"Hero's Quest" Update 6-20-08

As of this writing, I am on page 253 of the first draft of "Hero's Quest." It's another milestone to be sure, but the novel is far from over. Now, I am approaching the closing of Act Two with perhaps another thirty pages to go in it. Then the final stretch of the story begins.

As of a couple days ago, I began reading "Elantris" by Brandon Sanderson. I chose to begin reading this book for two reasons: one, because Brandon Sanderson has been contracted to write the last book in "The Wheel of Time" series after the untimely death of one of my favorite authors, Mr. Robert Jordan. I wanted to size the new guy up before "A Memory of Light" comes out next year. The reason for choosing the book "Elantris" specifically had to do with the fact that it is Mr. Sanderson's first published novel. Frankly, I wanted to see how I compared. I'm paying particularly close attention to the craft in "Elantris" and to be quite honest (and I'm not meaning to be egotistical or delusional based upon your vantage point) as I'm reading it, I'm thinking, "I can do that." This isn't to downplay Mr. Sanderson at all - I'm actually quite enjoying his book. It's very well written. But delusional or not, I'm pretty sure that I can write just as well. I'm not saying my first draft of "Hero's Quest" is this good. But I can revise the craft into something that'll work.

What I've come to realize is this: my synopsis was like being told of my characters. Finding out about their existence. This first draft is like being introduced to them. I'm starting to know who they are as people but only on the surface. And the revision I see being like getting to really know them. Find out what makes them tick, what really drives them.

I'm seeing hints of that in the first draft and the farther into it I'm getting, the better I'm getting to know my protagonists. They are beginning to take a life of their own, beyond what I may have known about them in the synopsis. Take one character, Joeh Melora, for example. In the synopsis, he was simply the miller of a small village. Yet, suddenly in my first draft, I found out that he's an ex-soldier and somewhat of a political outcast. These weren't things that I was aware of before I began writing scenes with him. But as I did, these details and others leaked out and really helped to flesh out and explain some of the actions he takes in the synopsis.

The structure of the story was there: now, it's taking on a life of its own. The details are filling themselves in with very little prodding of my own. I was actually talking to Craig about it the other night and went into a bit of detail regarding a scene, which I won't go into here. But in the example I shared with him was one more way of the story working out some of its own motivations - things that happened in the synopsis as a need to move the story forward but finding a logical and almost obvious explanation for those things to occur within the context of this world.

It really is beginning to become its own beast. The ending, while essentially being the same, is growing. I've known where it was going, but in the synopsis left more breathing room for the details of the ending than I did the rest of the story. And as I grow closer, those details are becoming clearer and clearer in my own mind. I'm starting to see a couple of new chapters that I hadn't previously known existed making their way into the story. And that's okay. That's logically where the tale and these characters need to journey and so I'll let it go that way. The results for how everything wraps up will be the same, but the path is slightly different.

How so? Well, I can't tell or it would give things away. But I will say: someone who was supposed to die, doesn't. It doesn't make sense in light of the things the characters have done without my prodding. And this character's life serves more purpose in the final scene than his death would have. There's other stuff, to be sure, but those are details that would give too much away.

In the meantime, I'm estimating another hundred pages or so. Possibly one hundred and fifty pages, but not much more than that. I'm getting close to being two-thirds of the way done. And that's a good feeling.