you! teenage writer! nothing stops you from writing in the google docs of ur school computer. people will assume it's an assignment. if a teacher is scrutinizing you just switch tabs briefly and 9/10 times they'll just leave you to it. depending on how much school is online and how much you care about ur grades you can write for a good bit of the day it's so easy. and you can email it to your personal acc and keep it
Yeah, I gave up writing The Human Spirit's sequel halfway through because I realised it was awful. Yeah, it was one of the first times I can remember feeling deeply self-conscious about this story. And yeah, I have a vivid memory of sitting in my relatives' living room, laptop in front of me, 20oz can of Redbull on the side table, and seeing for the first time with a sudden, glaring clarity that this novel was a waste of time.
So what?
That doesn't mean it's going to be lower in quality than any of the other drafts I've shared on this blog. Maybe it'll be better than I remember, considering what I thought was good at the time. Maybe it will inspire me to start working on these books again. Maybe i–
At some point between drafts 1 and 2 of Dying Screams, I realised the novel had very few men in it, other than the antagonists.
Twelve-year-old me decided this was a problem. I mean, most movies and books have loads of men in them! Boys, too! And all the good guys in my book, other than briefly-mentioned husbands and fathers, are women!
This was a serious problem that needed to be resolved.
Then it hit me. Of course. It's obvious. All I needed to do was age up the protagonist, and she could have a male love interest! Perfect! That completely fixed the problem!
I'm not sure how twelve-year-old me would have felt if she knew the love interest she created simply to fix this problem has featured in every draft since, outlasting characters that at the time were her favourites.
if fiction affects reality, then your narrator should tell the readers that fiction doesn't affect reality, so fiction doesn't affect reality anymore! but by believing that fiction doesn't affect reality, fiction HAS affecte—
We pause the plot to flash back to two weeks ago, apparently. Yeah. We could have started the book then, or ended The Human Spirit later, but instead we decided to start with:
flashback to Roen before the opening of The Human Spirit
Layane and Roen at an airport and nothing happens
Jezirah and Clemant are at Jezirah's house and nothing happens
Layane and Roen are finally trying to find Nicola! But let's pause that to flash back to two weeks ago
Layane is in Geviria. She realises she wants to know everything about Nicola before they meet, so she asks Jezirah and Roen about her.
No, I have no idea why I also had Layane ask Roen what Nicola was like in the earlier part of this chapter. Another retcon?
“What exactly happened when my parents came here?” Layane asked.
Jezirah looked uncomfortable at first. Layane assumed it was because at the time Nicola and Simon arrived, Jezirah wouldn’t be born for another thirteen years.
I'm not sure I'd bother asking these two, personally. Maybe try...
“You’re better off asking Gy...” [Roen] paused, and scowled. “No, don’t ask her. She’d probably just get mad.”
I like that the dialogue had already censored the name for me.
In all seriousness, what is the point of this? Not only is Layane unlikely to find out anything useful, but we're also pausing a fairly tense scene* for this.
* I suspect that is the intention, anyway.
Roen explains that Layane's parents found the entrance to Geviria before she was born, because they were... 'taking photos around Spain'.
Yep. They were on holiday to take pictures of Spain. That's the best I could come up with. For some reason, they came all the way out to the island to take pictures, which is meant to be so far from the coast the Gever need to arrange cruises to travel in and out. No explanation is given for Layane's parents' decision to sail out there.
If this was written by anyone other than me, I'd start to suspect they already knew Geviria was there, and came up with the lame cover story to trick the Gever into letting them in. Unfortunately, I did write this book, and I truly doubt that's where this is going.
“How did they even get in?” Layane asked. “You said humans needed to be with a Gever.”
“My mother left Geviria when they were still on the island,” Jezirah said. She started to look even more uncomfortable; she reminded Layane of the way Clemant felt when she was in large crowds of people. “They saw her, so she let them in. I think G-slur was angry at first.”
“She was,” said Roen. “But then she began to see a better side to it. Folon – my, er, father – was dead. Geviria was a lot... safer without him. And the Esconios stopped with their ‘humans are soulless’ nonsense for a while. She thought it would be a good idea if – eventually – humans and Gever could coexist.
Roen's father is called what now?
Considering most (if not all) of this information could have been shared by Roen, I have no idea why this isn't a conversation Layane and Roen are having in El Paso or wherever near El Paso they are.
Roen was a very small child when this all happened, apparently. I'd love to interrogate the timeline here a little more. So Layane's parents discovered Geviria, started... opening the path for human-Gever relations, I guess? And then immediately decided to have a baby?
Maybe Layane was unplanned? Just a surprise nine months post-discovering Narnia baby?
G-slur took Nicola and Simon on a tour around Geviria, where their arrival was celebrated as a turning point for human-Gever relations, for some reason. Yep. Just Nicola and Simon Thompson from... Somerset? I think?
“Then when they left, they were given the Key.” [Roen said]
“Did they ever return?” [Layane said]
“No. I think G-slur said Nicola was pregnant when they came here. They probably didn’t have the time.”
Oh. So... they went on a boat trip off the coast of Spain, in no particular direction, when Nicola was pregnant? Interesting.
This does make the whole losing-the-key thing make more sense though. They'd just had a baby! Maybe they noticed the key was gone while they were potty training Layane, and didn't have the time to deal with it, making it super awkward when G-slur showed up asking for it several years later.
But also... if they weren't planning on ever returning, and there was seemingly no expectation to return, WHY ON EARTH GIVE THESE PEOPLE THE KEY? Before now I had the vague impression that they'd visited a number of times, probably while doing something for the Gever? Doing what, I couldn't tell you.
And how did Winchester and his squad even find out about this, if Nicola and Simon never went back to Geviria and presumably didn't tell anyone about it?
After all of that exposition, which ranged from 'stuff we'd already figured out' all the way to 'stuff that contradicts the earlier plot', we get something that might actually be useful:
“G-slur sent Jezirah to get the Key back.” [Roen said]
“She means my mother, not me,” Jezirah confirmed. “She had the same name as me.”
Layane remembered something. It was a memory from her life at home, right before her parents abandoned her. It had lain dormant in her mind, until she thought hard enough to revive it. She had been in the kidnappers’ car when she remembered it.
Ignoring the absolutely deranged way I made Layane connect what the others are saying to her memory (which, as a reminder, is within a flashback), that was so distracting it took me weeks to realise Jezirah misgendered Roen for some reason...
[Insert that polar bear image that gets flagged for pornography here]
...and the fact that Layane could have asked Roen or Jezirah at any point in The Human Spirit who that woman was, finally, we might be getting answers for some of this!
“I think she warned them that G-slur was coming,” said Layane. “I remember when she came... well, a tiny bit. All I heard her say was that ‘she is angry’.”
This... kinda sounds like Layane does know G-slur is evil? I think? A free passport is a free passport, I guess.
“Jezirah’s mother was friends with Nicola,” said Roen. “She probably did. After Jezirah’s visit, your parents ran. They left you at the home, and then we never saw them again.”
This should definitely have all come out earlier. What exactly was the reason for this information being withheld from the first book? Other than the fact that these books should definitely have only been one book, I mean.
Also, how exactly did Nicola and Simon become friends with Jezirah Snr. if they never visited Geviria? Did Jezirah Snr. spend all her free time on the Upper World? Although, knowing that Jezirah Snr. was murdered several years later (presumably by G-slur), this may offer a hint as to what happened to her and why.
Of course, Layane does not make the connection between Jezirah Snr.'s visit and her violent death. And if you're thinking, maybe that's because she doesn't know about Jezirah's parents' murders in great detail, Roen or Jezirah Jnr. do and they don't make the connection, either. Instead, Layane questions why G-slur left her and her sister alone in a kids' home. Why didn't G-slur kidnap them as bait to lure Nicola in?
So, Layane does know G-slur is evil...?
Roen looked thoughtful for a while. “[The Gever] found you easily. They didn’t take you because it wasn’t your fault. Taking you couldn’t be justified.” He paused. “I think that was it... I think it was something like: they couldn’t explain it, and the Esconios would support it if they held you.”
That's a lot of words for, 'the author has no idea, sorry.'
[Layane] paused, taking everything in.
Yeah, it is hard to accept that the author has no idea what she's doing.
We're then dragged out of the flashback, kicking and screaming.
No, I don't know where Layane, Jezirah and Roen were for that flashback, other than somewhere in Geviria (presumably Jezirah's house). Not knowing exactly where the characters are is going to be a recurring theme here, I think.
“Are you okay?”
Layane looked up to see Roen, his eyes filled with worry. She had zoned out as she looked up at the apartments.
Layane says that she's fine, and just wants to get this over with, and the chapter ends. I was so nervous that the next chapter was going to go back to Jezirah and Clemant doing nothing in Geviria that I scrolled down a bit to check.
The relief when I saw Roen's name was immeasurable. (Things Layane has never said, hey-o!)
