The end of the beginning continues!

Welcome back! I know that I meant to publish this next part last week but with one thing or another it kept being delayed, then with the riots being rather distracting over the weekend and into this week it just kept being sidelined. Without further ado, here is the rest of the planning process;

Last week we left off creating the overview of what each character does, and put them in chronological order. This is essentially the very framework of the plot, in a somewhat readable (albeit bare bones) format. You could actually read this tale now, and be able to understand what is happening but it would not be much fun. The next step is to add flesh to these bones, and do the actual writing that turns a plan into a story.

I

·         Bjarni finds America

o   Bring out the superstitious element

o   Make Bjarni appear a coward to his crew

 Becomes;

A raven black as midnight flapped weakly onto the beached ship and hopped on to the mast which was now leaning on the rocky beach. Its strength left it then, and it tottered and fell to the small stones below, wings outspread in a grisly parody of flight.

“Odin has sent us a warning” murmured Snorri softly, eyes not leaving the corpse

“An evil omen! The gods are warning us that this land be cursed!” said Jorvik, his voice high. The superstitious crew all stepped back from the dead bird and then stood regarding it with their mouths agape. 

Bjarni, still in a trance was once again heaving at the ship, trying to push it back to sea. His crew needed no second urging and added their strength to his. Slowly the ship, timbers being eviscerated under the grindstone effect of the shale beneath uttered tortured screams and slid slowly back in to the ocean.

Now we have the manuscript in rough comes the part I am dreading most the editing phase. It is here that I call up all my friends and beg their help as I am well aware that spelling and grammar are not my strongest suits. We then go through the text with a fine toothed comb and make sure the final copy is readable, and that the messages it presents are those I intended. I bring out my notes on the characters and ask my guinea pi... err volunteer editors for their impressions on the cast and see if the two are more or less the same. From there I intend to get some professional editors involved so as to give me a full critique on what is good and what is not. These criticisms will then need to be acted upon and changes made to the script.

Once all of this is done, I should have something that I actually feel comfortable in selling to the general public, and the book is done.

The end of the beginning

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” is one of my most cherished Churchill quotes, and rings very true of the status of Vinland at the moment. Following my foray into the countryside of Dorset last week, I have been surprisingly industrious in working on my novel.

As you know, I met with the editor, Leila Dewji some time ago now, and have since then been refining the plot of the story to be rather more dramatic and less epic in scale. This process is thankfully nearly done, and I will soon be returning to what I enjoy the most anyway – actually writing the book!

I am sure you are getting rather curious about how I actually go about writing the book, I have given many hints over the months of my blogging here, but have never actually gone over the process. To start with, I have my notebook (a tool most good writers will have on their person at any one time) which is filled to the brim with ideas, people that i’ve met, strange situations. Anything really that crosses my overactive mind every single day. I then go through this notebook and take out anything which could be suitable to the plot, and note them all down in another, bigger notebook. This I entitle “Stuff to happen”. 

Example;

• Discover America
• Game of Hnetafel
• Warrior arrives
• Sit in hall eating meal ignoring enfolding drama
• Merchant thrown overboard
• Find prince
• Find natives

As you can see this is pretty basic, just an overview of things that could happen. The next step are the characters, and very unlike the plot these are remarkably organic, beyond some general traits and noting down major events I do not plan them overly much. Instead I go through the “stuff to happen” and apply those events to the characters, or if something especially good needs to happen, I create a suitable character for it to happen to.

Example;

• Erik the Red
• Central character. The reason Vinland succeeds
• Thorvald
• The voice of the warrior spirit
• Leif
• The voice of intelligence and reason

See, even the character overviews I have posted on this blog are more in depth than the notes I followed initially. Now we have the rough story and the characters, we need to turn this into a plot. Therefore I cut the events up into “sections” and arrange these sections into a chronological order. This is what we are left with;

I

• Bjarni finds America
• Bring out the superstitious element
• Make Bjarni appear a coward to his crew

II

• Leif loses to Erik at Hnetafel (Viking chess)
• It is a very close match. Mock anger from Erik to display his pride in the skills of his son.

IV

• Kai arrives
• Sits in hall eating meal ignoring enfolding drama

VI

• Edvin, Rorik and Anneliese arrive
• Edvin thrown overboard by Rorik

Addendum

• Find prince
• Dropped, terrible idea and horrifically cliche.
• Find natives
• ?

But how does this contribute to the finished script? Find out on Thursday!

Edvin

“Nyet, I am not captain” the man said in a good attempt at Norse. He had a wide Slavic face, but oddly bright blond hair. He cast another look back then fixed his attention back on the burly mayor.

“I am Edvin, merchant from Novgorod, which you may know as Holmgard” he said, hand snaking out.

Background

Edvin was one of the first benefactors of the rewrite. Initially he was a minor character, watching the development of the story from the side lines, but now he is far more important to the plot than before. When Leif decides to find Vinland, as described by Bjarni, he needs to raise money to pay for the voyage, and Erik refuses to foot the full bill himself.

The solution appears in the form of a bedraggled and thoroughly soaked Edvin (On arrival to Greenland he is pushed overboard by one of his more boisterous comrades), he is a merchant from Russia, which at the time was being colonised by the Swedes. Several of the most famous Russian cities today were founded by the Vikings as part of their domination of the Russian river-based trade routes, the biggest of which are Novgorod (known at the time as Holmgard) and Kiev.

These trading towns have a history of bringing much wealth and producing crafty merchants, a heritage I wanted to bring alive in Edvin. By the time that the Vinland tales comes about, the golden age of the Vikings is coming to an end. No-one really knows why the Vikings disappeared from prominence, particularly considering their widespread influence and power at the time, however some historians attribute this to a cataclysmic civil war between the warrior and mercantile classes. The merchants had consolidated all the power which the warriors had fought so hard to build up, and over time the warriors had simply become obsolete, there being no powers to stand up against them. The warriors, refused to slip from existence and returned to doing what they did best – raiding. This time the targets were their own merchants.

I have tried to include this in the story as the personal conflicts between Edvin and the Frisian warrior, Rorik (the man who actually shoved him overboard).

Traits

Edvin is something of a hybrid of two different types of character. Firstly he has the natural cunning of a successful businessman. He has significant wealth and is savvy in which trade routes are profitable, however his choice of profession is not down to his love for money, it is instead his interest in exploration that drew him to it. At the time most merchants did not stay in one place and run a market, but rather they sailed with their goods from port to port, buying and selling whatever commodities that they could find. Some would settle into established trade routes, taking goods from towns where supply was high, to towns with a high demand.

However, there would always be those who simply travelled, stocking up in what they could and taking it to where they believed it would sell, relying as much on intuition as on sound business logic. These endeavours were high risk, but also high reward. For this kind of adventuring spirit, like Edvin, the lure of new and unexplored markets would be irresistible and so he signs a deal with Leif and joins him on this journey in the unknown.

Loves and hates

Edvin is interested in anything that is new and adventurous... even better if there is a potential for profit. Although he doesn’t hate the warrior classes, he dislikes their apparent disregard for anyone who doesn’t fight and raid like they do.

Snippet from Vinland : Thorvald

I have been ill for the last few days so took some time off writing to recover. As such I have not been able to prepare anything for the blog (and will likely not do one for tomorrow either). However, this does give me an excellent chance to let you read just what it is that I am working on. Please note that this piece is still in the rough, it has not been checked for spelling / grammar.

A quick overview as this is not from the very beginning. This piece comes right after Erik announces the discovery of new lands to the people of Greenland. Thorvald, on whom this centers is the middle son of Erik the Red, he was not at the feast, but rather in one of the back rooms of the Great Hall. Kai is a legendary warrior who joined Leif's band. Berend is a berserker who recently joined Erik's band. Adalwolf, you should know by now!

Bjarni was the original man who discovered Vinland, he sold the knowledge to Leif and was branded a coward (nithling) for not having explored himself. In Viking culture, being called a coward was as good as being a leper, you were completely exiled so Thorvald's actions here are rather unusual in that end.

So without further ado, I present to you an except from Vinland;