Eyes on the Words
The writing of THE EYES OF THE WIND
pretty much followed my usual pattern — months of thinking about
the plot and characters, of jotting down notes, of making outlines.
Then I sat down and typed out the actual narrative in something
pretty close to finished form in a week. There was rewriting, certainly, but that was minimal, mostly a matter of changing words here and there, adding a tad more imagery — I tend to skimp on that when getting the story down.
I admit that I expected it to run
longer. The goal was the typical 60,000 word range for a fantasy
adventure, like my three Malvern novels. The structure was a little
different, four distinct episodes (one for each of the gems known as
the Eyes), book-ended by introductory and closing sections. If
anything, I thought it might run long — it seemed like a rather
sprawling plot line.
Instead, it ended up around 50,000
words. That is fine with me; it took that many words to tell the
story. I would certainly not tack on more material to reach a higher
word count. I would not pad the novel.
Is there more to tell of ‘Saj the
Seer,’ the protagonist of ‘Eyes?’ Most likely not; do not
expect a sequel, a series. He settles down to the life of prosperous
merchant in his new home and he and Marana raise a large family. That
family, however, may have many tales to tell. We shall see about
that.
No comments:
Post a Comment