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oscar’s story: planning

Short Pieces

More planning for Oscar

No brand new words tonight; instead, I’ve been taking down notes about the Oscar story and trying to get some idea of the other involved characters, and what the plot might be.

After my chat in email with my editor serasempre, I’ve pretty much decided that this will be part of the collection of Faerie Blood universe shorts. Which therefore leads me to affirm that the other major character in the story should be the obligatory Warder, and it’s likely that the antagonist will be one of the fey. I’m not sure whether Unseelie or Seelie yet, or whether he or she will be aligned with one of the Courts at all.

I have only the beginning picture of the Warder in question, but I’m pretty sure she’s somewhat older than Oscar. Old enough that she is established in her power, but young enough to be still in her prime. Old enough though that she might look askance at Oscar as a potential romantic figure–and that’s okay anyway because if there’s any romance in this story, I actually want to downplay it hard. Touch more on the hint of potential rather than state anything outright, and focus instead on these two characters reaching out to one another because of their common love of music; hey, if it works for Aubrey and Maturin, it should work for Oscar and this Warder. 😉

The setting is rural and coastal, although I haven’t nailed down where yet to my satisfaction. Nor am I a hundred percent sure that it’s set in “current day”; still thinking about that. (Since the trio of stories I have proposed to Deena will have one period piece and one current day, this one could I think be either.)

The plot that’s starting to take shape is that a migration of Big Creatures–some form of sea-based dragon–is violently interrupted when one or more of them are hunted and killed. My Warder woman is all about putting a stop to that, but it’ll turn out that it has to be Oscar who’ll be challenged to the musical duel, with the stakes being the lives of the remaining dragons. And my antagonist, not being an idiot, will be clever enough to yoink Oscar out of a Warder’s territory first. Muahaha.

More than that I don’t think I’ll get into, because then I’ll start getting spoilery. Suffice to say that the story is beginning to take shape.

January 11, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Oh hey look Chapter 20!

I’ve finally pulled through the end of Chapter 19, and now I’m in Chapter 20! I’ve noticed that Chapter 19’s the only one in this draft of Lament thus far to have actually gained a couple hundred words, but that’s okay–I’d actually pulled in content from Chapter 17, after all. Given how much I’ve edited out of the chapter to make up for that, winding up with only a couple hundred extra words works for me.

Chapter 20 is one of the smaller ones in the last stretch of the book, so I’m not sure yet how much I’ll edit out of it yet. But it’s good to get the momentum going again.

Meanwhile, I’ve pinged my editor serasempre to start the official conversation about what Drollerie and I will be doing next. We do not have official details nailed down by any means. However, interest has been expressed both in Bone Walker and in the shorter pieces set in the Faerie Blood universe.

Which leads me into thinking that Oscar’s story may well wind up in the FB universe now, and and that it could wind up being a novella. That’d work quite a bit for me. I’m thinking that Oscar’s story, Elizabeth and Ross’s story, and Millicent’s origin story would be a lovely trio of things to have in one book.

Writing activity for the 8th

Small progress through Chapter 19 of Lament, pretty much, since most of my day had to go to other activities. I’m on page 19 of 23 at this point, though, so if I apply myself I should be able to finish the word count reduction for this chapter tomorrow!

I’ve been continuing to mull Oscar’s story in the back of my brain, and while I don’t have a real core plot idea for it yet, I do have a couple of beginning ideas. One, it’s possible this story may be non-urban fantasy, by which I mean, contemporary fantasy NOT in an urban setting. It may be rural/small town, and specifically, coastal. Two, I’m keying off a remark solarbird made to me that has stuck with me: “tuba is piccolo for whales”. The idea here being that a tuba is one of the few mortal instruments that can dip down into the range of the deep, primal music I want to be part of the plot of this story. This implies that there will be Big Creatures involved with this story.

Possibly whales. Possibly dragons.

Character research counts

Yesterday’s general exhaustion continues, so no new words tonight–instead, I started listening to the album of tuba concertos I purchased from iTunes, just to see what it stirs up in the way of story ideas.

I’m finding that just jotting down notes about what the various pieces make me think of is a useful exercise. This, I think, will give me some concepts I can maybe work into my boy’s story somehow.

And I can definitely tell just by listening to the first four pieces on the album that one, a smoothly-played tuba actually sounds pretty awesome. Especially if the piece is an allegro one, which gives you deep, fast, runs of notes that can be evocative of something big moving very quickly. I’m finding myself thinking of bears, of avalanches in storms, of dolphins racing whales deep underwater. I need to listen to the rest of the album and maybe another one or two to know for sure, but I definitely find myself wondering if this story’s going be in a non-urban setting. (Which would sit well with me, given that I’m in the mood to avoid a lot of the tropes you find in urban fantasy right now, and writing a non-urban fantasy would be an excellent way to do that.)

Two, it’s kind of unfortunate that the particular recording I’m listening to has obvious places where the performer is hauling in a breath, but on the other hand, I expect that’s almost unavoidable given how much air you need to get through a tuba to get it to make decent music. This however tells me that my boy Oscar, whatever social skills and graces he may like, has excellent lung capacity. 😉 It also tells me that I totally want him to be able to play smoothly and liquidly, like several of the stretches of music I’m hearing on here.

(For those of you who are interested, the tracks I’ve listened to so far are three parts of a concerto by Edward Gregson, and now I’m working on a concerto by Roger Steptoe. The Vaughn Williams in F minor is on here, too; I’ll get to that.)

Three, listening to music in the name of character research rocks.

ETA: Correcting Vaughn Williams’ last name since both kathrynt and wrog have told me I got it wrong. Oops! Thanks, folks.

January 7, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti