Nov 20, 2015

Hey all:

Getting ready to fly home for Thanksgiving to experience the four F's: Family, food, football, flatulence. Dad, have the Scotch ready.

New chapter is up. The final chapter of Part Three. Can you guess what happens? I'm not one of those writers who think a fantasy story requires endless twists and and turns to be effective, and I'm not a huge fan of the "predictable swerve"--you know, that BIG moment you know is coming, when the hero is charging toward some kind of climax or apotheosis and the story takes an abrupt turn. Someone dies unexpectedly; someone betrays someone we care about; someone you thought was a lowly cowherd turns out to be a god walking the earth. Stuff like that. The moment (and it is a moment, often taking up no more than a page or two) isn't telegraphed, exactly, but nor does it fall from the sky. The best of these--like the Red Wedding--can be a clincher, propelling the action forward while drawing the reader deeper into the tale. But the worst--which are far more prevalent--can bring the story to a dead halt and cause the reader to shake his head and wince at the author's inane compulsion to sacrifice verisimilitude for shock value. I prefer to build up to a key narrative moment slowly, not just over pages but chapters, and then let it unfold naturally (and I value when other authors do this as well--George Martin, Mervyn Peake, Diana Gabaldon, along with Melville and Dickens, are/were masters of this technique). No swerving, no twisting. So, if you've read this far, you've probably already guessed what happens to Richard at the end of Part Three and have a pretty good idea of the kind of place he is going to and what he will need to do.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.

-M.