On Friday Daniel Abraham called together the troops, Walter Jon Williams, Carrie Vaughn, Ian Tregillis, Victor Milan, Ty Frank and me to help him work through the major story arcs for his new five book fantasy series that he’s getting ready to pitch to his publisher. Carrie had driven down from Colorado to see this process in action. For those of you who might be new readers at my blog, the plot break is something I brought back from Hollywood (sounds rather like a virus, but it’s actually a good thing).
I brought the white board and dry erase markers, Daniel provided limitless coffee, iced tea, coke, and pizza for lunch, Carrie provided brownies and I supplied the oatmeal, raisin, chocolate chip cookies, and we spent the day exploring a new world at its inception. Here’s a picture —
Daniel had done a lot of thinking about what makes fantasy work. (Check out his blog at bram452.livejournal.com for his thoughts on the subject with additional analysis by George R.R. Martin, Steve Stirling, Walter Jon Williams, Ian Tregillis and me. The other issue Daniel has been pondering is the whole idea of accessibility. What is it that pulls a reader or a viewer into a book or a television series and keeps them reading/watching.
In addition to all the philosophical underpinnings Daniel had also prepared a length document with his thoughts about the characters — which ones would carry the view point, the magic system (very creepy), the villain — how to make him first sympathetic and then tragic, but all the time keeping him evil, etc. etc.
We began by analyzing the view point characters, their arcs, what they wanted, places in the five books where they might connect, and so forth. Some of these character moments actually provided the tent pole scenes that were going to become important within each book. During the discussions we began to realize that one of the projected POV characters just wasn’t working. We kept trying, but he finally got demoted to important character, but not someone in whose head we needed to spend time. Scenes and dialogue began to suggest themselves. Daniel was scribbling on the board, and then it was time for pizza.
Fortified by cheese, carbs and sugar Daniel erased the character names, and instead wrote in Book One, Book Two, etc. He then wrote down the final scene in each book, and we back filled from there. Since we knew what had to happen to each character at roughly this point in the series, it wasn’t too hard. It’s surprisingly helpful if you can anchor that final scene, another way to put it — if you know how the book or script ends — everything else starts to fall into place. If you’ve got some of the big tent pole scenes it becomes even easier. Then the smaller scenes just suggest themselves. You know what’s got to happen to carry you from tent pole to tent pole and ultimately to the conclusion.
At five o’clock Daniel had to head off to pick up his wife at work, and we all retired onto the back porch to chat and watch the afternoon thunderheads building. The sky got darker and darker, the wind began to gust around the house, and rain started falling. Kat and Daniel’s dogs, especially the Great Dane, were not happy so I went into the house to bring them into the laundry room and out of the storm. Suddenly the loudest sound I have ever heard ripped through the air. The Dane when from the biggest dog in the world to trying to emulate a Peakinese. I ran out to check on the crowd on the porch, and into a babble of conversation. Ty had seen the lighting arcing across the supports of the porch toward Ian and Walter, small tree branches had rained down — it could have been a real bad day for the science fiction field. Carrie and I took pictures of the tree where it had been scarred by lightening.
But Daniel says this tells very little of the story. He climbed on the roof of his house to survey the _scorch_ marks, and the places where masonry had been _blown_ out of the chimney. Yikes! He said he’ll send me a photo. Walter and Ty kept talking about how they group on the porch were going to get superpowers, and then asking me what superpower I’d received only to add with mock sympathy — “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t get any superpowers.” I think my superpower was _not being on the frigging porch when lightening hit the house_!
Daniel and Kat returned and we learned that he’d literally looked over at Kat as they were driving, and said, “I hope that didn’t hit our house.” After recovering our shattered nerves with more brownies and cookies we actually managed to go back to work. As we sat looking, with satisfaction, at the board, Daniel said quietly — it looks like a historical, a history of events in a different world. Aside from one element of magic there are no trolls, elves, dragons, etc. That engendered a discussion of: “Do you actually need the trappings that we’ve come to associate with high fantasy?” Our conclusion — yes, you do. You may not have to call them elves, trolls, dwarves, etc., but you have to give the reader a different world. This isn’t to say you can’t do a mock historical and do it very well, check out Guy Gavriel Kay, www.brightweavings.com but that wasn’t what Daniel wanted to create.
By now it was dinner time, and the idea of other races was something Daniel wanted to process. So we went off for Greek food, and then I headed back up the hill to Santa Fe. It had been a very productive, fun (and alarming) day. So, that was how I spent my Friday.
