His life was a book of his own writing, one orderly page after another.
-William Joyce, The Fantastic
Flying Books of Morris Lessmore
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In writing, there are scenes or sequences of scenes that are more
enjoyable to write than others. These are usually scenes that come to me in
daydreams months or years before I reach their point in the story timeline,
which I look forward to with excited anticipation and which absorb me so fully
when I’m writing them that I don’t move from my keyboard for stretches of seven
or eight hours, well into the A.M. and well past the point of starvation and
exhaustion. In no real order, here are six that have stuck with me as
favourites to write, and favourites to reread as the author responsible for
channeling these words from wherever it is that stories come from. I wonder
whether these were your favourite scenes to read as well?
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| By Ginny from USA (book sale loot) [<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>], <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABook_sale_loot_(4552277923).jpg">via Wikimedia Commons</a> |
1. Aristea confronts Renatus at the end of Scarred (Scarred).
The dynamic between Renatus and Aristea is a wholly organic creation that I did
not expect or plan when I set out to write these books, but it's easily my
favourite thing about the series. I love them both in general, but I particularly
love them when they argue. They get so raw and I get to play with these toys of
mine in their most honest, accurate forms. Towards the end of Scarred, Aristea
storms into his office and comes down on him for the first time, angry about
the things he failed to tell her before she agreed to be his apprentice and the
predicament she now finds herself in. To start with, he miserably accepts her
anger, but soon fires up as well. I like their equilibrium, especially as
Aristea grows to stand up for herself and comes into her own. They have so much
reckless opinion and passion between them, but argue well without ever damaging
their relationship - not every pair can do this.
2. The forest chase (Unbidden). Fanfic followers of mine
will know of my love of forest chase scenes and my determination to wrangle
characters into a forest setting at night so I can engage them in a chase. It's
even better when the rest of the plot accommodates by letting it fit into the
wider storyline! A highlight of writing book 3 was the accommodation of this
sequence where, first, Aristea and Renatus are chasing down a suspect, but soon
after, Aristea is the target of a very dangerous sorceress. I caved and wrote
this scene the very day it came to me, sometime even before I'd finished
Chosen, and when many years later I breathlessly caught up with the storyline
and was able to transplant it, the sequence needed very little change to
fit.
3. Peter's drowning (Chosen). I don't know why this should
make a public list, and I'm sure you're all now edging uncomfortably away from
me thinking, psychopath. In the very earliest drafts of Chosen/Scarred,
back when it was a single book spanning across way too many unedited pages,
this scene was not present, and only learned about later through the scryings
of Qasim and Renatus. On a rewrite, I realised what an intriguing and powerful
story element I was choosing to omit. I had a go at writing the execution, and
thoroughly enjoyed the process of learning what had actually happened to Peter.
4. The Prague showdown (Unbidden). Originally written as being
in Johannesburg before it occurred to me that I knew nothing of the place, this
rewritten sequence allowed me to dig out my photos, post cards and travel diary
to re-explore the most magical city of all my real-world adventures: Prague. But
even on its first write, this scene was immensely satisfying to produce. I
think I knew I was on the home stretch and I knew exactly what I wanted out of
the scene, and it all poured out of my fingers for hours. I sat at my computer for days writing the lead-up (my
husband regularly came home to a totally dark house and a bewildered, starving
wife who hadn’t realised it had been seven hours of real-world time since he
left), and on the day of writing the showdown I barely moved until I finished
it at around 3A.M. I got to live it and love it all over again when I rewrote
it, and got to include lines of my favourite spoken language, Czech, in my
efforts to include more non-English dialogue in the books.
5. The water spell (Scarred). There’s this little spell
Renatus does with Aristea near the beginning of the second book and it’s quite
inconsequential, but whenever anyone says “I love the magic in your book!” this
scene, and Jadon’s explanation of how magic works in the first novel, is what
comes to mind. In a demonstration of what they’re now capable of since their
bonding, Renatus uses Aristea’s powers to encourage a burbling cupful of water
to form in her hands. Laughing, she drops it. It’s a favourite for a lot of
reasons: it’s a step forward in their friendship, it’s a rare show of magic for
the fun of it rather than for a purpose, it’s an insight into how learning
magic employs the same brain activity as any other learned skill, and it’s one
of the last things I wrote for Scarred before I sent it to the editor. It wasn’t
there in any of the early drafts and it kind of stands out as being written on
its own. I enjoy it every time I reread that moment.
6. The masquerade ball (Unbidden). Another playground I tested
out in the world of fanfiction before I presented it, polished and published,
to the real world. I saw this scene in my head years before I reached a point in
the story where Renatus would be ready to interact with this cast and before
Aristea would be skilled enough to appreciate and understand what she was being
exposed to in this extravagant party of slimy, dishonest, immoral elitists.
Unlike the forest chase, with this scene I held off and made myself wait, and
it was a glorious two solid days of aching eyes and seizing fingers to get the
whole massive sequence down. I loved every keystroke.
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
