Comfortable Silences

On gently falling in love with a chapter I haven't started yet.

I’ve got around forty-eight hours until my writers’ group, and I’ll admit it. I’m panicking a little. The quiet chapters are the hardest to write in so many ways, and after my daring rescue starring a VERY impressive and super realistic double pulley (if I do say so myself), these characters have to sit down, take a breather, and get to know one another.

Sea Shanty of Bog, a half-Vair, half-Manneskind young woman intent on killing the terrifying Second God to save her twin brother, has just rescued Immerlore of the Hvälesang Tribe. He is a terminally ill Nordlander far from home, and he has killed the terrifying Eighth God to buy himself more time. Gods store their immortality in their bone marrow, and he has something he really, really needs to live for.

This should be the easy part, because I’ve written this book’s middle and end. I’ve written their relationship in its later stages. I know where they end up, and how they got there. I’ve written them as lovers, their disagreements, their tenderest moments, and even the irreconcilable, unforgivable event horizon they’ll need a whole sequel to make it back from. But because my theme metamorphosed over the two-ish years I tinkered away on my first draft, I have to rework my entire beginning, and then fortify the rest so the throughline makes sense. Every draft gets better. But for me, at least, that talk after a memorable introduction is the hardest part.

My original idea to open this chapter was to have another character show up who is fully capable of single-handedly rescuing someone from a deep pit, no pulleys needed. He finds that his help is unneeded, but still wants credit for how easy it would have been to rescue Immerlore after he came all this way. It’s a very humorous beat that adds levity when the previous chapter is full of technical detail and pounding adrenaline, and establishes the clashing friction between the characters that endures throughout much of the novel’s middle stretch.

But Sea Shanty and Immerlore deserve more, in the sense that I need to establish them, early, as natural allies with great chemistry and complementary personalities. Sea Shanty is resolute but can be stubborn; Immerlore is pragmatic but distant. Sea Shanty is courageous but naive, Immerlore is clever but lacks eloquence. Sea Shanty’s destiny is divine, and Immerlore’s is cursed.

The crux of it, the very heart of everything, is this: to Sea Shanty, love means holding on, no matter what. To Immerlore, it means accepting the inevitability of letting go.

That’s the story. That’s it, that’s the book. And I need to trace it into this chapter like a gentle first kiss, a signature to be remembered later and melt into the resonance of the book’s aching final lines. This chapter will line up the shot, and another one, later in the story and already written, will land it.

“Goodbye forever” is a bitter blow. What happens, then, when someone says “no?”

I’m working backwards, and speedwriting, and contemplating another energy drink even though it’s going on 1:00 in the morning. In relative safety and comfort, two characters have to decide, “hey, you’re someone I could enjoy getting to know”. They have to find each other endearing and smile at each other’s turns of phrase. They have to grow quickly (but believably) into speaking like old friends, because in a way neither of them remember, they actually are.

This has to be the first step to eventually holding on when letting go is the other, and ultimately rejected, option. It’s a load-bearing structure; if I fail it, it will fail me when it matters most.