NaNoWriMo Free-Write 1
So I’m very slowly getting through my novel still, I have about 40 pages to go and I’m just getting to the dragon egg hatching, which makes me nervous because I haven’t looked over the scene since last year and I know there are going to be so many things that I want to change in there and it’s going to be super dumb sounding and probably inconsistent with the rest of the book and I keep tweeking it as the mythology around the dragons changes and I figure out their culture and their relationship with the humans and how their whole breeding process works. Dragons are complicated, man.
So I’m reading through and thinking about how much I’d like to write things for other characters and flesh them out a bit. I’d like to write something for Rohan and establish his whole back story in my head. He’s got this vague shape right now, his mother died when he was born and his father has since been super protective of the only family he has left, however, he sees Rohan as more of a reminder than an actual person. Kind of like a shrine to his late-wife, I think. He forgets that Roahn has to grow up and do his own thing and all that and just sees him as this little part of his wife left behind. And that little piece of her may have snuck out with the help of the servants to go to the Knights Academy. So I have to figure out how many servants are involved and just how into the whole scheme they are. Did he bully them into it? Did they encourage him to go? I was thinking two servants, right now. A butler and a nursemaid/housekeeper. I’m thinking they work with a very small staff. Maybe a cook is in there too. Probably all the servants are involved. The coachman would have to be, ferrying Rohan back and forth. Their close enough to the royal city that they wouldn’t need to take a train necessarily to return home in good time.
The real question is, how did Rohan sneak out without his father noticing him being gone for months at a time? I haven’t decided just how crazy he is. He’s pretty crazy, I know that. He can’t really function on his own and he’s not really been keeping up with his duties to his people. He has private doctors who come and take care of him, that’s probably a give-in. I just can’t decide if he’s not lucid enough to notice if his son isn’t there for a few months as long as he sees him sometimes? Maybe as long as the servants pretend he’s around that’s enough for his father. I haven’t decided if Rohan is a treasured item set out on the mantel to admired all the time, or if he’s that one you lock away and just know is there and only take out on special occasions. We’ll see, I guess.
Conley I’d kind of like to work up a little more as well, though he’s better established in my head. He’s the youngest of four brothers, he’s this big, good natured goof and he’s into doing his own thing. He’s super chill and knows what he wants from life. His dad is super gruff and wants his sons to turn out like him, a commander in the King’s army and then a successful businessman and keeper of the realm. The horse breeding business grew mostly out of having so many sons and not enough for them to inherit for several generations. So they started a family business so that the younger boys would have something to take part in. Conley is expected to join in with that after his time in the military and he probably will, since he loves horses, but he also loves “science” or rune magic, which is basically the same thing in this world. I would like to develop that more in him, make it more prominent as that’s a big part of who he is. He’s the science guy, Rohan’s the fighter and Sage is into history and literature.
Other characters I’d like to write for include Sage’s father and sister and Arabelle so that I can actually do something with her. I want her to be involved, the token street kid in a pack of nobles, but I don’t know much about here other than she was orphaned on the streets as a small child and grew up in a clan of theives and street rats who taught her everything she knows. What all she knows and does, that’s something I have yet to work out. I know she likes to flirt with cute boys. I haven’t decided how old she is, either. She might be a little older or a little younger than the boys. We shall see. The problem is, for this month when I really work on my novel I’m super focused on the word count in the novel and if none of the extra material goes into the novel I feel like I can’t count it so I never write for the other characters back stories because I want to build up that word count and by the end of the month I’m super exhausted and think, “just a little break,” and then I forget about it entirely until the next November when I pick it up again. I need a better system.
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