Writer's Diary: The Three Hilled City
Thoughts and commentary on the first pilot
This is the first Writer’s Diary post, as announced for Pilot Season here. You can think of this as a commentary track for my first pilot, The Three Hilled City, and should definitely read that first before reading this.
These are my thoughts as I was writing the piece, facets I’m considering in the piece if/when I move forward as a longer serialized piece, things I was worrying about, and so on. Feel free to ask any questions about the piece below in the comments and I’ll try to answer as best I can. In the future, these will be paid only posts, so be sure to sign up as a paid-subscriber if you want to see these types of posts in the future.
I’m not sure if I should keep this story in a close third-person on Ko’s point-of-view. Traditionally, you describe the daily occurrence and then introduce an “inciting” incident, which causes the story to actually start going. But this time, in this story, I don’t describe a daily routine. I just start directly with an “inciting” incident, with Ko arriving at the city. But that incident isn’t even “inciting” to my main character because it’s not changing anything for Ko. The event that spurred Ko into action (that caused him to shave his beard, become a cobbler, and decide to open a shop in the city) occurred “off-screen”. It’s background. The main purpose of this story is to explore Ko’s effect on the people who already lived in the city. Wouldn’t that be better explored by another character’s perspective?
Maybe not. Something that is eventuating this worry is I don’t have a book that I’m using as a “guidepost” for this particular story, unlike one of my previous books which used the Count of Monte Cristo. However, part of the inspiration for the longer piece is Ted Lasso. The inciting incident for Ted in that show was his separation from his wife and then getting a contract to coach football in the UK. All of that also happens off-screen, and Ted is still the main point-of-view for the story, so I don’t think it’s necessary to switch things around.
Plus, the point of view and daily routine I’d have to use would be the tall-guard’s perspective, and then using Ko’s arrival as the inciting incident. Tall-guard is not an interesting enough character (as proven by the fact that even though he has a name, I don’t remember it and would have to go look it up) to keep as the point-of-view throughout the rest of the story, and isn’t even going to be around later on.
It’s not like tall-guard is going to quit his job as a guard and try to get hired by Ko after the single interaction he and Ko have at the beginning of the story. Ko isn’t that influential and charismatic (at least not yet). Therefore, I’d have to switch around to different character’s perspectives throughout the story, each of them thinking their own private thoughts and opinions on Ko. But I don’t think that would really work.
Even though I know many fantasy writers get away with having multiple viewpoints, that technique generally doesn’t work for me. Maybe I’m just not good enough to pull it off, or maybe it’s my theater background, but each story I think of as centered on an individual, not a single incident or war or whatever. By splitting up the point-of-view across multiple characters, you make the story too complicated.
Also, defining the viewpoint of each character, defining how they see the world and so on, is incredibly difficult. You still have to do that in any book, but you don’t have to embody it as much if you aren’t writing from that character’s particular perspective.
Most of all, I want this story to be simple. Keeping the narrative within Ko’s perspective keeps it simple.
What doesn’t keep it simple, is working within the existing world of Asdra, which is how I have it planned currently. Unlike the other two pilots (which both occur in worlds that I haven’t really developed yet), this one was originally thought of as existing within the world I’d written my previous two books in, that I’ve spent the last five years of my life (and longer) developing.
I know why the city exists on those three hills. I know the city’s name, the industry that belongs on each of the hills, and the significance of Ko’s absent beard. I don’t have to play catch up or improvise reasons as to why those exist. It is unlikely I’ll have to backtrack and make retroactive decisions on aspects of the world. In some ways, that makes this easier.
In others, it makes it harder. I’m forcing myself into a corner in some ways, giving myself limitations.
For example, if this stays within Asdra, I have to make some decisions about the “when” of the story. There are two distinct eras that are fully explored in my world: Pre-Eastern Revolution and Post-Eastern Revolution.
My first instinct is to make this occur during the Pre-Eastern era because that is the era explored by my first two books. However, that would mean there are a lot of racial problems that occur between the Augr and the Tisanese people, colonization by the Tisanese empire, and an underground resistance. I’d have to incorporate all of that into this story, while still trying to achieve my current mandate of “coziness”. I think that would be pretty hard.
My other option is the Post-Eastern Revolution, which I’d explored in the D&D campaign that I ran in this world. But I haven’t written any stories in that era since then. This would be the first that occurs in that era. I’m already going to be exploring a new city, and a new cultural heritage for the main character. Would I have enough time to explore a new era as well? Would I be able to do it well or is it just muddling the plot?
It’s ultimately about what story I want to tell. This story is more about starting over and making a conscious decision about the way you want to live, the life you want to have. That fits a bit better within the Post-Eastern Era, despite the fact that I know less about that Era. Everybody will be recovering from a war, trying to figure out what they want their country to look like. Ko fitting into that landscape makes a lot of sense.
Finally, names. I chose the name Ko after someone that I used to work with when I was a teenager. The Ko in the story is nothing like the Ko that I worked with; I just liked the name. It was only after I chose it that I looked it up and found out it was Japanese. I’ll need to be careful about making sure Ko doesn’t fit a particular Japanese stereotype. So far, I don’t think he does? And the name actually fits because I was planning on having the Dwarvish culture act as a combination of Japanese and Russian culture, rather than the Semitic influence that Tolkien had in his traditional Dwarves, and the Scottish accents that most Dwarves are portrayed as having.
It is important to me that there is a more clear definition of Dwarvish culture than just mining and smithing and diaspora. I have some ideas on how to incorporate certain ideas from Japanese and Russian culture into Dwarvish, and specific ideas on how to play with gender in Dwarvish cultures (Do Dwarvish women have beards in my world? What is the history there?), but I think a lot of this will be dependent on when Ko interacts with his own people.
This brings me back to the view-point question, though, because an idea for a future scene is watching Ko interact with people from the outside, rather than embodying Ko during this experience. Watching how Ko interacts without really understanding why feels more impactful than having him immediately explain how and why he’s acting the way he does. Ko’s place within his own society is a larger mystery of the story, not a little one. I can’t reveal it immediately.
I’m looking forward to continuing to explore Ko at some point in the future, though. He is fun to write, and uplifting in a strange way. So far all of the pilots I’ve written have been really heartwarming for me to work on, which is a very different way of writing than I’m used to. I hope I can keep this going as if I continue to work on the novel over the course of the next year.