“Daughter of Blood” (The Wall Of Night #3) Q&A Thursday
And here it is, the very first Daughter of Blood Q&A Thursday that I’ll be running all this month, as part of celebrating the book while it’s a Kindle Monthly Deal.
So don’t let me run out of questions, OK?! 😉
And a big thank you to my four Questioneers for the inaugural Thursday!
They’re all great questions and I’m answering them in no particular order, except that I’m starting with Phoebe because hers was the very first question received. And Sandy’s questions dovetails so nicely with Phoebe’s it’s the logical second-of-the-blocks. 🙂
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Phoebe: Do you plan your books out in chunks or do you plan out the arc for the entire book at once? They’re pretty hefty – just thinking bc could impact the addition of random side characters for plot progression etc.
They are pretty hefty, so no surprises that the writing thereof can be a hefty process too. 🙂 In terms of planning, I’ve had a pretty clear idea of the story and the big hits of what’s going to happen since the outset, a statement that’s true of both the series as a whole and the three books completed to date. So there’s always an overarching plan for the story as a whole, with a secondary overarching plan for each book within that, that’s pretty much “whole and compleat” in my head.
The tricky part is always the material between those big hits. I think of it as being on a journey, with all the stops (e.g. cities and points of interest) clearly marked, but there’s often a variety of ways, such as roads or hiking/cycle paths or riverboats, that can get you there. And although I can have an idea of the preferred route between main story events as the characters set out, the route itself can generate unforeseen circumstances that affect how the story is told.
Characters, for example, tend to develop a life of their own, so they can react in ways that surprise me, including how they interact with other characters. Sometimes, too, those interactions can be profound enough that the story must adapt to accommodate them. And because the development of a story is an organic process, no amount of forward planning can anticipate all those potential interactions and adjustments, so I believe its better not to try but give the story space to breathe and grow.
Having said that, that doesn’t mean I can’t and don’t/won’t firmly rein in characters and plot lines when they seem bent on developing a “side story” that does not advance the main storyline. In fact, realizing I’m being “pixie-led” by a plot thread or characters is a major tool in my Author Survival Toolbox. 🙂
A Daughter specific example that I hope may illustrate the evolutionary process and the role of minor characters is the Grayharbor section where Kalan and Faro’s paths intersect. The fact that they would meet there, that the meeting would involve the Sea fleet and Kalan returning to the Wall by ship, and that the interactions would also include ill-disposed warrior kind, was part of the story arc from the outset. Elements that evolved out of the previous book, The Gathering of the Lost, included that Kalan would be travelling with two Emerian warhorses, and that the ill-disposed warrior kind would be the Sword warriors returning home: my initial story arc was undecided as to whether the warriors would be Night, Blood, or Swords but the evolution of the story pretty much decided the matter. And although I knew Kalan would interact with minor characters such as innkeepers, port workers, and the Sea Keepers, the ‘who exactly’, their dispositions, and the parts they played, all evolved out of the story, the town, and its culture.
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Sandy: Did Your Picture Of Any Of The Characters Change As You Were Writing Them? And Did Any Leap Off The Page and Take Charge?
The leaping off the page and taking charge has happened in the series, most notably with Asantir in The Heir of Night, but the closest to it in Daughter is Tirael of Stars. His character was always in the story arc, in line with my answer to Phoebe’s question, but he arrived with such a swirl of his cloak and gleam in his eye that I knew he was going to cut a swathe through the story, as indeed he did. 🙂 In terms of characters changing within the story in an unforeseen way, I believe the most striking example of this was the relationship between Myr and Kalan. You see, in my original vision for the WALL story, they were always supposed to fall in love, in a star-crossed, Romeo & Juliet kind of way. But when it came to the point, no matter how much I wrote and rewrote the story, the romance just never happened. To prove my point that characters have a life of their own, they simply refused to fall in love! [Throws up authorial hands in remembered exasperation.] However, once I accepted that alteration, the story and their relationship within it both really flowed, which I took as evidence that one must always heed the Muse.
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Lindsay: Which Battles Did You Research When You were Writing The Siege of the Camp?
Well, I did a LOT of research, I can tell you that — most of which never made it into the book but was pretty fascinating stuff. Some of it was on pre-modern warfare generally, not just sieges, although I gradually honed in on those. In terms of specific sieges, I focused on those where the defenders were badly situated defensively, poorly supplied, and/or outnumbered:
- the siege of the Lucknow Residency during the Indian Mutiny (also considered the first war for Indian independence from British rule) of 1857;
- the siege of the Kabul Residency in 1879, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War;
- the defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War; and
- the siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking during 1900, and also the distinct but concurrent siege of the Beitang, the North Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Church.
I also looked at the siege of Metz (1552-3), and similar sieges of that era, particularly in terms of the effects of disease on siege warfare; the Roman approach to fortified camps; and several engagements of the American frontier in terms of assaults and sieges on scantily fortified positions and the tactics used by both the attacking and defending forces.
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Chris: What Would Have Happened If Tirael Hadn’t Come To The Camp’s Aid When He Did? Did Kalan Have Any More Tricks Up His Sleeve?
I think we can probably agree that Kalan and the camp’s defenders had done amazingly well up until that point but that their resources were at a pretty low ebb, a situation that Arcolin, the enemy commander, did his best to exploit. Kalan had also proven himself to very resourceful and I certainly wouldn’t have put it past him to have pulled another rabbit out of the defensive hat. On balance, though, I think we can probably also agree that it was Really Just As Well that Tirael and the Star Knights turned up when they did.
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I hope you are as impressed as I am by this first round of questions, and have enjoyed reading the answers as much as I enjoyed writing them. Definitely a big thank you again on my part to the questioneers.
To Keep The Questions Coming:
Just email to my webmail: contact[at]helenlowe[dot]info
I’ll take it from there!
See you back here next Thursday. 😀