

I have a beginning, and thus my Hook/Inciting Incident.

I have the 7 Points System sitting in front of me.

I also have no idea where I want this character to end up at the end of the story. Wiser, certainly. Happier/sadder? Up for grabs. Do I save his dad, or kill him dead after a try/fail cycle of epic proportions, and thus leave his unready, under-twenty-years-old head wearing the crown?

Who the hell is my villain? Do I even have a villain? I have a dragon. I'm not sure he counts. I had an idea for a villain/contagonist, but that person has yet to make an appearance (that I know of), and her entire raison d'etre has gotten lost in the noise anyway. So, obviously, I need to have someone plotting behind the scenes for my Hero's downfall. Perhaps, even, someone he trusts, someone I've already introduced. *flips through characters* Hm.

Then there's the Love Interest aspect. Remember, my Romance Bone has suffered an irreducible compound fracture. There's no way, with me writing it, that at least the middle of a Romance isn't Bad and Wrong, even if I somehow wrench a Happily Ever After for it out of my ass. But he's the Prince, and next in line for the throne, and he needs to get married. And if he doesn't actually love any of the women who are being thrown at his head, but instead has a thing for the lovely (but commoner-bred) Head of Protocol--hey, there's me, being Bad and Wrong again, but no one ever said this was going to be easy, right?

Not only that, but this is in first person. I love first person. If I could get away with writing in first person all the time, I so would. But I'm not sure it works for this particular story. At the same time, I don't particularly feel like changing it.

And scribbling this thing without an outline feels wrong. Understand (o my new readers) that I'm a Pantser rather than an Outliner. My first draft, generally, is my outline. But in this case, with a thing I'm not sure what it is just yet, not outlining seems like a Bad Idea.

CRAPPITY. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO OR WHAT HE'S FIGHTING. AAUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.

Ben going on the back burner lasted as long as I remembered that there was a point of my own canon that I needed to fix at the start of the thing. I managed to fix it (a wolfsbane net should be draped over someone lying on his back, not wrapped completely around his body, lest the part that is getting no light and squished in the bargain up and dies and dumps very many nasty toxins into that person's body, thus killing him much faster than you might want to, and boy is that sentence a mess, like I care), after much swearing and tearing out of hair. My canon is once again internally consistent, go, me.

And I have also realized that the (original) first part of the Chains story...doesn't actually work. A few days ago, I scribbled an actual beginning to the thing, and now the part that I scribbled before, which I thought was the beginning? Isn't, nor does it work. I can probably salvage pieces of it and finagle those in somehow, but I think my Captain of the Guards is going to morph into a Head of Protocol or something similar. Because my Master at Arms can do double duty as a Captain of the Guards (it's a small kingdom), and I need a Head of Protocol to deal with the fact that my Prince needs to get married.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I don't want this to turn into a novel. Novels are hard.

Er. That is, I can haz robgoodfella's new book, released today, titled "Roadkill."

Seriously, you guys. Ben's sarcasm has nothing on Cal's. He could take lessons. In fact, I'm taking lessons, because this woman has things to teach me about writing.

Speaking of Ben. Ben is going on the back burner for now. For which, honestly, he's probably grateful. I mean, there's no sense in working on a sequel for a novel that's not even sold yet, amirite?

THEREFORE. I am working on the Chains story. And this one is going to get a semblance of an outline--at least to the halfway point--based around the template that Dan Wells outlined at LTUE. I don't know if it's going to be a novel yet or not. We'll see, as the thing gets fleshed out. But considering the problems my protag has, and the number of people vying for his attention (not to mention his hand in marriage--it's good to be the King, or first in line for the Kingship, in this case), it could easily, I think, be one.

But I'm not going to be upset if it turns out to be a short story either. Seeing as that's the milieu that's chosen me, it would be normal. For once.

Speaking of Dan Wells, his novel "I Am Not a Serial Killer" drops at the end of the month, and I urge you all to go out and buy it. I picked up the UK version (yeah, he got it published overseas first and it's doing gangbusters over there, OMG) at CONduit last year, and it's brilliant. Totally cannot wait to pick up the UK version of the sequel at this year's CONduit--he did a reading at LTUE and I thought I was going to die of squee.

Oh, good God, no.

I just now realized, this second, that my protag is going to need to get married.

Not only that, but I have three good candidates, each of whose fathers will have his own special motives for wanting his daughter to marry him.

This is a love square. Except, of course, it's all very political and maybe he wants to marry someone else entirely because that's who he actually loves, and...

*headdesks repeatedly*

I AM NOT A ROMANCE WRITER. MY ROMANCE BONE HAS SUFFERED AN IRREDUCIBLE COMPOUND FRACTURE. DO NOT WANT. WE HAVE ALL SEEN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I WRITE ROMANCE AND THAT'S NOT GOOD FOR ANYONE. I WILL RUN THIS RIGHT INTO THE WALL OF WRONG. ARGH ARGH ARGH.

Not to mention the whole "Hey, he's locked himself in the dungeon because he swaps bodies with a dragon sometimes with no warning."

Just shoot me.

I managed to scribble over a thousand words of Inciting Incident today.

No, that scene still isn't done, why do you ask?

But it's getting there. I feel good about today, and I feel good about the story. Still don't know how it ends or how long it's going to actually be, but I like it.

*sigh* I can write an actual SF short just...anytime now. Y'know?

But, hey. I take what the Muse gives me. I realized a long, long time ago that I have no control over Process. Like, none.