Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Essence and the Stones

The Essence and the Stones

My cousin came over today and we blocked wood and moved it via the tractor bucket over to the wood pile by the log splitter. Working together for a couple of hours we got more done than I could accomplish alone in a week.

Then I came inside and read my Novella Essence and the Stones, Bedelia and Petra. They are all aspects of the same story. I have decided I’m going to combine them all into a single novel. Much of the material will not be included and become part of the back story. New material will be added to bring the parts into harmony. Some of you who have visited my port know that I am also a sensual prose writer. I have this view that you can energize your writing by skirting the edge of our human sensuality and later edit it out. When you do it seems that most of the energy remains even when the graphic details are deleted or referred to indirectly. It is an interesting concept and I’m glad this site gives writers an opportunity to experiment with what works and what doesn’t. So I caution readers who visit my port to pay attention to the ratings and if you are easily offended don’t read the material labeled GC.

The first effort I made at writing fantasy was Essence and the Stones. Then I went off on a tangent and developed one of the characters, Bedelia while expanding a backwater of the fantasy. Finally I wrote some material on another character Petra, that looked at the situation from an entirely different perspective. When I read Stephanie Meyers, vampire series I could tell there was a lot of back story she probably didn’t include. For example the novella Brie Tanner which forms a connection but a digression from the main story thread. The character was in her series, but only briefly. This is what I have done with Bedelia and Petra. They are connected to the Essence and Stones saga, however they formed digressions. Interesting digressions, to be sure, so interesting that Bedelia began to eclipse Liope as the Central Character. In the digressions different aspects and slants on the story line began to appear and taking these side trips was very worthwhile. I now know that Bedelia is the Central Character, even though there are about a dozen well developed male and female characters spread throughout the works. As I wrote the variations on the main thread each of these characters began to emerge as serious players and they had a competition of sorts to determine who would qualify as the big cheese.

When I read the Bedelia digression, something resonates and I find myself really liking her. So does my wife Linda. She gives me hell and says I ought to write Bedelia and quit fooling with all this other stuff … particularly the sensual prose… Keep it in the 13 plus classification and even that might be pushing the envelop of her tolerance.

So I have about decided to write a second draft of Essence and the Stones that uses Bedelia as the CC but the whole rest of the cast too. I’ll be using the drama model and integrate the three takes into a comprehensive outline. Then I’ll do the character sketches. Then I’ll write the second draft. The expository writing will be disguised as poetic prose. The dialogue will be a crisp conversational banter that moves the story along. It will have all the undercurrents, repetition, and symbolism that makes for good drama. What it will have that most of my writing has lacked to this point is a structure that is built on the traditional model for good storytelling.

Anyway I intend to start soon and will keep everyone in the loop as to how it is coming.