Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

An excerpt

Hello all!

I figured today would be a good time to post a small excerpt from one of the two stories I’m currently working on. PLEASE NOTE: what I’m about to post is a pre-draft meaning if I was asked to submit a draft of this work somewhere, it would have to undergo some sort of fine tuning to be presentable. As you will see, there are a bunch of inconsistencies in it (different styles of writing, different character voice, wrong pacing and of course a great deal of filter words) and of course the ever-existing language barrier issue. By no means this is supposed to be an end result or a finished product. Hopefully, next week I will be able to present you with a finished and published product. Feel free to critique keeping in mind that it’s a pre-draft work.

This scene is taken from a larger one where the main character of that chapter (Jalea) escapes with the help of her soldiers. The setting is medieval fantasy and it’s an action scene, so there aren’t many thoughts and emotions. Here goes.

 

They sped down broad avenues until they reached the gates of the Great Divider; the place where history mentioned all those who had drowned each uprising in a sea of blood. Just like the sergeant had said, the gates were open and waiting for them.
Jalea’s heart raced when she saw the guards on the gatehouse. She didn’t trust anything from this city. Her sergeant had placed his trust on the money he paid; that it would be enough for them to escape but to her it seemed as if he had forgotten they were in a viper’s nest.
Any moment, she thought. The gates will close and we will be trapped. My men will die for my folly. The only thing that kept her in touch with reality was the isochronous beating the horses’ hooves made on the paved road. Her breathing caught in her throat. She tightened her grip on the reins, felt the rough leather against her skin.
And then the shadow of the gatehouse was over her head. In less than a heartbeat, they left it behind them. She exhaled a sigh of relief and her muscles relaxed, as the first barrier was behind them.

[…]

Eventually, they reached the Main Road, a broader and far filthier version of the avenues of the upper city and they were able to pick up pace again.
She tried hard to make up any sound coming from the palace over the snorts and galloping the horses made but failed to hear anything. Just a little longer. Just a little more before they find the gagged guards, she thought.
Then the dark gatehouse entered her field of view, its doors open and the land – golden from the grain fields that stretched beyond it. A thin tear line streaked the end of her eyes as she let out a relieved gasp. It stood before them only a few tens of yards, welcoming them, bidding them to cross it.
And then the bells tolled. First one of them – the cathedral, she thought – then another mimicked it; then another one and before she had drawn a breath she thought the entire upper city’s bell rang.
The guards at the gates looked up at the palace – the ringing had taken them all out of their laziness – then at the speeding riders. They scrambled to place themselves in front of the gate, all three of them, with their spears and halberds.
Jalea saw them getting lowered progressively, saw the sun’s gleam sliding across their surface and she held her breath.
She glimpsed the fear in the guard’s eyes as he stood against a wall of trampling muscles twice his size, charging straight at him. One of her men’s foot stretched and caught the guard squarely on the face, blood and teeth landing on the ground.
A yell from her right made her turn her head to that direction, only a moment too late. She witnessed the descending shadow of the rider next to her, followed by a desperate neigh full of pain and agony. She stretched her head as far as she could and saw another one of her riders coming crushing down on the one that had fallen half a heartbeat before. Rider and horse tumbled in the air and landed with the man’s head first and the horse on top of him. A few feet away from them was the third guard’s body, trampled, his face marred by mud and blood. She closed her eyes and wept for her men.
And then the sun filled her with that strange and somehow blinding red darkness, as the sun shone through her shut eyelids; sun from everywhere. They were out of the city. Behind them the ringing bells carried the message loud and clear; seize them, kill them.

Feel free to comment below but keep in mind this is work in progress.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 3 Comments

Writing about dreams

I will continue last week’s theme about dreams. Like I wrote last week, the story I’m writing deals with dreams. In it, one of the main characters acts as a conduit between the dream world (which is a plane of existence separated from the four planes that define the material world) and the real world (though one may argue how real can a fantasy world be).

That particular character is supposed to be a tragic one; she has sought for this plane for all her life, eager to gain power and knowledge (that’s what motivates her) and when she finally finds it she fails to realise what this new world actually is and what its denizens plan to do. It’s a bit ambiguous if she found the dream world or if it’s the other way around. That’s up to the readers to tell, when they will judge the character.

Which brings me to the next problem I’m facing: how does one describe a story that is both easy for the reader to understand where things are happening (real world / dream world) and maintain limited omniscient (third person) POV?

One of the ways I chose  to deal with this problem was to change the tense of the narrative.  Another was to occasionally break the narration by interjecting small paragraphs (no longer than a sentence perhaps) that described what the physical body did while the mind was in the dream world (twitches, sweating). I have to admit I’m not sure about this last bit though. It feels odd and… wrong, I guess, to break the narrative.

I have been reading for quite some time a long series of fantasy books (cause that’s pretty much the only genre that really excites me) called Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. I started reading this story after I decided I wanted to try writing and without knowing that the story was about dreams. I can honestly say that I was happily surprised. The way Jordan describes his version of the dream world (he has given it a very strange name for me to type it here without messing it up) and the interactions of the characters with it is by maintaining the tense and adding things that could only happen in a dream. To me this makes more sense.

Another book I’m currently reading (or listening to, since I have it as an audiobook) is Bag of Bones, by Stephen King. In it, King chooses to change the tense and it works for him. The problem is that whenever the main character has a dream, music kicks in and the listener understands that something’s different. Would it have worked just as good if I was reading it instead of listening to it? I don’t know.

I’m at a loss to be honest and I don’t know which one is best. What do you think? What would you use? Leave a comment if you have an idea. Do you have someone you know who is either writing or has written something about dreams? If so, could you please hook us up here so we can exchange ideas?

Also, please take a minute to answer the poll I had posted last week about a new section that will deal with ideas. So far only one person (thank you by the way 🙂 ) has answered it.

Thank you all and take care!

Hello everyone

This week I’d like to give some information about what my book is about.

First of all, I should say that the genre is fantasy leaning towards sword and sorcery BUT not entirely. No more than A Song of Ice and Fire is, at least. I use multiple POVs in order to tell significant events that happen in the world. The world I’ve created bases its magic on the elements, which means there are four distinct types; earth, fire, water and wind. The way I have explained it is that the characters’ world resides at the centre of a balanced scale with four tips. Each tip represents an element and consequently another world dominated by that element. The characters’ world (the real world) resides on the fringes of these four elemental worlds, thus having access to all four types of elements. Pretty straight forward so far.

What happens if another plane enters the equation? That is one question a part of the story is about, though not the main plot line. The other thing is this: what if nightmares were real, living entities? Where did they come from? What if there was a way for them to enter the real world (the characters’ world)? What would happen then? My guess is madness would come to life and that is what I have made the story be all about. How would individuals deal with it? What would happen to a kingdom that is on the brink of civil war, if the key players were to be “possessed”, so to speak, by maddening nightmares? This last question gives rise to another one: who controls the nightmares?

These, along with the different characters that will tell the story (different POVs), are some of the main plot lines that will have to be answered by the time I finish all the books. Oh yes, I forgot to mention… It’s going to be more than one book. Which is nice when you think about it but nigh impossible to sell to the agents and publishers since I’m unknown in the literature circles. The risk is too high for them. The length of each book will be far greater than the standards agents ask from newcomers (if I ever become one). Again, think of George R. R. Martin’s books (around 1000 pages) as well as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time book length (more than 1000 pages).

To tackle this, I have also started outlining (whenever time permits) another story, a stand alone one, based on one of my short stories. I will talk about that at another post. I should be able to keep it at normal length (around 100k words, which is about 250 pages I think). But first I want to finish with the draft of the first book of the series and see where it takes me from there. If anything, I’m honing my craft, so no waste of time there 🙂

Also, I’m still waiting if anyone wants to share ideas with the rest of the community. If so, please let me know, so I can set up a new page in my blog where we could share stories and ideas.

Take care!