What’s wrong with Black Fiddle...
Jun. 11th, 2006 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katiefooleryI know what’s wrong with Black Fiddle! Even better, I know what’s right with it, too. There’s so much right with it that I want to dance about and hug people. I can even handily ignore the fact that I know there’s a great deal of work ahead of me because I’m actually looking forward to it. That’s right - for the first time since I finished the first draft, I actually feel hopeful and positive about this second draft. I think I can do it.
I finally have a smidgeon of faith in my abilities there.
I think the main reason for my dissatisfaction in the past has been the last third of the draft. It’s not great. But I know why it’s not great, now - because the ending is completely wrong. It’s the wrong ending for the story entirely, in fact. There’s a point where the story could go one of two ways and I took it the wrong way the first time around. This time, I’ll go the other way and it will be better for it.
There’s so much work to do, though. There are characters to be fleshed out and new ones to be introduced. I have to resolve Jeannie’s relationship with Meggan - that’s an important one. I think I let my own impatience with Meggan’s character intrude on Jeannie’s feelings and poor Meggan suffered as a result. Most of what Jeannie does is for Meggan anyway, so there must be a reason behind that, beyond simply being sisters.
I have to spend a great deal of time with Cianan and induce him to tell me all his secrets. The main reason he hardly tells Jeannie anything in the first draft is due to the fact that he wouldn’t tell me anything, either. But he shall learn. If he doesn’t behave, I’ll give him a limp and a wall-eyed countenance.
I thought I’d get rid of the Way of the Dead entirely, but the first half of it is actually quite good.
So, in an effort to make a start, tonight shall be spent painstakingly converting all of the scenes to single sentences. I’m hoping this will assist me in re-arranging the structure of the story slightly. The best bit is that it will make me feel productive! The elusive second draft will finally begin!
*insert mad dance of excitement here*
In the meantime, I thought I’d share a couple of excerpts from the first draft with you all. Please remember that these are completely untouched pieces - I wrote the first draft in one go and there has been no editing to speak of since then.
These three excerpts come from my favourite part of the book so far. Jeannie has arrived in a city called Calladan and has been arrested and imprisoned for playing music in a market square. She quickly learns that music is reserved for the wealthy elite and that she can expect to stay in prison until she either faces trial or is "bought". Eventually, she ends up as a servant in a large house in Calladan, where she washes dishes, cleans floors and turns the pages for the daughter of the house as she plays her flute incredibly badly.
This excerpt comes from a section where Jeannie has been locked in an underground storeroom as punishment for, well, for being Jeannie, really. She’s going ever so slightly insane when an unquenchable desire for music overtakes her.
Somewhere in the darkness, the longing for the Fiddle awoke in Jeannie. In her weakened state, she couldn’t hold it back, could only lie there as the desire for the Fiddle washed over her. It was a painful longing that spoke of waking death should she fail to once more hold the Black Fiddle in her hands.
She needed music as she had never needed it before. If someone were to come to the door of the store room with a fiddle in one hand and water in the other, she would have been driven to the fiddle.
It has been too long since I played, Jeannie thought to herself. She couldn’t remember a day when she hadn’t played music, until she had started her journey to Laighgrain. I have to play. I have to...
Vaguely, she was aware of her hands moving in the dark, trying to find a fiddle that wasn’t there. Her fingers yearned to fold themselves around the familiar shapes, to feel the vibrations of music from the wood. She ached for it, with a strength that unnerved her. A strangled hum was coming from her throat, low and intense and desperate. In the darkness before her, grey light was blooming, wheeling about, forming a familiar shape. Some deep part of her mind had taken over, teaching Jeannie things she didn’t even know she knew.
I must have music.
The greyness twisted about, becoming more real by the the minute. But then the faintness came back to Jeannie and blackness pulled itself over her eyes.
In the seconds before she fell unconscious, her fingers touched wood and string and she knew she held a fiddle in her hands.
In her time as a servant in Calladan, Jeannie strikes up an uneasy alliance with a girl called Eilish. But Eilish is no ordinary servant and Jeannie quickly learns the truth of her nature. She has been brought up to hate people like Eilish, but when Eilish offers to teach her how to fill the empty spaces in her music, Jeannie can’t bring herself to refuse.
Five minutes was all she could stand. Carefully, although she was shaking, she packed away her cleaning implements in their little cloth bag and stood up, dusting her skirt down. She turned around to head for the stairs and ran straight into Master Kenneth.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, trying to seek a way past without appearing rude.
“Don’t do it,” Kenneth said. This close to him, Jeannie was surprised to notice that he was much younger than she had thought. He was as tall as ever, looming over her almost accidentally.
But what did he mean? Don’t do what? Jeannie frowned at him. “It was an accident,” she said hesitantly.
Kenneth almost laughed. “Idiot girl,” he said, almost fondly. “You know what I’m talking about. Stay here. Finish your tasks. Do not follow her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeannie said, fully aware that her voice was denying her words.
“Yes you do,” Kenneth said. “Do not think I was not aware of you during Miss Carrie’s... lesson. You are a smart girl, you must know what Eilish is.”
Jeannie merely stared at him. He’d been watching her? Did he think he knew everything about her? And did Eilish know he knew about her? “What is she?” she whispered, feeling time slipping away from her.
“Don’t play the fool with me,” Kenneth said gently. “I am not your enemy, nor am I an enemy of Eilish.”
“Then why are you here?” Jeannie asked. Standing between me and my destiny.
“You must realise what she is,” Kenneth said. He had manoeuvred them into a shadowy corner in the stairs and was speaking with a lowered voice.
Jeannie gave him a defiant look but refused to speak.
“She is one of the fey folk,” Kenneth said, his voice stuttering over the words.
“I know,” Jeannie said.
“Then you know why you cannot go with her,” he said.
“No. I don’t,” Jeannie said. She couldn’t move without pushing Kenneth out of the way, and yet every moment she spent with him just frustrated her. She was so close to learning all the musical secrets she had ever desired. Why couldn’t he let her go? She pushed at his arm, trying to get past.
“Has she offered to teach you secrets?” Kenenth asked. His voice was as quiet as ever, but it stopped her in her tracks. “Has she offered you power?”
Jeannie stayed where she was, looking stoically away from him.
“The power of the fey folk is not for mortals,” Kenneth said. There was a bitterness in his voice that almost hurt Jeannie to hear it. “I know you are a musician. The master would not have put you in that room if it were not so. And I saw the pain in your eyes as Miss Carrie... played.”
He paused, and Jeannie waited for him to fill the silence.
“She is not offering you music,” Kenneth said.
“No,” Jeannie said. Her voice was hoarse in the darkening hall. “She’s offering me the way to fill up the empty spaces.”
Kenneth started at her words. “The empty spaces?”
“The bits that are missing,” Jeannie said, her heart aching at the memory of music. “The shadows in the songs. She’s going to show me how to fill them in.”
“She would not offer such a thing,” Kenneth said slowly, “if you did not have the power to do so.”
Jeannie felt an arcane thrill at his words. “What do you mean?” she asked, although her blood knew the answer.
“Don’t go, Jeannie Finn,” Kenneth said, which was no answer at all. “The fey folk only know destruction in this world. She will not truly let you learn, for her heart hates you.”
“Then why did she offer?” Jeannie asked. A part of her couldn’t doubt Kenneth’s words. She had seen the dangerous beauty of Eilish’s eyes, the terrifying wisdom of her mind. How she must hate being trapped in such an ordinary world.
“She needs music,” Kenneth said. “You could not possibly understand what it is to need music like that.” He shivered, as though he understood all too well.
As did Jeannie.
“You have no idea,” she said, her voice hard and bitter. “Have you woken at night, a hair’s breadth from pain because music is inside you and you cannot let it out? Have you so longed to touch a fiddle that your skin seemed to burn on your bones? Don’t presume to tell me I do not know what it is to long for music.”
Kenneth had turned to stare openly at her, his face a picture of dawning terror. “Then there are a thousand reasons you should not go,” he said.
And then there's Cianan. They bring out the worst and the best in each other and spend as much time hiding their own secrets as they do glaring at each other. Jeannie’s servitude comes to an end when Cianan arrives, although Jeannie’s pride is stung to the core to be found in such a situation by such a person.
“What is this?” Cianan asked. His gaze rested on Jeannie and her plain, servant’s clothes. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“You don’t know?” Jeannie asked. “How did you know I was here if you didn’t know everything.”
“There’s a little more to my story,” Cianan said. “Are you coming, or must I wait forever, as per usual?”
“She’s going nowhere,” Linne said. She grabbed Jeannie’s arm in a grip that Jeannie couldn’t shake and dragged her back into the house. She flung Jeannie from her with an insane violence. Jeannie slid across the black and white tiles in an undignified manner, knocking her head as she drew to a stop. “I’m sorry to call an end to your little reunion,” Linne sneered. “But you have work to do.”
“Get out of my way,” Jeannie snarled, drawing herself up on all fours.
Linne knocked her down again. “Tsk tsk, Finn, have you learned nothing in your time with us?” she said. “It will please me to teach you manners, if it takes a lifetime to do so.”
Ringing footsteps announced Cianan’s arrival at the scene. He pushed Linne away, although he seemed reluctant to treat a woman so. “Jeannie, what is happening here?”
“I’m a servant,” Jeannie spat, tasting bile with the words. “Are you happy? I’m at the beck and call of the master of this house. I clean dishes and turn pages for the little bitch of a mistress. And I was just polishing the bannister before you arrived.”
She didn’t know what she had expected from Cianan, but she knew she hadn’t expected him to laugh. Yet that was exactly what he did, laughing until his face turned red and tears danced in his eyes.
“Oh, Finn,” he said. “I feel so sorry for them.”
I finally have a smidgeon of faith in my abilities there.
I think the main reason for my dissatisfaction in the past has been the last third of the draft. It’s not great. But I know why it’s not great, now - because the ending is completely wrong. It’s the wrong ending for the story entirely, in fact. There’s a point where the story could go one of two ways and I took it the wrong way the first time around. This time, I’ll go the other way and it will be better for it.
There’s so much work to do, though. There are characters to be fleshed out and new ones to be introduced. I have to resolve Jeannie’s relationship with Meggan - that’s an important one. I think I let my own impatience with Meggan’s character intrude on Jeannie’s feelings and poor Meggan suffered as a result. Most of what Jeannie does is for Meggan anyway, so there must be a reason behind that, beyond simply being sisters.
I have to spend a great deal of time with Cianan and induce him to tell me all his secrets. The main reason he hardly tells Jeannie anything in the first draft is due to the fact that he wouldn’t tell me anything, either. But he shall learn. If he doesn’t behave, I’ll give him a limp and a wall-eyed countenance.
I thought I’d get rid of the Way of the Dead entirely, but the first half of it is actually quite good.
So, in an effort to make a start, tonight shall be spent painstakingly converting all of the scenes to single sentences. I’m hoping this will assist me in re-arranging the structure of the story slightly. The best bit is that it will make me feel productive! The elusive second draft will finally begin!
*insert mad dance of excitement here*
In the meantime, I thought I’d share a couple of excerpts from the first draft with you all. Please remember that these are completely untouched pieces - I wrote the first draft in one go and there has been no editing to speak of since then.
These three excerpts come from my favourite part of the book so far. Jeannie has arrived in a city called Calladan and has been arrested and imprisoned for playing music in a market square. She quickly learns that music is reserved for the wealthy elite and that she can expect to stay in prison until she either faces trial or is "bought". Eventually, she ends up as a servant in a large house in Calladan, where she washes dishes, cleans floors and turns the pages for the daughter of the house as she plays her flute incredibly badly.
* * * * *
This excerpt comes from a section where Jeannie has been locked in an underground storeroom as punishment for, well, for being Jeannie, really. She’s going ever so slightly insane when an unquenchable desire for music overtakes her.
Somewhere in the darkness, the longing for the Fiddle awoke in Jeannie. In her weakened state, she couldn’t hold it back, could only lie there as the desire for the Fiddle washed over her. It was a painful longing that spoke of waking death should she fail to once more hold the Black Fiddle in her hands.
She needed music as she had never needed it before. If someone were to come to the door of the store room with a fiddle in one hand and water in the other, she would have been driven to the fiddle.
It has been too long since I played, Jeannie thought to herself. She couldn’t remember a day when she hadn’t played music, until she had started her journey to Laighgrain. I have to play. I have to...
Vaguely, she was aware of her hands moving in the dark, trying to find a fiddle that wasn’t there. Her fingers yearned to fold themselves around the familiar shapes, to feel the vibrations of music from the wood. She ached for it, with a strength that unnerved her. A strangled hum was coming from her throat, low and intense and desperate. In the darkness before her, grey light was blooming, wheeling about, forming a familiar shape. Some deep part of her mind had taken over, teaching Jeannie things she didn’t even know she knew.
I must have music.
The greyness twisted about, becoming more real by the the minute. But then the faintness came back to Jeannie and blackness pulled itself over her eyes.
In the seconds before she fell unconscious, her fingers touched wood and string and she knew she held a fiddle in her hands.
* * * * *
In her time as a servant in Calladan, Jeannie strikes up an uneasy alliance with a girl called Eilish. But Eilish is no ordinary servant and Jeannie quickly learns the truth of her nature. She has been brought up to hate people like Eilish, but when Eilish offers to teach her how to fill the empty spaces in her music, Jeannie can’t bring herself to refuse.
Five minutes was all she could stand. Carefully, although she was shaking, she packed away her cleaning implements in their little cloth bag and stood up, dusting her skirt down. She turned around to head for the stairs and ran straight into Master Kenneth.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, trying to seek a way past without appearing rude.
“Don’t do it,” Kenneth said. This close to him, Jeannie was surprised to notice that he was much younger than she had thought. He was as tall as ever, looming over her almost accidentally.
But what did he mean? Don’t do what? Jeannie frowned at him. “It was an accident,” she said hesitantly.
Kenneth almost laughed. “Idiot girl,” he said, almost fondly. “You know what I’m talking about. Stay here. Finish your tasks. Do not follow her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeannie said, fully aware that her voice was denying her words.
“Yes you do,” Kenneth said. “Do not think I was not aware of you during Miss Carrie’s... lesson. You are a smart girl, you must know what Eilish is.”
Jeannie merely stared at him. He’d been watching her? Did he think he knew everything about her? And did Eilish know he knew about her? “What is she?” she whispered, feeling time slipping away from her.
“Don’t play the fool with me,” Kenneth said gently. “I am not your enemy, nor am I an enemy of Eilish.”
“Then why are you here?” Jeannie asked. Standing between me and my destiny.
“You must realise what she is,” Kenneth said. He had manoeuvred them into a shadowy corner in the stairs and was speaking with a lowered voice.
Jeannie gave him a defiant look but refused to speak.
“She is one of the fey folk,” Kenneth said, his voice stuttering over the words.
“I know,” Jeannie said.
“Then you know why you cannot go with her,” he said.
“No. I don’t,” Jeannie said. She couldn’t move without pushing Kenneth out of the way, and yet every moment she spent with him just frustrated her. She was so close to learning all the musical secrets she had ever desired. Why couldn’t he let her go? She pushed at his arm, trying to get past.
“Has she offered to teach you secrets?” Kenenth asked. His voice was as quiet as ever, but it stopped her in her tracks. “Has she offered you power?”
Jeannie stayed where she was, looking stoically away from him.
“The power of the fey folk is not for mortals,” Kenneth said. There was a bitterness in his voice that almost hurt Jeannie to hear it. “I know you are a musician. The master would not have put you in that room if it were not so. And I saw the pain in your eyes as Miss Carrie... played.”
He paused, and Jeannie waited for him to fill the silence.
“She is not offering you music,” Kenneth said.
“No,” Jeannie said. Her voice was hoarse in the darkening hall. “She’s offering me the way to fill up the empty spaces.”
Kenneth started at her words. “The empty spaces?”
“The bits that are missing,” Jeannie said, her heart aching at the memory of music. “The shadows in the songs. She’s going to show me how to fill them in.”
“She would not offer such a thing,” Kenneth said slowly, “if you did not have the power to do so.”
Jeannie felt an arcane thrill at his words. “What do you mean?” she asked, although her blood knew the answer.
“Don’t go, Jeannie Finn,” Kenneth said, which was no answer at all. “The fey folk only know destruction in this world. She will not truly let you learn, for her heart hates you.”
“Then why did she offer?” Jeannie asked. A part of her couldn’t doubt Kenneth’s words. She had seen the dangerous beauty of Eilish’s eyes, the terrifying wisdom of her mind. How she must hate being trapped in such an ordinary world.
“She needs music,” Kenneth said. “You could not possibly understand what it is to need music like that.” He shivered, as though he understood all too well.
As did Jeannie.
“You have no idea,” she said, her voice hard and bitter. “Have you woken at night, a hair’s breadth from pain because music is inside you and you cannot let it out? Have you so longed to touch a fiddle that your skin seemed to burn on your bones? Don’t presume to tell me I do not know what it is to long for music.”
Kenneth had turned to stare openly at her, his face a picture of dawning terror. “Then there are a thousand reasons you should not go,” he said.
* * * * *
And then there's Cianan. They bring out the worst and the best in each other and spend as much time hiding their own secrets as they do glaring at each other. Jeannie’s servitude comes to an end when Cianan arrives, although Jeannie’s pride is stung to the core to be found in such a situation by such a person.
“What is this?” Cianan asked. His gaze rested on Jeannie and her plain, servant’s clothes. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“You don’t know?” Jeannie asked. “How did you know I was here if you didn’t know everything.”
“There’s a little more to my story,” Cianan said. “Are you coming, or must I wait forever, as per usual?”
“She’s going nowhere,” Linne said. She grabbed Jeannie’s arm in a grip that Jeannie couldn’t shake and dragged her back into the house. She flung Jeannie from her with an insane violence. Jeannie slid across the black and white tiles in an undignified manner, knocking her head as she drew to a stop. “I’m sorry to call an end to your little reunion,” Linne sneered. “But you have work to do.”
“Get out of my way,” Jeannie snarled, drawing herself up on all fours.
Linne knocked her down again. “Tsk tsk, Finn, have you learned nothing in your time with us?” she said. “It will please me to teach you manners, if it takes a lifetime to do so.”
Ringing footsteps announced Cianan’s arrival at the scene. He pushed Linne away, although he seemed reluctant to treat a woman so. “Jeannie, what is happening here?”
“I’m a servant,” Jeannie spat, tasting bile with the words. “Are you happy? I’m at the beck and call of the master of this house. I clean dishes and turn pages for the little bitch of a mistress. And I was just polishing the bannister before you arrived.”
She didn’t know what she had expected from Cianan, but she knew she hadn’t expected him to laugh. Yet that was exactly what he did, laughing until his face turned red and tears danced in his eyes.
“Oh, Finn,” he said. “I feel so sorry for them.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2006-06-11 07:56 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-11 08:15 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-11 09:04 am (UTC)And of course I'll be buying the book!
Why is everyone posting really interesting excerpts right now?! Stop making me want to read more, damn it!
no subject
on 2006-06-11 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-11 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-11 11:21 am (UTC)lustlustlust'" Which, er, is not to say that Kenneth is necessarily a love interest, but rather that minor characters can be very interesting/important in their own right.And of course I'll be buying the book, so I can read it in public places (like the bus) and say "look, look! I know the person who wrote this. We like, talk about things, and I can send her emails without getting 'cease and desist, crazy author-stalker' emails back omgwtfbbq!" I'll be cool by association, you see.
no subject
on 2006-06-11 08:19 am (UTC)This is really fascinating stuff, Bunly!!! I want to read more. I especially liked the first one, but I just love the idea of there being shadows in the music.
no subject
on 2006-06-11 08:56 am (UTC)Thank-you muchly, good Kayt. I'm glad you liked it. :)
no subject
on 2006-06-11 11:32 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-11 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-12 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-11 11:45 am (UTC)Kenneth is interesting, but he strikes me as a little bit of a over-dramatising snob. Someone who would watch A Current Affairs and stay away from elevators for the rest of their days because they're liable to eat your foot.
I love Jeannie, she's got such a delightfully stroppy attitude. So nice to have a main character that doesn't attempt to drown you in sweetness.
no subject
on 2006-06-11 11:43 pm (UTC)I guess I shall just have to hurry up and get to work on this second draft, then. Just for you.
no subject
on 2006-06-12 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-12 05:58 am (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
on 2006-06-12 05:34 am (UTC)*wants more*
no subject
on 2006-06-12 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-12 09:54 pm (UTC)I'm impressed. ^_^
no subject
on 2006-06-14 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-13 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-14 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-15 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-14 02:22 pm (UTC)Its all just so damn interesting.
Very very good for a first draft.
no subject
on 2006-10-06 10:48 am (UTC)*whaps LJ*
Thanks for your feedback, good Nomes. When I started writing the Jeannie-as-a-servant aspect of Black Fiddle, I was expecting it to be quite a shortish section but it turned out to be more significant than I'd anticipated, mostly because of the whole "music reserved for the elite" aspect. Jeannie comes from a different part of the country where pretty much everyone plays music, so the whole concept rather disgusts her and she tends not to hold back when she's disgusted by things.
no subject
on 2006-10-07 05:46 am (UTC)You're welcome, I love having an opinion on stuff. Though it would have been better without the tpo.
no subject
on 2006-10-07 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-10-07 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-10-06 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-10-06 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-10-06 10:48 am (UTC)The place to send things to is alexmacfarlane@gmail.com
I'm also on MSN and AIM if you want to chat:
MSN = chibifemalefighter@hotmail.com
AIM = akalandra