Today’s the day I work through my NaNoWriMo novel from a few years back. Follow along from the beginning here (and then refer to the archives).

Last week, Ro still hadn’t reached the House of the Broken Jar, but we had a few hints about what he was going to find when he got there.

A few moments later, Ro entered unto the House of the Broken Jar. Inside, the wide common area was as spacious as ever. On one side, beautiful boys and women attended as the cup-companions of gaming soldiers and other low men as they drank wine and smoked opium. On the other side, a more refined clientele shared coffee and talked in low voices, while a musamirun, a teller of tales for the evening sat smoking and waiting for a young singer to finish. He caught Ro’s eyes as he entered, and looked away disinterestedly.
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Last time, Ro took a detour on his way to the House of the Broken Jar. You’d think he’d get there this week, but no…

But as he hurried along the darkening streets, a loud and hearty voice hailed him. He turned quickly and saw four of the Shah’s elite guard, the Janissary, striding towards him, all matched in hair and height.

Ro smiled. The hair was more often than not dyed to get that spectacular white-blonde and some of them wore heeled boots. Before even the old Shah’s time, the guard had been made up of hand-picked boys descended from settlers from the north, chosen for their intelligence, their strength and physique, and their blonde hair. Often they were taken forcibly from their parents, who were nevertheless recompensed well. Trained from a young age, they lived supposedly celibate lives in devotion to the Shah. Ro had joined the older than most, under the guidance of the old Shah, and eventually become captain, given the position solely on his parents’ achievements. By that time, they had long since given up the colouring requirement and resorted to dyes instead.

He had been a good captain and they loved him still. He returned the hail and shook hands all round. Three of them were too young for him to know personally, but the fourth was a man now a sergeant, then a young boy Ro had taken under his wing.

‘You back in town, captain?’ this one said.

‘Just arrived,’ said Ro, in the same light, cheerful tone. ‘Been a few changes.’

The response disappointed him. Not a flicker of disgust or shame showed on the sergeant’s face. ‘There has, there has.’

Ro did not pursue it. They were loyal to the Shah still and would never hear a word against him, unless of course he tried to cut their pay or privileges, as the old Shah had leant. That was when the narrow streets off the main circular thoroughfares, zigzags and dead ends and alleys ended in stairways that went nowhere, were barricaded by the people of the City of Brass themselves to protect themselves from a violent uprising of the Janissary.

But all had been peaceful since those times, since the Citadel of the Dog-Headed had fallen, since the time of the plague. So peaceful, the Shah had resorted to sending his people out to raid harmless village folk, apparently.

Ro shook his head. No doubt the girl-slave glossed over her people’s provocation. The City of Brass did not attack for no reason. But he did not ask these men about it, for he had no wish now to be delayed any longer from the Broken Jar and Ninevah.

‘You will, of course,’ said the Sergeant, ‘Present yourself to the Shah at your earliest convenience. You know he looks forward to seeing you.’

‘Of course,’ said Ro with equanimity, shifting the position of the parcel under his arm. ‘I have surpassed myself this year with my gift for him.’

‘Yes,’ the sergeant, and his tone changed a little. Ro had just reminded him he was no longer a soldier and now a merchant, for all that he still carried the long sharp sword no merchant was allowed to own concealed in the packs hung on his camel.

Ro bowed and flashed a wide and stupid smile. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen. I attend the Jar.’

Soft hoots greeted that, and the sergeant laughed. ‘You try again, Ro?’

But they stepped back and Ro bowed again and marched off down the street before they could get ribald and seek to engage him with coarse jests.

With this scene, we learn a little more about Ro’s past and current position in the city and his value to the Shah, mention that mysterious package again, and also again get a hint that there is something both well-known and somewhat funny about his regular attendance at the Jar.

Here’s where the book drifts off from what I think I now want. I don’t think Ro should have been a captain in the elite guard. It adds something to his character – a certain expectation of decisiveness or heroics or leadership that he simply does not have. If I kept this aspect, I will have to change the guards’ attitude to him, because I do not think they would respect him. In fact, either way, on the re-write of this scene, the guards will not be respectful towards him and we’ll see more of their swaggering, turn-any-moment nature.

So there is another purpose of reviewing scenes – do they match with what you want to put across about characters? Last time, I showed something of Ro’s character…this time, I again show it, but wrongly, so it needs to be changed.

Last week was a bridging scene which set up a few things for later in the book. Ro is on his way to the House of the Broken Jar. Except he doesn’t go to there, he takes a small detour and we meet another new character.

Ro strode off with his parcel, leaving the young man with his windfall. Perhaps he, too, would make his way to the House of the Broken Jar, though probably not even Ro paid well enough for that. One of the lesser Consort establishments, then.

He stopped at the public baths, the hamman and sluiced away the dirt of his journey across the edge of the desert, the swaddled package perched on the tiles beside him as he soaked. He was early for the baths, before the crowds made their evening pilgrimage, and he shared the steaming waters with only as few other men. Behind the screen, the idle giggles of women made him smile a little. He thought of Ninevah and started to get out.

A girl, her eyes downcast, her garments scanty and soaked to her body knelt beside him. Ro, battle-scarred, laid a possessive hand on the package, standing waist-deep. It went everywhere with him because he could not trust its safety in other hands, and all in the City of Brass knew it.

The girl asked something in a voice too low for Ro to hear. The cloth that gave her bare decorum was not just soaking wet but ripped. Ro narrowed his eyes to see it.

‘You wish service?’ the girl repeated. She still did not meet his eyes.

His eyes narrowed further. ‘You are a Consort?’ But he doubted one of that respected profession would ever negotiate using such terms.

‘I am a slave,’ said the girl, simply.

Ro pressed his lips together. One year ago, the City of Brass had not tolerated slavery. ‘Slave? How so?’

‘My brother and I were captured,’ she said, addressing his belly button. ‘My brother was put to the sword. I was purchased by the Master of the Hamman.’

‘But we do not kill or enslave prisoners of war,’ he said. ‘We put them to work and when they have earned enough, we allow them to settle in the City of Brass.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Silly me. Perhaps it is because we are not prisoners of war, but spoils of raids.’

‘We don’t –’

Her gaze lifted. Her eyes were grey and they silenced him utterly.

‘Girl-slave,’ called one of the other male bathers. ‘If he would waste your time with talk, I have good coin over here.’

‘So you are paid?’ said Ro quickly. Consort was a fine respected profession.

‘The coin goes to the Master,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ She stepped away from him. ‘You will adjust,’ she told him sadly over her shoulder. ‘All else did.’

Ro dried off and put on the plain clean robes supplied by the Master of the Bath. His own clothes would be washed and returned to his home. More women hastened to dress him and he looked askance at them. None had grey eyes.

He left the bath and headed along the zigzag streets towards the Broken Jar, carrying his parcel under one arm. He was impatient now, and although the girl-slave was like a flea in the armpit, he put her aside. Tomorrow was time enough to assess the changes in the City of Brass.

So we’re seeing some of the changes in the city since Ro was last here. I’m building a case against the Shah, who has people working to overthrow him. Are they justified, since he now allows raids as opposed to war…not that the difference is all that apparent to me from this far distance. I will probably change the language or dwell on this just a little more to justify the difference between ‘legal’ war and ‘illegal’ raids in terms of the codes of honour of those times.

We see here also Ro’s character – he is rather shocked by the girl’s plight, but he just dries off and leaves her there. This is his pattern – to react in his head but to take no concrete action. This is why he deserves to die – arguably – the book is asking the question (did he deserve it?), not trying to tell the reader.

And lastly, it introduces a bit more about the concept of Consorts, which was indeed quite a respected and valued profession back then.

As with last week, a few more lines of description here and there couldn’t go astray. For example, making “Behind the screen, the idle giggles of women made him smile a little” into “Behind the screen, the idle giggles of women as they bathed together out of the sight of the men made him smile” adds only a few words but makes it clearer. I could write in a bit more about perfumes and steam and so on to set the scene better.

You can see that on this first pass through I am not worrying too much about language. What I am doing is checking that the scene serves at least one purpose, does not go on so long that it drags, and does not take the story off in the wrong direction.

Last week, Ro finally entered the city. I’ve already identified the need to tighten the opening up. Now we introduce a new character.

He walked across the square to the street that curved southwards to the merchant quarter, where those who sold wares for a living made their homes. The Consorts, too, in all their honesty.

There his assistant would be waiting for him with the wealth of nations.

Harun did indeed wait before Ro’s great warehouse. The young man bowed as Ro approached. The cresset-bearer passed by, lamplighting. The smell of his cart indicated he had already begun his other nightly duties of collecting waste and dead animals from the street.

Ro wrinkled his nose, his stomach suddenly roiling. He had bought a stick of dripping meat from a wayside stall but now he did not have much appetite for it.

‘Stand up, Harun,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’

‘Master,’ said Harun, refraining from a second bow. ‘I have had the camels unpacked and stabled. All is in order.’

‘Good.’

‘Shall I have the guard doubled, master?’

‘No,’ said Ro. ‘Or we might as well shout to sky that we have something especially valuable in there this time.’

He gave his young assistant three oxen, bronze coins, three camels, silver coins, and one gold horse. It was thrice Harun’s normal pay, and twice his normal bonus for the safe completion of a trading journey. The boy had done well; he deserved it.

‘Do you have it?’ he asked, before Harun in wide-eyed wonder could thank him.

‘I took it from Jabuatia myself, master,’ said Harun. He reached behind him and took up a large swaddled object which he laid reverentially into Ro’s arms.

‘Did she fuss?’ Jabuatia was Ro’s vicious camel, prized only because she was white. He’d have sent her to slaughter long ago if not for that.

That, and the fact she would kick to death any stranger who tried to take the parcel from her.

‘She knows me, master.’

And that was true enough. Ro turned. ‘I go to the House of the Broken Jar.’

Harun blinked. ‘Are you sure, master?’

Ro looked at him in white-lipped silence, and Harun learnt one hundred years of wisdom in one breath. ‘Yes, master.’

So I introduce Harun, establish that this trading mission was in some way especially profitable, introduce the parcel Ro carries with him everywhere, and hint that there’s some reason why Ro might not want to go the House of the Broken Jar. That’s pretty effective for such a short little passage.

Unlike the previous passages, which were wordy (NaNoWriMo; what better way to get the word count up than description), this one’s a little under-nourished. I prefer sparse to over-written, but I could probably put in a description of Harun, especially as he becomes a relatively important character. If this was his only appearance, I wouldn’t really bother developing him further.

He’s also a little different here than he is later – where he seems older and cheekier. So this scene would have to be adjusted to account for that.

Other than that, it’s a nice short passage that gives a bunch of information without hitting the reader over the head with it, and that’s pretty much all you can ask from a scene-bridger.

Now, that line, ‘He learnt one hundred years of wisdom in one breath’ – that isn’t mine – I believe I lifted it directly from a book discussing the Arabian Nights tales (The Arabian Nights: A Companion by Robert Irwin, a facinating book and what I was reading about the time of NaNoWriMo way back in 2003). I need to find a way to let the reader know I’m only quoting; I really should have noted where I was quoting at the time, since coming at it more than five years later, I’ve forgotten and am going to have to sift out such instances by the vague sense that it’s not quite what I would have come up with by myself.

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Last time, I said the opening of book would be better if we got straight into the bit where the Shah cuts down the forest of the dead, which, funnily enough…

Ro sighed, stood, and walked back, angling south and west to rejoin the east road near the gate into the City of Brass. The forest grew ever outwards, east and south and north, but never west towards the coast. The City of Brass kept its back resolutely the sea, for it had been settled by a desert-dwelling people who could adjust to river-borne agriculture but never acclimatise to how the sea moved, as enormous as the sky but never still.

The closer to the stone walls and brass gates of the city Ro walked, the taller the trees grew. The mighty river Unnamed came lazily from the northeast until his path joined with it and he strolled along its banks, meandering with it past pleasure pools empty in the chill of the early spring evening, past moored boats and less reputable watercraft, past peasants watering their oxen and filling buckets, who watched him from narrow eyes but gave him wide smiles.

With a final sweep of the wide slow river, Ro came into view of the City of Brass and the Grove of the Fallen. But the gates had been plated in gold, and the grove – Ro fell to his knees – the grove had been cut down.

The desecrated stumps of the mighty karri that had grown before the east gates of the city since its founding were like the obscene stumps of an amputated man. Ro swayed on his knees as if he had been struck a sound blow in a wrestling match. Even the younger trees, those added after the battle with the Citadel of the Dog-Headed, even those were gone. His parent’s single tree, their mingled ashes feeding its roots, gone.

‘Who dared to do this?’ cried Ro, on his knees, looking at the gap in the Forest of the Dead where those who had given their lives for the City of Brass had been honoured.

But who else could have done it, but the Shah?

Ro got up and strode down to the gates. He had come to the execution gate, the gate the City of Brass presented to the world. He preferred the south gate, which gave straight onto the merchant and Consort quarter, but he did not let that deter him now. As he came in unchallenged, mingled with the water carriers, the evening prayer bell rang, and an axe fell to take the hand of an unfortunate young thief. The boy howled, the axeman pressed a skin of wine into his good hand, and Ro turned away.

The same axes, he thought savagely. The same.

OK, so this is nice, and the effect I was looking for – we have already introduced the idea that the Shah is not respecting the customs of his people, something as bad to his people as cutting off little boys’ hands is to us. It’s still wordy and clumsy and oh boy do I like long sentences but this is the kind of opening I was looking for. The desecrated forest should be the very first thing Ro (or whatever his name will be) will see when he comes home from his trading mission.

The thing about sentences: there’s nothing wrong with long sentences per say. What you’re looking for on an edit, though, is clarity, and long sentences do not always promote that. Also, a variety of long, medium and short sentences gives a nice rhythm to the words whereas nothing but one length (be it long or short) becomes monotonous in the reader’s mental ear.

Whether it should be a particularly sacred grove that the Shah cut down, or whether he should be trying to ease his people in to the necessity of freeing up the land for city expansion by cutting down something slightly less contentious is a matter for thought – what extra message do I want to get across about the Shah here? I’m trying to make it a debatable as to whether he really deserves getting overthrown or not, so his presumption in daring to cut down the trees of his ancestors should be balanced by a touch of sensitivity to his people…but then, the guy’s a despotic emperor, so sensitivity is not going to be his strong suit.

By the way, the might river isn’t really named Unnamed, that’s a note to self during the fast NaNoWriMo process. I can see myself forgetting to change that.