Last night I prodded my database for some answers and didn’t much like what I found. It’s possible that rather than being entry 522 as noted below this is really just 505. I’ll need to take a deeper look into that possibility. I’m not surprised to be off; I’m surprised to be that far off. In fact, I’d initially suspected I was ahead. Bummer.
I don’t know what my original intention was for Ron’s return to Camp-home. I envisioned him as a bit of a spearman trudging through the snow to a place that he could no longer call home. Now I’ve got him cavorting with the neighbor’s daughter and running off to the city. Giving Charming a dead body seems to have helped me over the cusp and into the business of conflict.
What I didn’t yet post about Ron’s situation is that Neri never made it home.
Up until I wrote that prior sentence I imagined her dead, but that doesn’t aid my cause so I’ll make her missing. Or both. Dead as far as her fellow tribers believe; missing as far as Ron knows. Driving the plot that way gives me a built in tug-of-war between tribers thinking he’s escaped justice and him thinking he’s on a rescue mission. Plus his tribers can be dubious about helping Ron. Making matters worse is the Gordawn girl he fell in with after Neri left.
Setting up the murder mystery might require a little delicacy. What clue leaves Neri’s tribers convinced she’s dead but Ron convinced she’s just missing? Perhaps Ron has a glimpse of her in town in the late Fall during hunting season? The sighting is fleeting enough and his employment situation dicey enough that he doesn’t/can’t pursue the vision further at the time? Meanwhile, the traders she’d made off with are attacked and killed on the road—probably by her tribers. She’s left some trinket with one of the girls that proves she was among them during the attack.
Where does the story begin then? That’s an assload of backstory to discreetly divulge on the reader assuming I start with Ron’s snowy walk. Though most of it would be naturally part of the evidence discover during conversations following his impending capture so maybe not so tough to impart.
If that is the backstory what is the frontstory? His rescue quest? Their capture mission? Both twined? Her escape? More twining?
411 words on day 522