The loading took up the next hour or so. Gehnn had once been used to this sort of work, but the aching in her muscles and her barely contained clumsiness revealed just how long it had been since she had last lifted something heavier than her pack. Her right hand seemed especially weak – several times, it gave way under the strain it was forced to undergo and slipped, nearly dropping the cargo she was carrying. Gehnn tried to hide it as best she could. Remembering the words of the shopkeeper once again, she put all her effort into not looking like a weakling.
The other workers made themselves known as the job went on. Overall, there were about five in the group, besides herself, who seemed to be working for passage - two men, three women. Gehnn only passed by them as they loaded the cargo, and so she did not get a chance to make a detailed study of them until they had finished. Tummett called them all to him, and had them introduce themselves to one another ("You'll be sick of seeing each other's faces by the end of this next fortnight," he said, "Might as well give names to the faces.")
A tall, bald-headed man with a mustache and several earrings went first - "I am Stavo Smick, from Port Lomeliss. It's in Keldis."
Someone who lived by the sea, Gehnn thought to herself. A Port-town. The man had come a long way.
A shorter man, a few years older than Gehnn, with shaggy hair and a grim face said, "I'm Hyram. From Marrowby. Few day's trip northward."
He wasn't much for words, was he? And Marrowby....Gehnn had heard of it. It was a small county not too far from Samare, where they were now. They didn't trade very much, from what her parents had sometimes said, and what they did trade was not anything special - just wood and some small crops. Marrowlings apparently kept to themselves, mostly. Gehnn didn't doubt it, seeing this sullen young man.
A young woman came next - she was about Gehnn's own age, maybe a year or two older. She was stocky and muscular, with a colorful sleeve of tattoos covering her entire left shoulder and part of her neck, and silver rings running up the sides of her ears, two in her left eyebrow, and one in the side her nose. Just looking at her made Gehnn's face hurt.
"I'm Yul Blunt," she announced. Her voice was husky, but strong - unusually strong for a girl's. "I'm from Keldis as well, but from Port Corsellis."
All these people from the sea. How strange. Did they come here for work? If that was so, it didn't seem like they were doing too well, if they were here.
The next person, a woman, was only a little taller than Gehnn, with dark skin and black hair pulled back in a thick, waist-length braid. A colorful cloth covered her head, and her clothes were made of well-woven cloth and good leather.
"I am Lissahnn Zheberassk," she said, with a trilling, slithering accent. "I come from Rredidossk, here in Samare."
Underneath her coverings, Gehnn shivered. She tugged on her hood, nervously fiddling at its edge. She avoided looking at the woman.
The next person, the last one before Gehnn, was a middle-aged woman who had short auburn hair, going grey, and a small brown eyes that peered tiredly around at her surroundings.
"I'm Claye Burnstock." she said. She shrugged. "I'm from Keldis. That's about it."
They all turned to Gehnn.
Gehnn straightened, trying her best not to feel - or look - intimidated.
"I'm Gehnn." she said. "I'm from....Pamarahn."
They all nodded, not really taking in the information. Gehnn could follow their thoughts - they were tired, and they had come here for pay, not to make friends. She would not be well remembered.
Well, that was a relief, anyway.
Tummett, seeing the introductions done, called them all to mount the shellbacks. They would be leaving very shortly.
"And no whinings or complainings about food or rest or whatever else crap you want to throw at me," he said. "I got enough on my plate as is, and I don't need your squallings to add to it. Suffice to say, you signed up for this, and you better stick to it, otherwise I'll drop you in the middle of the road halfway to Solstice, and I won't turn back when the skin-hounds come a-howlin' for your flesh."
With that chilling reprimand, they were sent off to the shellbacks.
The shellbacks were something like gigantic desert tortoises, except that their necks were shorter and legs longer and less stubby. These particualar ones looked sturdy, if a bit aged, and Gehnn didn't feel too nervous to clamber up the ladder to the large saddle strapped to the beast's back. She had ridden these once or twice before, and so while it was familiar to sit in the saddle and look down from that rolling height, the novelty of it was still there. She smiled to herself, underneath her wrappings, feeling as close to happy as she had ever been in the last few weeks.
She had made it. She had a found a way to Solstice. And what's more, no one found her very strange at all.
Aha! From my two english writing/literature classes, I actually sort of have a system for analyzing writing! So I'm going to practice a full-on analysis on you, okay? Sorry if it's long or ranting.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it's very well-written. You present us with a mature world that seems very well-thought-out. I can see it's going somewhere big, and that you've invested a lot into it.
I guess I'm not seeing too much conflict yet. I mean, not just the main plot conflict, but even the little ones -- a la Harry Potter begins with trouble with the Dursleys, then not knowing about Wizard culture or how to get onto the train station, or being bullied by Snape or Malfoy, all the while keeping us all engaged while the main conflict with Voldemort takes its sweet and appropriate time to appear. Then we get all emotionally invested in the characters. Yay.
You do a good job of showing us the world you've invented -- from what you've described in it so far, it sounds like a more diverse-climate version of Tatooine! With oceans and such. Maybe like Arakis with an ocean or two. But I get a very desert-world-esque feel to it. Maybe they're just in a desert-region? I get a distinctly Star Wars feel.
What could do better (I think all us Blackhams have this problem: I'm just becoming aware of it and am trying to fix it) is more sensory images in your descriptions, and even in descriptions of dialogue. It helps breathe life into your characters. I need to be able to feel what Ghenn feels, in as many of the senses as I can. You do have some of that! The aching limbs, and such. Though more would help paint a clearer, more engaging picture. Is it hot, cold? Does it smell good? Is she hungry? How does she like the other passengers? What about them makes her feel uneasy or wary? Or at ease and calm? Like, the guy with the moustache -- a grizzly man glared up at them, muttering his name and origin from beneath a thick grey moustache, which did not compensate, impressive as it was, for his hair-free head. Okay, that should have been two sentences, but you get the idea.
I think I need to know more about Ghenn, and know why she's doing what she's doing. She needs motive. And the way you describe things will help define her personality -- it's really her story, right? So she'll sort of describe things, but in the third person.
So ... long rant. You know what's cool? David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants -- he's a former BYU professor who became a famous author. He does workshops on and offline to help aspiring new fantasy/sci-fi writers. He's on the board of judges of the L. Ron Hubbard writing contest, and he trained Stephanie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson (the guy Robert Jordan selected to finish the Wheel of Time series) and others.
Did you know, by the way, that Jews and LDS are the two religious groups most likely to turn out successful fantasy writers? It's true. The rest are either agnostic or atheist, but when it comes to religious fantasy writers, it's us and the Jews. Fun fact. Keep writing! Let me see moooooooooooore!!!
Wow. What kind of writing classes are you taking? They sound like writing classes on steroids or something. That's a great analysis, and I really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteMy approach with the narrative thing, though - I'm trying to make it so that you find things out as the story goes along. I've always preferred stories where you didn't find things out all at once. You kind of discover everything along with the character. So here, Gehnn (pronounced GEN, not JEN, by the way) is a point of interest because instead of just being a bland pair of eyes through which the reader experiences the plot (like Eragon, for example), she is a part of the plot herself, because we're watching HER as well as watching WITH her.
That's what I'm trying for, anyways.
You have a good point about the sensory thing, though. I'm still struggling with that - and also with length. I have a bad habit of having everything happen at once. So I'll try to work on that, a bit.
Thanks a lot!
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ReplyDeleteHa, I commented wrong. Here we try again:
ReplyDeleteEragon will burn in the abyss. Because he will. But hey!
Hm ... I guess I’m not sure what you mean by that. I mean, you need to know something about the character’s thoughts/feelings, or else you feel no connection to the character (i.e. the character will be boring and flat), and you run into a bit of an issue: you can’t have a character be simultaneously the main character and thoroughly mysterious to the reader. Rather than Eragon’s bland pair of eyes, a writer’s challenge is find an interesting and dynamic pair of eyes to experience the plot. I think I was just not quite getting what you’re saying ...
So, how did you mean? How do you want your main character to come across to the reader? How will you make her dynamic and round (and therefore causing the reader to want to know more — take an old hick, in overalls, sitting on a wooden fence in the Deep South, with a jug, and munching on something. So far a flat character. Then he starts speaking and he has a british accent. He instantly becomes a more interesting, rounder character, because the audience wants to know what the darn is this Brit doing dressed like an old hick in the Deep South.)?
What I meant is that Gehnn is both a witness AND a player. Like....hmm. It's difficult to explain.
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's see if this makes sense:
When you start out a story, you know nothing about the protagonist. Here is where most authors fill in with flashbacks or a narrative of their history or their history is pretty self-explanatory from their surroundings (like a poor farm boy, for example). Here, though, what I'm hoping to accomplish to tie Gehnn's personal history - where she comes from, why she left, what her motivation is, etc. - into the story itself. So, as the story and the world it's in unfolds, so will her own history. You see what I mean? It's like being introduced to someone in real life - you know their name, what they look like, but not much more than that. You find out more about them as time goes on and you get to know them better.
I just think that this is more interesting than a reader FYI at the beginning. I've always preferred books where I've found things out about the characters gradually - you know, where I felt like I was actually getting to know them and connect to them in a realistic way. This is hard to do in literature, especially with a protagonist, but I think it's worth a try.