Legea: The Extras

Behind the Scenes: The War: First Conceptions

Whether you're reading The War or not, you're welcome to read this chapter.

The War was always pretty epic. The satirical style of The Journey's and The Claw's earlier stages was nowhere here. We, my sister and I, had wanted a real, gritty war(bloodthirsty 12- and 14-year-olds): people struggling to cope with the collapse of their life; death, injuries. The concept of love and loyalties grew swiftly and easily into prominent themes of the book.

When we finished playing/inventing the war, I leaped up next morning and started to write down the scene that was most vividly in my head: the Dragon Battle. (look forward to that one, y'all. It's juicy.) And that was the way I continued to write The War. Not chronologically, like all the others. Just whatever scene was burning most clearly in my mind.

I (somewhat hilariously, now that I look back on it) having tried to outline the book in my head, assigned chapter numbers to each chapter I wrote. The table of contents that I wrote in the front of the notebook (which is currently falling to shreds) looked like this:

[Chapter] 1 ~ [Page] 8

2 ~ 83

3 ~ 94

4 ~ 101

5 ~ 61

[6 through 9 were not yet written]

10 ~ 23 (note: this was the most controversial chapter. It was originally listed as being chapter 9b, meaning that 9 was supposed to start earlier than the scene did. I decided it would be 9 on its own later, and then realizing the material I had to get through switched it to 10. Months later, I was pretty sure it would be Chapter 14. It is currently Chapter 15.)

[11 through 13 unwritten]

14 ~ 15 (at an estimated guess, this chapter will now be in the mid-20s)

And so forth. I ended up with a plan of 28 chapters. The story will actually be encompassing between 40 and 50 chapters.

Anyway.

If you look up there, you'll see Chapter 1 is listed as page 8. It was in fact the second one I ever wrote, and I'm going to reproduce it here with commentary included.

(note: if you read this you will be exposed to the fact that a certain character does NOT die in the previous book. If you are okay with being spoiled for that minor comforting fact go ahead.)

Chapter 1 of The War, dating from April 2014

The morning of the twelfth of April was clear and sunny. [portion of about a sentence missing from my dead notebook] [...] until the spring horse sale; women were going through their seeds and bringing out warmer-weather clothes, in answer to their children's pestering. (The number of -ing's in this sentence is making my eyes bleed) The day promised to be warm, perhaps warmer than any day yet this April, and several people even suggested it would get up to the sixties, though these were scoffed at. The idea of sixty-degree weather before the twentieth of April at least! (Orden's temps were supposed to mimic my own home's. However, this was pushing it. We have definitely had sixty-degree weather by April 20th, more than once, though UNFORTUNATELY I don't think it happened this year) Up in Ceristen, the town had long been awake. Already from various houses on the slopes of the mountain girls and women were issuing; this would be a good day to go to town and get groceries, and, of course, hear the latest news.

But the quiet serenity of the beautiful April morning was lost on the young man galloping grimly through the streets of Orden City. (This is one of the few sentences in my old draft that has remained largely unchanged and I still love the fierce change of pace and the pulsing urgency of the picture it puts in my head.) He pulled up his horse a few miles outside the east end of town, and gazed up at Mitheren, Tower of Kings in Old Ordenian. It was a mighty structure that Thireler the Conqueror had achieved, and beautiful even in its simplicity; but the man had not come to gawk at a building. He glanced around, swung off his horse, and led it over to a nearby tree where he tied it securely. Then he strode over to the door, spoke a few hurried words to the guard standing there, and rushed inside. He had a message for the General; he would not wait.