Things that are done:
The main characters have been fleshed out, roughly. Jake needs to find his anger, Thomas to let go of his and the larger arc of the story is the brothers coming to terms with all the lies they've told each other and the mistakes each has made regarding the other. It is easy to think, "I've changed! Why doesn't anyone see that?" and not give them the benefit of the doubt of changing as well.
Things that are not done:
Everything else. I do know the end scene of the novel and how at least one antagonist meets their end. And I think it has to begin roughly like the first version did because their lives before they are dumped in the other world is important, as is Jake's new car.
I need to flesh out the Kingdom of the Seven Keys. Right now my rough notes make it an ugly aristocratic-driven kingdom with magic reserved for the rich and wealthy and most crimes being punished with death. Which makes sense, given the transition in the thousand years since The War but it does remain woefully generic. Sooo....
- The world (faerie, according to humans) originally 'belonged' to the hingari, or at least -- next to the People -- they were the first inhabitants. As such its shape needs to be fluid, no map adequately fitting the territory. The seven keys/locks are old magic that allows seven city-towns to remain solid and serve as the focal points for the Kingdom. They don't move, so it is easy to find them. The rest of the kingdom is less easy to pin down, and movement between towns can range from an hour to several days, which makes travel uncommon and difficult.
- This shall fit into the idea of the middle ages and how people never knew the wider world since no one left home. Add to this the idea that the Kingdom is deliberately encouraging this looseness of geography and holding back scientific (and magical) advances that can allow the Kingdom to better fit together in order to keep the power structure intact.
- At present, due to lack of training for many, most magics are small and unimportant.
- (finish later)
I actually really like the new title... it's very mysterious and makes me deadly curious not only about the second theft (of what?) ...but of the first as well :D
ReplyDeleteYeah. It is far better than Higher Ground ever was. The back-cover blurb part pretty much spells out the first 'theft' as being probably Jake's innocence since any 12 year old kid drafted into a magical war on another planet is going to be changed by it, no matter how much they try not to be.
DeleteIn a purely literal sense, there's him being 'stolen' to the world again. I am going to have fun playing with the idea and hope to get into how some stolen things aren't entirely a theft, vis a vis the notion that getting your heart broken makes it stronger and so forth.
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