Axing the Ax!

I was struck and amused at some of the ideas I'm bouncing off my SBC readers, and thought it was worth sharing, if only for the realization I came to in the final line of my note to these wonderful ladies ...

By the way, if you don't like having opening chapters of a novel "spoilered" - well, then, this contains spoilers. However, nothing of substance beyond the first few dozen pages will be ruined by this post.  If you're interested in "process", though - read on, because this is full-on authorial sausage-making!  (Note:  "Cloti" is my nickname for Queen Clotilde.  Other characters named are a mix of historical and fictional, mostly the latter.)


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Kristi, to catch you up on brainstorming last weekend, Leila helped me to see that I could cut the character of Clovis’ older sister, Lanthechild (and her traitor husband, Gaianus) out of the novel.  Just because she existed doesn't mean she needs to exist in this novel!  This weekend, I decided I probably need to ditch Clovis’ own mini battle with trichinosis, too.  That thread doesn’t do anything but demonstrate Cloti’s administrative expertise, and I don’t think evidence of that is so short those scenes and their aftermath are worth preserving.  Your thoughts?

I’m also shifting the opening progression to move straight from Evochilde’s death to the battle with Syagrius, eliminating all the talk of horse breeds and cousin Wedelphus, and prep for five years, to tighten the progression of events.  It’ll be coronation, mother’s banishment, death of Evochilde, big battle, with very little exposition and blah-blah in between.  Any character I can eliminate, I need to - so if you think the little scribe boy, Merochar, needs to go, for instance, tell me.  For now, I’ve kept Mero since he does provide an ongoing thread through the novel - but he may not be essential, so throw ideas around there, too.

Pharamond’s parents may get to keep their names, but I may also eliminate the scenes where their deaths occur; it doesn’t add anything to the action, nor Clovis’ character (their deaths don’t even do much for Pharamond’s character, textually speaking!), so that will probably go.

Funny, how I can feel so “fertile” as a writer, coming up with so many darlings to kill!!