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!

Eureka!

So yesterday I had something of a Eureka moment. Thanks to the changes proposed last week, I have been in deep thought on how to make these take effect, especially in the way I flesh the characters out and add depth to their personality.

When the book was more epic in scope, I spent far more time concerned with the politics between factions, the overview of their ambitions, and basically giving a blow by blow account of the tale, much like a reporter does for news coverage of major events. Now that the story is following more of an adventure template rather than the epic, I am free to devote more to the people who populate the world of Vinland rather than the events, as such it becomes more personalised and dramatic.

As a part of this, I began to create an in-depth overview of each of the characters, noting down little details like scars, personal foibles and habits. Things like Jorvik’s black teeth and Gorran’s exclamations of optimism will become far more widespread, and hopefully will truly give life to the people there. Everyone has these little niggling things, but it is only once you get to know that person well enough that you become noticeable. Now, imagine being stuck on a small boat for several weeks, every single habit would become well known to you.

Along with the built up personalities there becomes more scope for conflict, we now have personality traits that are incompatible with others. Leif, for example, plays a prank on Jorvik which leaves him humiliated. How will Jorvik, and his prickly pride respond to this? Friendships grow over time, and are tested by the many trials and tribulations of being an explorer. Religion and faith come in to play, these are the early years of Christianity coming to the Norse, how will the followers of the old gods react to the imposition of an aggressively missionary church?

The Vikings are also a highly superstitious race, how will certain sightings and activities impact on them? Will it drive them apart through fear, or bind them together through overcoming these problems together. What about power? Wealth? Money? Romance? Ambition? All men and women are driven by these emotions, which can make even the most logical and reasonable act entirely out of character, everyone has their own agenda, each with wide ranging and important consequences.

Now a little background before I get onto the Eureka moment proper. I had expressed concern previously about adding in a massive detour which takes much of the cast to Norway in order to develop Norway as the big, evil antagonist, but the time spent doing this would seriously detract from the rest of the story. It was a weak element but needed to be in, in order to tie together everything else, from the vigour that Erik would show in his determination to colonise Vinland to the schism that will form between the Americas and Europe.

As part of the character overhaul I got thinking about Kai’s actual background as it was completely un-developed other than he was a retired Varangian. Why did he leave Byzantium? What caused him to go there in the first place? Perhaps there is something about his past that we do not know...

This led to him becoming a rather more important character to the story. Just why does the King of Norway show such an interest in Kai? Why does Gostav (the bard) begin to take such an interest in the legends of “Greycloak”?

What role will his supposedly magical weapon “Bloodaxe” have for the future of Vinland?

Kai

“By Odin’s missing eye, who the Hel are you stranger?” Erik managed, still gasping.

“I am Kai Miklagardson, retired, of the Varangian Guard”

Background

This is rather refreshing to say; after all my complaints at how difficult certain characters are to write, Kai was a real pleasure and probably the most fun I have had in creating a new character for the Vinland stories.

When I originally wrote Erik, he had a completely different personality, however I soon realised this was unsuitable for how I envisaged Erik's development as a character. I liked the personality traits, however, and created another character that could embody these, the end result of that rewrite was Kai.

So many stories about the Vikings portray the warriors when they are in the full bloom of their youth, but what happens when these warriors reach old age? Not all of them die in battle, many of them certainly retire peacefully to a farm somewhere and live out their years telling stories of their former glory.

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;