This month brings you a scene from the second draft of Storge, specifically the inciting incident in chapter 2. It is a fight scene, so content warnings for blood and two “on screen” minor character deaths. It’s 1470 words, so nothing tooo long. I’m super excited to share this with you since it’s one of my favorites and I’ve only ever shared isolated lines before, so please let me know what you think!
Every butcher, baker, farmer, tailor, merchant, laborer and beggar packed themselves into the cramped arena stands to experience the spectacle. Seldom did they see bloodshed beside their own, and they would not waste the opportunity for entertainment. Stuck as they were, Grace strained to see over the crowd. They held their breath against the stench of body odor and fish that baked into the air under the hot evening sun. Luca fought the urge to take off his long-sleeved shirt to cool off, but the sight of the Atilan viewing boxes made him think twice. He tugged the edges down over his wrists instead.
Venders hawked their wares to the crowd, hoping to make some extra money off the event by selling the oily, salty snacks of dried meat. The advertising cries drowned when the crowd rose in a sea of shouting as guards dragged the rebel Master onto the sand. He didn’t take arrest easily. Blood and sweat shone on his bald head and dripped down his bare, lash-scarred back. They chained his hands behind his back, but it didn’t stop him from straining against his bonds. It took three soldiers to force him to move. Jeers sounded as the people of the city unleashed their pent-up frustrations and anger.
The High Atil strode onto the raised dais that stood in the exact center of the arena and raised his hands for silence. Gradually, the crowd hushed and anticipation replaced the fervor. He sneered at the rebel leader and slowly stretched out his arm, pointing his index finger towards the ground.
Most writers have a serious love/hate relationship with editing. Rereading your old writing is a special type of painful, but the process of refining the words into something beautiful can be thoroughly satisfying as you watch your skill with writing grow. I’ve been editing the first draft of Storge recently, so I am closely acquainted with that feeling, but I’ve figured out a method at works for me and makes the job a whole lot more enjoyable. It won’t be perfect for everyone, but I thought I’d share it in case you could learn something from it!
For context, when I say I’m editing the “first draft”, I mean I’m editing the first completed draft of the story. It’s the first full manuscript I’ve finished, not the very first set of words I put to page. I started several variations of the story before realizing I had too many plot holes and characterization problems to continue. Then I would quit drafting after few chapters to go back to the drawing board. There were a few reasons for that original block. First, Storge is a very complicated story and I didn’t have enough experience or skill to execute it yet. Second, I was still figuring out my own process and didn’t yet know that I needed a detailed plan in order to tell that kind of story. I think this draft is the 5th version, but it’s the only completed one, which means its the only one that really matters for the sake of this discussion. All of my planning and scrapped drafting ahead of time helped eliminate a lot of plotholes and teach me about my writing process, but it’s not what’s actually being edited today.
I’m also planning to self-publish, and so this guide is geared to that end goal. I do not know where beta readers and professional editors fit into the querying and traditional publishing process, so I’ll hazard a guess that it’s best to go with what the professionals say. Additionally, this process focuses on long novels, but it can also be used for short stories and other works. The steps just would take less time and require fewer cycles of double checking. I wrote this to be as cohesive as possible, but you can always scale it down if needed.
That being said, now what? I’ve got a finished manuscript – how do I even start making sense of this 110K word thing??
It was far too lovely a day for a riot, but not even the cool breeze flapping the fabric of the trader’s multicolored tents could prevent Luca from taking advantage the fact that there was, in fact, a riot. No one was quite sure who noticed the Atilan erasing and inscribing the new tax decree onto the massive slab of sandstone that served as the city’s news board. No one was really sure who started shouting obscenities first. No one was entirely sure when the Atilan threw magic into the gathering crowd. No one was completely sure how many Debilan they had injured.
It mattered little now. The body of the Atilan messenger lay motionless in the street.
Luca ducked and dodged through the throng. Red-faced shop keeps chanted curses against their rulers for this new grievance. He fixed his eyes on the ground, searching for valuables dropped in the scuffle. A dull gleam of polished stone caught his eye. He snatched the prize and stuffed it into his satchel without stopping to check what he had found.
As the Atilan guards flocked to the scene, Luca glanced up at the brief distraction, and so did the wealthy-looking merchant standing to his side. The shouts rose to a roar as workers charged onto the platform. The smells of blood, sweat, and anger hung in the air as the bodies pressed together. Someone stumbled into the merchant. Coins tumbled from the purse that sat in his open hand. Luca stooped to pick them up before the man could stop him and mumbled an apology. Shoving the newfound loot into his knapsack, he flipped the cover shut, escaped the crowd, and hurried along a twisting side road. Luca ducked under the outside staircase of an old tenement building, searching for any onlookers. Satisfied that everyone else was off protesting, he sprinted up the stairs and onto the flat roof.
A girl waited for him in the shade of a makeshift canopy, focused on the brouhaha below them. She was young, with ruddy brown and freckled skin and curly dark brown hair in a braid that reached her waist. Her simple dress had long lost its creamy white color, and it was torn from an old fight. When she heard Luca mount the stairs, she tore her attention from the seething crowd to look up at her brother.
“They attacked the Atilan!” she hissed. “Did you see that!?”
“Kills the mood, huh?” Luca beckoned his sister towards him, away from the edge of the roof. “I thought I told you to stay out of sight.”
“If riots are distracting enough that you’re safe to go stealing, then I’m sure I’m safe aaalllll the way up here, watching your back.” She glanced down at the street before moving closer to him. “Find anything good?”
Luca nodded and flopped down next to her as he dumped out the bag, pushing back his hair as it fell into his face. They pocketed the coins first, before sorting through the rest of the oddities. Grace occasionally looked to the street. With mages conjuring a wall of magic, the guards pushed the rioters out of the plaza. A couple lingered to watch them collect the messenger who stumbled to his feet, disoriented but not wounded. The watchers scattered when the largest of the three guards pulled his seax knife from its sheath.
Grace frowned and turned her attention back to their work. “Most of this stuff is junk. Enne would probably like this button. Pretty pattern, and you can feel the texture. Does it match the ones on the frock she’s making?” She held the button up to the early morning light, and the shiny metal glinted in the sun.
Luca shrugged in reply before handing her the stone he had picked up, eyes gleaming with hope. “What about this?”
As Grace took the pebble, her eyes widened in surprise. Her fingers shocked with magic, and she dropped the thing back into Luca’s hands like a hot coal. “A charm! Not a powerful one, so don’t let me have it. Where did you find that?!”
“A few paces from the shops. My guess is that one of the Atilan dropped it in the scuffle.”
“Do you think they’ll come looking for it? If we’re caught-“
“No. Look, it’s so small. They won’t miss it.”
Grace nodded in agreement, when a sudden loud voice interrupted from behind them. “I don’t suppose you were planning to return that?”
The two kids jumped, spinning around to face the newcomer. Perched on the edge of the roof was an Avian. They were bird-like people who lived in the canyon cliffs along the river, and this one was taller than most, standing at seven feet tall. Four huge wings folded behind his torso – two at the shoulders and two at the waist. The reddish-brown plumage that covered nearly his entire body, save the palms of his hands and face, mirrored the color of the clay dirt of the desert. He wore a vest and loose breeches with several pockets that seemed stuffed with all sorts of strange things. Belted around his waist hung a stained artisan’s frock. Another harness strung over his shoulder, between his wings, and around his hip so that it could hold a large assortment of chisels, hammers, and knives. He wore no shoes; his taloned feet curled over the ledge of the roof to keep him balanced as he hunched over the two kids with his hand extended for the charm. Solid bronze eyes with sharp black pupils set deep in a human-like face, squinted in anger. The feather tufts at his ears pressed back against his head.
Luca clasped the charm to his chest as dread and panic mounted. He shifted his weight onto his feet and braced himself against the stairs, ready to run. He pulled Grace to his side, not for her own protection, but for restraint. She snapped into a fighting stance, and had her hands balled into fists, though they stayed by her sides. Neither answered the question.
The avian seemed to notice their discomfort. He forced a smile and lowered his wings, as if trying to appear nonthreatening. Luca, still threatened, forced himself to smile back. The avian repeated his question. “Are you going to return that?”
Like it says in the title, this is the counterpart to an original post about some of the big groups that affect the plot of Storge. That first post got pretty long last week, so I decided to split it up and post the rest of the lore today! This will elaborate on some of the groups mentioned in part 1, so if you’re confused you can read part 1 here to learn about the background of the world, geography, Atilan, and Debilan groups!
The Avians
Hundreds of years ago, the avians used to be a nomadic group, but the cliffs of Maaren’s canyon provided the perfect place to build more permanent structures for weathering storms and resting en route. At the time, the land was controlled by the Atilan, and though they didn’t posses the technology at the time to retrieve the precious metals and magical elements from the cliffs, they didn’t want to give it up either. For a time it looked like the clash would turn violent, but the humans, knowing they could be devastated by attacks from the sky, and the avians, not wanting to resort to that violence, came to a different agreement…
Welcome to the world of Laoche! This is the home of all the stories in the (appropriately named) Laoche Chronicles, including a main trilogy (that has yet to be named) and the prequel, Storge. While all of these stories take place in the same world, Storge focuses on a conflict in one specific reason – a powerful city-state called Maaren. Because this is a sociopolitical conflict, I mainly focused on worldbuilding the class system, government, and religions of the city, and that’s what I’d like to discuss in more depth today! In the future, I’ll elaborate some more on the lore, magic system, and flora and fauna of the world in the future, but for now this will focus on the main topics that are relevant to the understanding of the story.
All of this would be explained in-story as well as the reader follows along with the main characters going about their lives and navigating the conflict, so this isn’t strictly necessary to know before getting into the story. However, I’ve found that explaining it in an informational way like this helps people understand what on earth I’m talking about online, so I hope this can also be useful as a reference guide of sorts!
[Image ID: A pencil drawing done on plain paper of a woman, shown as a portrait from the bust up. She has wavy loose hair and shaded skin meant to convey a light brown skin-tone in grayscale. She wears a white dress with a halter top and neckline. Her head is angled down slightly and she looks up at the audience with a scowl. End Image ID.]
Age: 37
Role in the Story: Antagonist and Tyrant, the self-appointed Atilan queen of Maaren.
About:
At the start of the story, Lyss is a well-known Atilan woman who is married to one of the members of the Council. During an anarchist attack in the arena, the council is mostly killed, and in the moment of crisis, she seizes power and becomes the self-appointed queen and sole ruler of Maaren, disregarding the Trials and her council entierly.
She begins to answer the anarchist threat and search for the magical Debilan children who exposed their power trying to save people during the attack. The other Atilan either support, or are unwilling to cross her, and as she becomes more and more bold, it becomes clear the Anarchists aren’t backing down either. Because of her actions, soon the avians and the Laine family are pulled into a conflict they had wished to avoid. She’s a powerful magic user, compelling authority, clever manipulator, and a dead-serious threat to any who would stand in her way.
Author’s note: This bio has been rewritten to reflect changes made to her backstory during my edit of Storge. If you read the previous version, disregard that, because this is the most updated iteration of her character. This does not significantly affect the overall plot of the book, but it does make her story easier to tell and improves the worldbuilding and her intimidation as a villain and I wanted to reflect that here as well.
I’m sure you’ve noticed a change in art style between the previous character portraits I’ve shared and this one. That’s because the others were commissioned for me by my best friend! I plan to commission the artist again to complete portraits for my villains and side characters who we didn’t request the first time, so until I can do that, I’ll be drawing the character portraits as placeholders.
If you’re new to the site, then more character art can be found on my Gallery page, and the rest of the character portraits can be found under the Storge page. Next week, I’ll share Esil’s introduction, then I’ll have some side characters and worldbuilding lore to share with you, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks. Thank you for reading!
[Image ID: A digitally drawn portrait of an Avian from the neck up. She has a human-like face, dark skin with cool undertones and flecked with orange light, and “hair” of feathers covering his head. She looks at the viewer with a neutral expression. Her plumage is various shades of blue, white, and black. Though not shown in the drawing, Avians have four wings and she wears a loose fitting wrap-style dress and bangles. This portrait was done by @_.par0xysm._ on Instagram! End Image ID.]
Age: 24
Role in the Story: Leader, responsible for the trade of her city and the well being of her people.
About:
Chara is an extremely driven and determined Avian who will work herself until exhaustion to achieve her goals. She’s a public servant, first and foremost, and her focus is entirely dedicated to helping her city and friends however she can use her power and position to do so. She’s idealistic and prizes fairness and justice in her work, and doesn’t approve of people seeing her shaken. Chara keeps meticulous organization and appearance in order to uphold the facade, even if she’s stressing over her responsibility to keep her people well-supplied and well-fed.
Despite her ambition and devotion to her work, her heart is ultimately with her loved ones, and she prizes the work of her brother, Acheran, and the company of her friends in the Laine family.
This is the last of the character introductions for the main characters in my current WIP, Storge, which is in its editing phase! Next up are introductions for my two villains, as well as a list of several important side characters. In the meantime, you can find the other character introductions linked to the Storge page of this blog, and more art on the Gallery page. Thanks for reading!
[Image ID: A digitally drawn portrait of an Avian from the neck up. He has a human-like face, dark skin with orange-red undertones and blue highlights, and “hair” of feathers covering his head. He has an angular face, and looks at the viewer with a neutral expression. His plumage is orange red, and his feathers are fluffy and disheveled. Though not shown in the drawing, Avians have four wings, he wears loose fitting work clothing and carries belts and straps full of carving tools. This portrait was done by @_.par0xysm._ on Instagram! End Image ID.]
Age: 21
Role in the Story: Observer, a scientist studying magic though his art of charm making.
About:
Acheran is one of the pacifist Avians living in the cliff-city near Maaren. He is a charm maker – though he can’t perform spells, he’s excellent at sensing magic in his surroundings and channeling it into the materials he works with in order to create his art that functions as batteries for the Atilan to use in their work. He’s extremely curious about the natural world and practical applications of the magic he works with and loves solving problems. When he gets going on a project, he won’t rest until he’s figured it out or someone forcibly stops him and often forgets to eat and sleep as a result of this. Likewise, if something bores him, he’ll avoid it at all costs.
Upon a first meeting, Acheran may seem quiet, clumsy, and disorganized, preferring to avoid conflict and content to sit back and merely observe the world. But Acheran’s connection to his city runs deep through his sister Chara, and his friends in the Laine family, and he must do his best to navigate an increasingly volatile situation, wondering what’s the right thing to do, and if he has the will to commit to it.
This is the one of several character introductions for my current WIP, Storge, which is in its editing phase! If you want to see Acheran’s sister, Chara, make sure you check back next Friday! In the meantime, you can find the other character introductions linked to the Storge page of this blog, and more art on the Gallery page. Thanks for reading! 🙂
Image ID: A digitally drawn portrait of a young girl drawn from the neck up. She has warm ruddy brown skin and dark freckles, dark brown hair in a cloud of tight curls around her head, and large brown eyes. She looks straight forward with a neutral expression and wears a yellow headband with a bow. Though not shown in the photo, she wears an old and simply styled sundress that’s been patched and torn several times. This portrait was done by @_.par0xysm._ on Instagram!
Age: 12
Role in the Story: The Fighter, a Debilan girl who kills magic and resists it all
About:
Grace is generally a very friendly and enthusiastic chatterbox who enjoys the small joys and fun side of life from the perspective of a child and mercilessly teasing her older siblings. Most would underestimate her as a “silly little girl” but she will not hesitate to throw herself into a fight to protect her family or defend their name. She’s stubborn, loud, honest, and unapologetic, even when going against foes seemingly much more powerful than her.
This is the third of several character introductions for my current WIP, Storge, which is in its editing phase. We’re going to take a break from these for just a moment, however, as next week is a very special post! Come back next Friday to read an interview with Max Gray about how he’s developed his author’s platform, and the character introductions will resume with Acheran on the 18th. Thanks for reading!
