Help! My Characters Lied. by Helen Henderson

Fire and Amulet
Helen Henderson
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As a writer who tends to be more plotter than pantser, the relationship with my characters usually develops in a certain way. We meet and the characters tell me a little of their background and hopefully their goals. The one thing they don't always tell me up front is their name. But that is the subject of an earlier post. Then after some preliminary plotting, the characters are comfortable enough to trust me and they take over the telling their story and I am related to the position of scribe.

However, even after I pried their names out of them, the characters of Fire and Amulet fought me every inch of the story. 

When Fire and Amulet was released, I thought the fighting was over. The first sections of the sequel's journey were set in my mind and I had a cast of characters so the plotting part was done and it was time to become an explorer, following the trail that had been laid until the path ends. At that point the characters were supposed to take over and all I had to do was follow as they blazed a trail through the twisted jungle.

Then Brial and Karst said, "Stop the wagons. We are important too. Tell our story." I agreed and started the 2024 release, Fire and Redemption.

As to the title of this post? While Karst's background and his kin were uncovered in the first book, Brial's extended clan was not. But they need to appear in the new work ... and so the fight begins again. 

Several characters in the first book are Brial's kin (a fact they failed to mention earlier.) Now they need to be meshed into the rest of the clan. Blending the positions on the family tree and relationships between the village and trader branches means a battle between what had already been said and the unsaid. 

Even after the family tree is charted, there still needs to be calculations to make sure the ages work. A grandmother at twenty does not fit the culture. And a seventy-five-year-old mage would not be as spry and active as the story requires.

The information the characters told me in Fire and Amulet and what I recorded in the series bible is not necessarily true. Surprise, surprise, my characters lied. I'm off to check out the past and see how old Betrys, Keyne, and Feldt really are. Then its drawing Brial's family tree.

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~Until next month, stay safe and read.   Helen

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who have adopted her as one the pack. Find out more about her and her novels on her BWL author page.