the deep moans round with many voices

For bluejayfic, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)

The Courting Dance: Marriage is a bit more complicated than quarreling and making it up again, especially for the crown prince of Archenland and an exiled Calormene Tarkheena. (21,000 words)

Chapter 7 - The Beating of Our Hearts: Running from your problems is rarely a good long-term solution, but sometimes the change in environment can be helpful -- especially now that Aravis and Cor are on the same page. (1,600 words)

As bluejayfic's ask mentioned, this chapter is the one with the wedding scene. What was I thinking, putting the wedding halfway through the story? Well, I was thinking that the plot is as much about politics and worldbuilding as it is about romance, and the wedding is a major symbol of Aravis and Cor deciding to commit to each other despite various obstacles. Also, while it resolves their interpersonal problems, it doesn't resolve their external problems at all -- in fact, it makes some of them worse. So I figured it would make a good central turning point, where we switch from Aravis and Cor being pissed off at each other to standing back-to-back against the world.

( Chapter 7 - The Beating of Our Hearts, with commentary )

And that is pretty much that. :)

The Courting Dance: Marriage is a bit more complicated than quarreling and making it up again, especially for the crown prince of Archenland and an exiled Calormene Tarkheena. Aravis/Cor, 21,100 words, Feb. 2010-Aug. 2016.

I started writing "The Courting Dance" somewhat by accident. Back in 2010, I wrote a little 15-minute ficlet about Aravis prodding Cor into making a move in a Calormene-style courtship. A couple days later, in response to rthstewart's encouragement, I wrote a sequel from Hwin's POV. Then I admitted that I'd been ambushed by yet another chaptered story. *headdesk*

The narrative arc is relatively jumpy, which is a side-effect of the way the POV switches every chapter. There is a LOT of world-building -- this story is equal parts romance and meta on Archenland and its fraught history with Calormen. And my writing pace is, as always, the next best thing to glacial. But I have an outline of sorts -- my current estimate calls for 15 chapters altogether -- and I will finish this sooner or later.

ETA, 15 August 2016: It definitely ended up 'later' rather than 'sooner' and only 13 chapters rather than 15, but thanks to the 2016 WIP Big Bang challenge, I got there in the end!

( The Courting Dance - Table of Contents )

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Oh look, it's another fit of internet housekeeping! *sigh* This post will update as I write the rest of the story.

"Guardian" ch. 15 is refusing to play nice, though I may be able to bash the Amane family's scene into shape by the time I leave for Minnesota on Thursday morning. I think I have also identified why I was never happy with the Naga-tachi scene just before that; it's trying to go in three directions simultaneously, at least one of which should not be there at all. So that will help when I get to the pruning phase.

On the brighter side, I did manage to finish ch. 7 of "The Courting Dance," despite more or less falling down a hole inside my own head for a couple days. We are back in Aravis's POV. I am beginning to get a rough notion of the shape of this story (by which I mean its length and the remaining incidents until the conclusion), and I suspect it will clock in around 15 chapters. Which means we should get another POV chapter each from Hwin, Cor, and Bree, at least one from a Narnian I have not decided upon yet, probably another from Lune and/or Corin, and hopefully then a conclusion back in Aravis's POV a third time. (This is all assuming the story doesn't run away with me, which is, alas, never a safe assumption.)

Anyway. Running from your problems is rarely a good long-term solution, sometimes the change in environment can be helpful -- especially now that Aravis and Cor are on the same page. (1,575 words)

( The Beating of Our Hearts )

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Back to You Can Choose Your Friends

Forward to Simple Problems

Read the final version on ff.net. (Trust me, you want to read the final version. The journal version is a beta draft, with all the mistakes that implies.)

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( some world-building notes )

Clearly I think far too much about these things.

In any case, as always, I would love constructive criticism -- if anything is confusing, flat, or unrealistic, please tell me so I can try to fix it!

After eight months of driving myself nuts re: cultural differences, hereditary hatreds, history lessons, sibling relationship, etcetera, I essentially gave up and did a more low-key equivalent of having random ninjas break down the door. In other words, hello there, unplanned plot twist! Thank you for getting me out of the world-building bog. Next up, Bree's POV and, with any luck, actual stuff happening.

Anyway. They have the same blood, same face, same home. So why can't Corin make Cor understand what it means to inherit Archenland? (1,825 words) And yes, this chapter's title was blatantly stolen from the Robert Frost poem.

( Mending Wall )

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Back to The Law That Makes Him King

Forward to You Can Choose Your Friends

Read the final version on ff.net. (Trust me, you want to read the final version. The journal version is a beta draft, with all the boneheaded mistakes that implies.)

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The ending is, obviously, too abrupt. If you have suggestions for smoothing it out, I would love to hear them!

As for the world-building... look, I really wasn't kidding when I said I was having trouble writing a story instead of an abridged dissertation on the history of Archenland. This is as compressed as I could get it and still make the points I think need to be made. If you have any ideas for trimming the exposition, I will love you forever and a day. Seriously.

I would like to say in advance that I am aware that this chapter is madly inconclusive. The thing is, I could not get it to work any other way (and believe me, I tried), so I have shoved most of the meta-heavy history lesson into chapter four. Also, Lune uses an oddly stylized grammar, and trying to sync the narrative to his dialogue -- not to mention writing said dialogue in the first place -- is incredibly frustrating.

*beats head against desk*

Anyway. Lune loves his sons and wishes for their happiness. Unfortunately, a king cannot put himself before his country. (1,450 words)

( Speak Softly )

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Back to Which Give Value to Survival

Forward to The Law That Makes Him King

Read the final version on ff.net

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My Archenlandish (Archenlandian?) geology/topography is largely cribbed from parts of the Appalachian mountain range of North American, supplemented by details from the Finger Lakes region of New York, mostly because I live in northeastern America and I like gorges and waterfalls. Obviously there has not been anything remotely like enough time for the Narnian world to develop mountain ranges of sedimentary rock, let alone for those mountains to be worn down to the height of the ones in Archenland, but the world is flat and was created by a lion singing, so I figure Aslan could muck around with the topography and geology however he bloody well wanted to; science need not apply. (Science especially need not apply to Bism, but let's not get into that here. *grin*)