This is the second post that walks through my process of writing a book as I am writing it. It’s a guide to what I’m thinking while a go through chapter creation, and how I work.
Drawing From Other Sources
There are parts of writing that have been influenced by things I’ve seen in other areas of my life. It could have been something that I read in a book or seen in a movie. It might have also been something I personally experienced in life at one point or another. The idea of time duality is part of the latter group.
In chapter two, the idea started out with remembering the opening scene of “Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron.” Specifically it was the sweeping camera and title score (0:00-3:15) that got this chapter started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzTQQSKfMV0
That was a long time ago for me, and I was an adult, but for some reason, the single-cut sweep following the eagle through the plains and then through forests, and ending up with the horses just pulled me in. I didn’t know I was going to draw on that experience until this chapter came about.
Writing A Chapter Like A Movie Scene
In the last post, I mentioned that I see the scenes much like a movie in my mind as I write them, and this was no different. I imagined the vast plains of the Central Expanse, and Kira’s tribe out on them, and the camp that had been by the river for generations.
Then the camera fades it on Azaya, as she stands inside the horse corral with Izrah, and mounting her horse, Bantu. From there, it was just writing something similar to what I’d seen all those years ago with the sweeping camera in my mind as I typed the scene out.
This was the first paragraph I wrote of the chapter, even though it’s not where the chapter began.
Azaya felt the launch and nearly lost her balance. Bantu must have felt the shift because Azaya realized he leaned a bit to help her steady herself. Then when she was balanced again, he hit the ground running hard right out of the corral and out onto the open steppe. Azaya felt the cold wind hit her face as Bantu carried her towards the others into the Expanse.
Bantu wanted to run. That was what I could see, but he also knew he was carrying a child. Azaya is a city kid, and Bantu sensed that she wasn’t quite accustomed to riding, so he thought to give her the ride of her life. In a way, I’m getting into the horse’s train of thought for this scene.
“This is like coin running, but better!” Azaya shouted to her mom as they caught up. Lenne laughed but the wind caught it.
The horses did a long arc out across the steppe. Azaya looked over at the other riders. They were all the way down against their horses so the steeds didn’t have to fight the wind resistance as much. Arms down, hands holding the low grips near the front legs. Azaya leaned down as well, but couldn’t reach the grips. She put her arms around the horse’s neck and let the movement carry her. Azaya was terrified, and excited, and fully in the moment. She laughed as they shot across the plains, the sun peeking over the horizon, lighting their faces.
“Bantu,” she called to her horse, “Thank you.”
This is the part where the rest of the world slipped away while I was writing it. I was fully there, feeling the wind and watching the horses arc out into the Expanse at top speed.
Bantu shot forward and ahead of the others. He started putting distance between them and the rest. Azaya heard the sound of the wind rushing by her as she leaned close. She felt Bantu pounding against the ground as he picked even more speed up. And then she saw what he was tracking for and her eyes got wide. She clutched against him with all her strength as he came in at top speed and jumped an old log near the yak grounds. Then he slowed as the remaining riders caught up.
“That was the BEST!” Azaya swung off, shaking from the adrenalin and excitement. She gave Bantu a hug. “Thank you Bantu!” she said again before she followed the others over to where the yaks waited for them.
Even though I was sitting still, typing at my usual 65 words per minute, my heart was racing as I saw the old log out in front of Bantu with Azaya. They sped towards it, and in my imagination, this part of the scene was a low camera angle close to the hooves as they tore closer to the log, then cleared it.
Pacing Changes – Horses to Yaks
There are quite a few chapters that start off at once pace, then shift in my books. Usually, it’s a slow moment that ramps up into something faster, but here, I intentionally inverted it, and made it feel a bit jarring. While Azaya was riding Bantu, her time was matched to his, in his world of speed and distance. Then as she dismounted, she returned to her time, a bit slower than his. This is another form of Time Duality, and it repeats again in this chapter.
Yaks are slow animals by nature. It takes a lot of time to care for them, and no, I have no actual experience in yak care, but with research and some imagination, I could get a small sense of what it would be like for Azaya.
She would certainly feel the sudden shift from the top speed of horse-riding to the agonizing slow pace of the yaks. For me, I needed to fill the space in. Lenne’s family story just kind of filled the void because I realized that nowhere in any of the other books, did we learn anything about her. Naturally, she’d tell her daughter about the family.
I worked at a Zoo for about five years a long time ago. I remember that many of the zookeepers would talk to the animals, almost as if they were just having a conversation with them. Sometimes I heard them talking about their families, other times, relationships, even grief and sorrow.
This is where I brought another life experience into the story, and almost without realizing it.
Izrah tells Azaya to talk to the yak while brushing it since the yak wasn’t thrilled to have a tiny child trying to brush out its guard hair. Oh, and I forgot, when I wrote the scene in chapter one where Oyun brushes out Azaya’s hair in the morning, that wasn’t setting up this scene. I hadn’t even thought of this at that time. It just was conveniently there.
So Azaya starts talking to the yak. She tells it about her life as the reader knows it, and I don’t really go into detail. The reader already knows, but they feel her starting to bond with the yak, and the yak accepting her in small ways. Azaya talks much like the zookeepers did when they talked to the animals while feeding and grooming them.
She finishes one yak, and then moves on to work on a calf, gets a ride around the herd, and finally ends up plopping down with the calf and napping with it while the herd closes in and stands watch.
Ending A Chapter
More often than not, my chapters end at a clean breakpoint. I almost never cliffhang into another chapter. Most writing advice says that you should cliffhang chapters to keep the reader interested, but I have found that immersion, even on its own, will have the reader flipping to the next chapter without thinking about it.
In my own experiences, cliffhanging gets the page turn, but the reader is only interested in knowing what happens. Beyond that, during that moment, they don’t care about the rest of the plot, arc, or other characters.
On the other hand, when a reader is fully immersed into a book, it all becomes important. It’s not just about what happens next, although that’s a factor, it is also about care for the characters they now follow and sitting beside them as they continue through the book.
Most of my chapters start off by dropping the reader in as things are happening. That’s by design. My chapters generally end at the end of a day. My method is to cliffhang the beginning of a chapter and letting it play out for the reader rather than force them to stay up an extra thirty minutes past their bedtime to figure out what just happened. First, it’s more conscious of the reader’s time. I know that someone could get one or two chapters in at lunch, and be able to go back to doing work because a chapter ended cleanly. I have often been in a position where the chapter ended on a cliffhanger, and I had to go back to doing work, but the friction is higher because you want to know what happened. I chose to be respectful of the reader’s time.