Class Work

A year ago last January I started a weekly set of classes at Forward Motion generally called 2YN (Two Year Novel). The first group is up to week 59 and the second group, started this last January, are up to week 7. I post something every week. The second group is getting the edited version of the first year stuff, but the material up there at week 59 is still new stuff.

Sometimes I like to try and give some little example. Usually these are off the top of my head, like this week's material where I tried to show how a person might expand material to make the character seem more in contact with the world around him.

Example without expansion:

Delian took the steps slowly, in no hurry to get up to the high tower room where he had not been in years. He'd been a page here ten years ago. That seemed like another life, and he wondered how he could feel so nostalgic about something he had despised at the time.

Of course, back then he thought going off to war and fighting the enemy was a grand adventure. He let his fingers brush against the small round tokens sewn into his belt -- all taken from the belts of dead friends. There were far too many of them.

The door to the room loomed ahead, the mage light glowing in a way that seemed welcoming now rather than frightening as it had been to a ten year old. He didn't pause as he reached the door and knocked softly.

"Come in, Delian," Owl said from the other side.

This isn't a bad scene, but I wanted to expand on it, get more into the feel of what's going on. So I wrote this:

Delian put his foot on the bottom stair, feeling the groove in the stone where countless others had climbed, suppliant to the man who lived in the high tower room. Delian had not been here in years. He looked up at the narrow passage and the flickering of a torch at the first turn. No use putting it off. He started up the steps, his booted feet finding the pattern where others had walked, and moving steadily upward between brown stone walls worn smooth by age and traffic.

Ten years ago he had taken this stairwell a half dozen times a day as a page assigned to the great and powerful Mage Owl. It had been a plumb job, and the other boys had envied him -- but they never knew about the hours of tedium sitting on these steps waiting for a call to do...anything.

Of course, back then he thought going off to war and fighting the enemy sounded like a grand adventure. He had gone in his sixteenth year, and came back now a decade older and wiser. His fingers brushed against the small round copper tokens sewn into his belt -- all taken from the belts of dead friends. There were far too many of them, and some of their faces came back to him in that moment, so real that he could almost hear them speak. He had to stop, his hand to the wall and calm the surge of despair and anger that raced up through his body -- and to wipe away the unmanly dampness from the edge of his eyes.

He moved on, his mouth clamped shut, his hand well away from the belt. He took the next set of stairs with grim determination, past the last of the torches that would have been placed by the current pages.

Delian hadn't even realized he had subconsciously counted the stairs (forty-six, forty-seven) until he looked up and saw the steady glow of a torch that had not been changed in decades, and still shined brightly with it's magic fuel. That gave him some hope. He stopped and straightened his clothing, brushed a fingers through his hair, and pulled back the shards of his tattered emotions.

And then he leaned down and brushed his hand over the wall, down low by the step where he had sat and waited for the mage to send him on some mission... waiting for life to happen. He found the carefully carved letters that spelled his name, proving that he had, really been that boy.

Straightening, he walked the last half dozen steps to the door and knocked.

"Come in, Delian."

Of course he had known. He always had. Delian took a deep breath and opened the door. Owl stood by the window, looking out at a storm cast day, dressed in common tunic and pants, his long hair wild, moving in the breeze. No different, Delian thought with a shock. No older, no sign of anything that had changed.

"I trust you didn't mutilate any more of my wall on your way up?" he asked.

As a child, those words would have terrified him, but he'd survived far worse than bad tempered mages in the last few years. This time Delian looked into the man's face.... and laughed. Owl grinned.

Now here's the problem. I suddenly have a scene I like, two interesting characters... and I want to run with them! And I don't have time!

Well, maybe just a nice little short story....