Slow but Steady

I didn’t add as much as I wanted to this week, but I had a good reason. I have hit part of the story where I am making major changes and I have to think through what I want each character to be doing and which characters I am cutting and which are being brought into the plots I have going.

I have a pretty good idea where I am going to go for this draft, I can (and probably will) make adjustments when I go through it all again if it doesn’t quite work.

This week I have really leaned into my discovery writer tendencies to work out some of these plots by just starting a scene and seeing what happens as I write. That can be pretty slow as the characters often ask questions I don’t know the answer to and I have to keep stopping to figure out the plot holes they punched in my story.

While I have not yet done my writing for today, I do have this draft just over 54k now and I should be able to hit 60k without too much issue with some of the ideas I have settled on for the next part I will be writing.

Here’s a little snippet from this week’s labors:

Aila turned and found Zuriel approaching. His eyes flicked between them, lingering a moment on her before settling on his friend.

“I was just heading out.” Halvar lied. Aila looked at him with narrowed eyes, but he ignored her.

“Did you eat all my food?” Zuriel gave him a look which was probably supposed to invoke fear, but there was far too much affection obvious in his bearing.

Halvar rolled his eyes. “I did not eat all your food.” He nodded toward Aila. “Aila here was just telling me a great idea she had to help with your training.”

“What?” Aila spun and gaped at him.

“Really?” Zuriel looked at her with such a nakedly hopeful expression, it sliced through the flair of irritation she suddenly felt toward the naim.

“Something about plants?” Halvar scrunched his face up as he looked at her, a note of apology in his eyes.

Back at it

This week went really well for writing. I added a little less than 6k to this draft and I have written past the few scenes I outlined after pulling the outline from the draft I got interrupted writing. I got it over 50k now. Woop! I am pretty excited about that. I am still very much discovery writing this version of the story despite pauses to think through how each of the story strands are going to come together.

I have a few of the side and more minor characters getting a promotion to “important to the story” which has been a lot of fun. I keep finding little quirks in how the magic works that add and fill out the story. I guess that having a world with four distinct magic systems leaves plenty of room for that sort of thing. And man is it fun to play with.

Here’s a little snippet from the excitement I got to write this week:

A curse broke from him as he realized he had overshot his landing. He hit the ground but couldn’t slow enough to keep himself from flying over the edge. He brought up a block to stop his forward motion as something wrapped around his waist and jerked him back at the same time, another block formed beneath him.

With a grunt he slammed into the platform behind him and his legs folded as the block beneath him rose rapidly. Soon he was on his back in the dirt, a slew of ice and lightning and the occasional ball of fire, flying just over the edge where he’d just been dangling.

“Zuriel!”

Staying low, Aaron rolled over and found Aila’s green eyes looking at him with a mix of relief and fear. She released the plant link, and he looked down to find a vine wrapped tightly around his torso.

“Thanks.”

“Same.”

Writing again

Getting sick derailed me considerably. It’s been nearly a month since I’ve written consistently but now that I have pulled the outline from what I have written and planned out the next series of scenes, I have started trying to get back to my 1k a day goal. I have not succeeded yet, but I have added a little since I got derailed and I am excited about some changes I made to one of the anchor scenes I had coming up. It works much better now.

That said, the draft currently sits just over 44k. I am still planning on about 120k so I am about 36% of the way through my plan.

Here’s a little snippet:

Aaron shook his head and walked back to the far end of the garden. “I don’t need to be good for three days, I need to be able to use all this magic I have.”

“You start at the beginning, Zuriel. You’re not going to face him tomorrow.”

Aaron formed his steps and started climbing. “You don’t actually know that.”

Slight Pause

After recovering from being sick for seven days, I am rereading the 43k I wrote in this draft, summarizing each scene and noting the purpose of it. I am just 12 or so pages from finishing that. Once I finish that, I intend to build a rough outline for how I want to move from where I let off to where I will end the book.

It’s been nice to read it again and still think it’s worth keeping.

Here’s a little snippet I enjoyed on the reread:

“You are an idiot.”

Aaron turned to look at Halvar who sat in a chair he’d pulled up beside the bed.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“You don’t even drink alcohol, what were you thinking drinking a tonic in a world you know almost nothing about, called Star Nectar that smells like sugar and tastes like fire? It literally tastes like fire, Zuriel.”

“Yeah, I kinda remember that.”

“Do you remember anything else?” Halvar raised his eyebrow and leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest.

“No.” Aaron answered reluctantly.

Both a Terrible and Very Fun Week

This week I was taken out by a migraine. Settled in Monday night and hung around until late Wednesday morning. This took me off my 1k a day pace, but not by much. I did get just over 6k added bringing the draft up to 41k.

The writing I did get to do this week was so much fun. I have reached the part of the story that breaks from the last draft so rather than transferring and making minor changes to scenes, I am crafting entirely new ones and building out altered and strengthened plot lines and character arcs.

This has been so fun. I got to write an adorably awkward early scene with Aila and Zuriel as well as a darkly fun scene with the minor baddie where he is gaining actually sinister attributes.

Here’s a little snippet from how Zuriel’s training is going:

“You have already become so much more than I ever thought you would be.” Halvar said, a soft awe to his voice.

Aaron’s smile faded and Pyre nudged his side with his warm snout. He ran his hand on the dragon’s scales and tried to offer assurances that they’d fly soon. Then he turned his attention to Halvar.

“I can’t even handle a real sword. I can’t keep my thoughts from barging in on other people’s minds. I can’t pull fire without blacking out and I can’t form enough stairs to mount the dragon I barely know how to talk to.”

Halvar chuckled. “You’re just going to gloss over the fact that you have three magics and a dragon, then?”

Aaron sighed. “I’ll count them as a plus when I can do anything useful with them.” Halvar stood and offered his hand to help Aaron up. The potion Cyrus had given him had helped, but he’d pushed himself harder than he ever had in his life. And all he’d managed was to leave himself so useless he’d probably need someone to carry him back to his room.

Another Solid Week

I added a little over 7k to The Shadow of Vale this week bringing the word count nearly to 35k.

The amount of the previous draft I am transferring over is really surprising and quite exciting. While I have made significant changes to some of the plot lines and characters, there is still so much that I am finding just works with minimal changes. I think changing some of the context is making some of the scenes work better than I thought they did originally.

Despite getting really sidetracked by another WIP this morning, I did get my 1k in today to round out a solid week of writing.

I also did a fair bit of work on some out of sequence scenes that got stuck in my head. That might have been another 1200 words or so, but they won’t actually count until I get to fold them into the draft. 😉

So much was transfer, it was actually kind hard to pick a snippet, but here we are:

“What’s that?”

“A dummy sword.” He pushed it closer to Aaron who took it reluctantly.

“Shouldn’t I be training with a real sword?”

Cyrus rolled his eyes and drew his sword again. He turned and offered the hilt to Aaron while taking the dummy sword back.

With a grin, Aaron took hold of the sword, the tip of which immediately dropped into the dirt when Cyrus released the blade. “Oh! It’s heavy.”

Cyrus sighed and ran his hand over his face. “This is going to be a long day.”

Making good progress

Since last week I have added 12,800 words to the latest draft bringing it over 27k.

Part of that was how much I didn’t want to change. There were several scenes that I transferred with some adjustments and a couple that I copy pasted as is.

This morning I worked through a new portion of the story, where I am making adjustments to some of the character arcs and plot lines and I am feel very good about how it came out, especially since I was stumped when I sat down to write this morning and assumed I wouldn’t hit my 1k goal for the day (I flew past it).

In celebration of another good week, here are a few snippets:

Aaron’s mouth dropped open. “I’m your link? Your rider?”

Agreement.

With that, Pyre stood and pushed an image of Aaron climbing invisible stairs onto the dragon’s back.

Still in shock, Aaron stood dumbstruck a moment until he pushed the image in his mind once more.

“I, I don’t know how to do that.”

The image returned with the added detail of ripples of energy beneath his feet as he jogged up the invisible stairs.

“No, I get that it’s naim magic, I just, I don’t know how to use it like that yet. I haven’t even been here for a day, Pyre. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Pyre huffed and reached his head toward Aaron, his lips pulling back from his teeth.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Aaron held out his hands and stepped back quickly. “Do not throw me. I’ve never been so close to literally having the crap scared out of me.”

“He needs you, Aila.”

Aila frowned. “Who?”

“Zuriel.” He turned away, looking at nothing as he continued. “You are the last daughter of Abner on Vale, at least as far as well know. You’re a light. He must face down Samael, and I must ensure he survives that, but you,” he met her eye once more. “You give us all hope for what comes after.”

This Rewrite/Revision is going well

Writing is going fantastic. I could not be happier with how the 4th draft is flowing at the moment. This draft now sits over 13k, 37 pages.

I am very happy with adding 8k in a week.

One thing I am noticing as I write this draft is how much more effective I have gotten with my POVs. I realize how to use them now to convey not only setting and plot, but character work. You get a view of Vale through the lens of the character for their POV, which can get a little confusing in the beginning while Aaron is still coming to grips with his new identity, but I think I can make it work.

Aila is getting a lot more POVs this time, so after all these years she is finally getting proper main character treatment.

There are a few early scenes I think benefit greatly from being written from a different character’s view point. A lot of it in the previous draft was from Aaron’s pov and the poor man just doesn’t know what is going on this early in the story so adding in Halvar and Aila I think has made things a lot clearer for the reader.

Two snippets in celebration of a good week:

The familiar sights and smells of the California trail fell away, and the strangely exotic trees and disconcerting sky took their place, settling in his gut like a stone.

“It’s real.”

As he stared into the strangely glowing trees, absently noting the traces of purple in the veins of the leaves, he felt more than saw Ray stand beside him.

“Are you Halvar?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

Aaron nodded and blinked as he noticed the nymph. He looked at her, really seeing her for the first time, understanding that she was an actual person and not something his mind had invented. She was beautiful with kind grey eyes and an oval face framed by light blonde hair, just a shade darker than her flawless, pale skin. She was small, several inches shorter than him, but she stood with a sort of confidence that lay claim to the space around her.

“This is Aila.”

—

Another roar drew all eyes just off to their left as the sound was accompanied by the noise of splintering wood and soon after, crashing trees.

“What’s Pyre?” Aaron whispered.

“A dragon.” Cyrus answered.

“A dragon?” Aaron repeated in shock. “Like, fire-breathing giant lizard?”

“He can do fire, ice, and lightning.” Cyrus answered as if it were a minor point, his eyes still scanning the trees. “Move!” He called and the group started forward as the sounds drew closer.

I have news

This week I had a bit of an epiphany about The Shadow of Vale. I realized where the story has a bit of a natural break that would lend it to be multiple books. I have had this idea before, but I haven’t had this clear of an idea as to how to execute it before.

I decided to print out my abandoned 3rd draft to see what I wanted to keep and was shocked to find that for the first time, I didn’t want to gut and rewrite it. The scenes themselves need work, but they don’t need to be changed completely. I could see what was wrong with them and what I need to do to make the story work better.

I don’t really know how to explain how excited I am that I might have found the version of this story that works after two decades of picking at it. This story is old enough to drink and I might finally be getting close to a version of it that I can actually publish and get in the hands of eager readers.

Wednesday I started the Fourth draft which now has just over 5k in it. My goal for this book is about 120k. Given that I hadn’t quite reached the stopping point in the last draft which I abandoned at 87K, and with some character and subplot cuts I need to make, I think that’s a workable length.

I do want to have a solid plan for the rest of the story before I do publish this one, even if I do get it to a finished state, but I don’t foresee that being an issue. I do know how the story ends.

For the first time in a while, I am happy to share a little snippet. Enjoy!

—

“Wait,” Ray grabbed Aaron’s arm as he passed. “Just tell me what happened.”

Aaron pulled his arm free and rushed out of the room. Ray was on his heels as he descended the stairs and grabbed his keys. He wasn’t going to the trail this time.

“How far down the trail where you when it happened?”

Aaron ignored the question he shouldn’t have known to ask and slipped behind the wheel of his beat-up Toyota. Was it safe to drive while you were having a mental breakdown? Probably not. He started the car.

Hello!

Just wanted to poke my head in and give the minimal update I have for The Shadow of Vale.

While I have not written anything this past month, I have had it simmering in the background as I work on other stories. I have a better idea of what themes I want to explore in the next portion of the story. Some ideas I am toying with for my Phoenix Bound story are also sparking some ideas for The Shadow of Vale as the magics and races play off each other since they exist in the same universe.

I will probably scribble out a few scene ideas for the next portion once I solidify them a little more. It’s taking some time to move from having nothing but the understanding that they will get married, and filling out what impact that has on them, the main plot, and other characters. This portion didn’t exist in any previous drafts because this is the first time I’ve had them marry before the conclusion of the main plot, so I don’t have much to build on. The things that worked with mutual pining aren’t necessarily going to work with them married. There was a plot line of them both toying with the idea of marrying other people, for example. That has obviously been nixed.

All that is to say, I am quite enjoying this new set up of working on something simpler (despite occasionally growing bored with it) and letting this simmer in the background. Takes some of the pressure off and lets me get creative with it in a new way.

Plus, I am building new writing skills as I work on a more solidified story.

Thanks for reading! Till next time.

-Michelle