81: New Perspectives
3/4/2014
Just finished Bakar and Dougga’s Guardian of the Gate scene to plug into Chapter one. And I wrote Tamal a scene yesterday, with him up in the tree atop Overlook Hill after hearing about his mother’s death. That one turned out better, of course, because it was so much shorter. Short and sweet is much easier to make poignant and consistently good from beginning to end. That rule of thumb doesn’t bode well for my first novel as a whole, considering what a mammoth it’s turning into.
Anyway, it was an odd experience to go back and revisit Chapter One like this in order to flesh it out. It’s very much like traveling back in time, only instead of reliving what I already lived, I’m going back to see adjacent stories and circumstances related to my original experience. New perspectives on what was thought to be an already fully realized experience.
None of what I’ve written in these two new scenes are necessary to the plot in any fundamental way. How could they when I built what I have already without them? Yet I believe they do enhance the quilt I’m attempting to weave. Both Tamal and Dougga are better understood now. The theme of Making Friends is better illustrated now for this chapter as well. It anchors the characters with deeper roots, rather than just popping up out of thin air in the Twa Yal-Jukun chapter after 200 pages of story without them.
I’ve got one more scene to write for this first chapter, then that ought to do it for Alena. I’m considering adding a scene into The Fever as well for Tamal, Bakar, and Dougga. They don’t need a lot of presence there, but if Diallo is their friend during this period, they should have a scene in the chapter where he’s on death’s door the whole time.
It will probably have more vague references to Alena sending Diallo on a quest for the ghost frog, which is how he contracted The Fever from mosquitoes in the swamp. Just a two-to-three-page dialogue would do.
Something to think about. First, I have to do this last scene for Chapter One tomorrow. Short and sweet, so it should be good… though I haven’t given it any thought and have no idea what it will be about. It needs to tie into Alena though, since the chapter is named after her and she’s only appeared briefly in it so far.
I’m happy. Things are going well. Better than expected in fact.
Present-Day Reflection
8/14/2026
Finally, the younger me is getting back to the beginning to flesh things out and bringing things up to where they stand today. More or less. He’s still at the very beginning of his reimagining work and has no clue what he’s really undertaking, but it’s a start.
New perspectives are vital for breathing in new life, adding depth with unforeseen dimensions. This is what reality does, so it’s only appropriate that art should do it as well. Experimenting and growing in new and unexpected directions.
