I’m continuing my dual revision projects, editing Guardian III and adding chapters from Terrence’s point of view into The Princess Beyond the Thorns.  The added chapters are definitely bringing more layers into the story, and it gives me a chance to bring in elements that will be important later, that I didn’t know existed when I first wrote this.

For instance, I didn’t invent Elena as a character until I wrote the next section of the book–but she’s important to Terrence and it makes sense he’d mention her to Rose sooner.  Here’s an excerpt that mentions Elena, builds on the growing romance, and lets me poke a little fun at romantic tropes of silly misunderstandings.  Enjoy!

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“Who is Elena?” Rose asked, adding a pair of gardenias to the flowers in her basket.

Someone he had simpler emotions about than his mother, and Terrence grinned.  “Elena is the other most wonderful person I’ve ever known.”

“Oh?” Rose said, turning away from the gardenias and walking a little farther down the path.

Terrence’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her back.  He hadn’t thought about the possible implications in what he’d said before he said it, might still not have if Rose hadn’t turned away just then…but what was she imagining his relationship was with this woman he said was wonderful?  And did she not like what she was imagining?

He was being ridiculous.  Why should Rose care what Elena was to him?  Why should he care if Rose cared…well.  That was less ridiculous.

“Elena is my cousin,” he volunteered, because letting any misconception go on was even more ridiculous than anything else.  “My mother’s niece.  She lived with us, so we pretty well grew up together.  I spent whole years of my childhood pretending Elena was my sister.”  Just in case the cousin clarification wasn’t enough.

I’m doubling on my revisions right now.  I’m still revising Book Three of my Guardian of the Opera trilogy.  Meanwhile I finished the prep work for The Princess Beyond the Thorns, and have started in to revise the first short story (or short novella) I wrote some months ago, which will be Part One of the novel.

The first thing I’ve realized is that I want to bring the point of view of my other protagonist, Prince Terrence (you’ve been meeting him in recent weeks) into this first section, which was originally entirely Princess Rose.  Unlike recent Phantom revisions, I don’t think I’m going to rewrite/replace anything substantive.  But there are some places that were skimmed past, some time gaps, that I think could be filled in with Terrence’s point of view.  We’ll see how it goes!

Rose’s voice, especially in this first section, has a very fairy tale quality to it.  Details are indistinct, and we are much deeper in her head than we are in the world.  Terrence isn’t like that.  Rose has been trapped in the garden for a hundred years and, in a metaphorical though not literal sense, she’s asleep.  Her voice will change as the novel goes on–but Terrence stumbles onto the scene from the outside world, and he’s already awake.  So I’ve already started having fun contrasting his voice, putting in far more detail than I originally had in the story.

Here’s a bit from my new Chapter Two that demonstrates this rather nicely.

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He wasn’t sure he had ever really expected to find the Princess Behind Thorns.  He wasn’t sure he had ever entirely believed she existed.  He had heard stories about her all his life, about the sleeping princess under a curse, waiting for a champion to set her free.  His father had a portrait of Princess Rose Amelia in his throne room, an elegant woman with golden hair piled up on her head, wearing a dress cut in the fashion of a century ago.

At least, Elena said it was the fashion of a century ago.  He couldn’t tell the difference himself.

He wished Elena was here.  She might know what to do, now that he was faced with, not a portrait, but an actual, living girl.  She looked enough like the princess in the portrait that he knew she had to be the right one—and at that thought, he laughed at himself.  Because what was the alternative?  That some other woman was living behind a wall of thorns, pretending to be a princess?

At the thought of the thorns, he pushed himself up to his feet.  He didn’t know what to do about Princess Rose, who wasn’t asleep and didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but the next logical step in a rescue was still obvious.

He retraced the path he had taken to the pond, following his own footprints on the dust of the garden paths.  The sharp edges of his boots stood out in marked contrast to the soft hollows of her footprints.  Her steps were everywhere, an endless layering of clearer prints atop worn away ones, criss-crossed by the outlines of tiny paws.

Terrence hadn’t expected cats either.

I’ve been balancing revising the Phantom and plotting for NaNoWriMo lately.  I’m almost done putting together background for major characters for my NaNo novel, and I’ve gotten through the (I hope?) most difficult section of my third Phantom novel.  I got past the opening, very rushed section (now very expanded) and am into a good stretch that’s already pretty solid.  So it should be clearer sailing…at least until the last couple chapters, which I’m pretty sure are rushed again!

For now, here’s a bit that I wrote forever ago that didn’t call for hardly any revising…and which is something of a fun nod if you’ve seen enough versions of the Phantom!

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My attention lit on the narrow table at the far side of the room.  It was a dark wood that matched the bed, and a row of masks lay lined up along its length.  I went that way.

There was Red Death’s skull mask and the metal half-mask I first saw the night Buquet died.  Next to it was the cream-colored one he had worn the day we first spoke in the auditorium, and for Easter at Notre Dame; it matched in style the black mask Erik was wearing now, cut to hide everything but his mouth and chin, but the different color made it so much less ominous.  A similarly shaped one I didn’t recognize lay beside it, pale gray, cut in more gentle curves at its bottom and suggesting a hint of curved eyebrows above the narrower eye holes, a similar hint of cheekbones below.  That one actually wasn’t too bad, having a serene aspect.  Still, I reached instead for the last one, the familiar white half mask he wore most often, covering from forehead to jaw.

“Here.”  I held it out to him.  “It’s by far the least forbidding.”

Lately I’ve been trying to do some pre-planning for this year’s NaNoWriMo.  Mostly, I want to work out at least some concept of a plot arc, in contrast to my usual method of “pick a direction and go.”  That’s worked out sometimes, not so much others.  And I’m very excited about the characters I want to write about this November, so I want them to have a really great plot to play in.

I’ve been working with some tools to lay out the major sections and key turning points of the story, with tightly integrated plot and character developments.  The character arc really drives the shape of it…so I’m creating plot points to drive the character growth, although in a funny way it’s who the character is that drives how they react to the plot points, so…it’s a very confused cause and effect.

And even in semi-outlining, characters can rebel!  I have a pretty good handle on Rose, and worked out some plot twists that work very well with who she is and who she ends up becoming.  Terrence, on the other hand (you met him as a child last week), has not been cooperating.  He didn’t want to react to my plot points the way I expected, and seemed to be pursuing a goal completely different than the one I thought he wanted–which sent me back to the drawing board to see if I actually understood his character after all.

Part of the challenge, I realized, was that the motivations driving Terrence’s effect on the plot are not the same ones driving his character growth.  On a plot level, he’s deeply conflicted about his relationship with his father.  On a character growth level, he’s dealing with a lack of worthiness.  Are those related?  Absolutely.  Are they the same thing?  Mm, not quite.

People think writers just make things up.  Some days, even I think that.  And then on other days, with gratitude to Robin McKinley for the metaphor, it’s much, much more like trying to part the veil to look in on the Land of Story and see how it all happened.  Though I have to say–those are the most exciting stories to write in the end!

No excerpt today, because all I’d have to give you is a plot outline, and that would be giving rather a lot away, wouldn’t it? 😉