Scene 04 starts out with Cirellio riding through the desert. His horse is named ‘Twice’, a brown palfrey with patches of white fur around his eyes. After days of travelling they are finally seeing signs they’re nearing the desert city Shiira, and the river that runs along it.
The scene shifts gears and goes into a prior event. In Aydomar, in the high office, Lord Gazic (leader of the largest guild of theives in the world) has been keeping tabs on Cirellio and two other men who had left Aydomar days earlier without permission. Gazic is doing some information gathering and has summoned Redmond, the leader of a faction in Brennan, (‘the underground city’ which is on unclaimed land—therefore one of the lost cities which swears allegience to no one) to recant everything that had happened, despite having already read the dossier sent earlier.
He tells of how Cirellio had gotten seized by a blacksmith named Taglaraun, who had publicly accused him of being a thief. This brought much unwanted attention. Taglaraun, ever the showman, insists they duel, hoping it would draw in more business before he turns him in for the ransom. Cirellio came out of it the victor, but the mob of people rushed him and the valuables within the tent.
One of Redmond’s men broke up the crowd disguised as a fugitive hunter, feared men who are hired by the kings of the world to seize fugitives outside the major city gates to collect bounties. The ‘fugitive hunter’ claimed to work for King Rezzik, king of Aydomar, and tried to bully information out of him, but Cirellio managed to stick to the story that he was going back north to Aydomar anyway and was only there for the public auctions. However, Redmond’s men had witnessed his purchases—mainly provisions for desert travel—which suggested he had planned to head south all along.
I have to remember as I write Cirellio that he starts out a fatalist and thief—fairly heartless and cold. He’s been bottling up his feelings for a long time.
Lord Gazic is thorough, calculating, untrusting, puts his job ahead of his personal life, and would kill people in his own guild to keep his own butt out of the frying pan.
Words: 615
Hm. My wordcount is falling quite short of 1,000 words-per-scene. That’s okay at this point because I’m writing my first draft fairly lean and I have quite a bit more than eighty scenes to work with.
1881
+615
=======
2496 -> Now, I just need to do that 40 more times :)
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And I still can’t believe you keep it so… mathematical. I don’t think I could ever work on a chapter with a space limit. I make some really short, some rather long.
That Cirellio seems quite an interesting character. He isn’t yet on your “Characters” site, is he? I kind of like him.
I didn’t say a lot about Cirellio but he is the main character. There’s a lot of mystery to unravel with him; everything from his difficult and painful past to the reason behind why he named his horse ‘Twice’.
I really don’t think of this as mathematical at all. While I am writing these scenes, I’m making stuff up on the fly and letting the stream of consciousness guide me, only using my notes as guidelines to ‘stay on topic’, so to speak.
There really is no limit to how long my chapters can be. I just hope to meet or exceed 1000 words for each scene. Some chapters will have many scenes while other chapters will have few. For instance, the prologue had three scenes, so I expected it to be about 3000 words. I hope that clears things up!
I read your blog back to what I think was your first entry, where you explain a few things about Cirellio. That is where I already started liking him, and how glad I was to see that he appears in the story! And man, the horse name Twice got me hooked. I want to know how that happened, seriously.
@packsister: Sorry about that. I think I misunderstood what you meant by ‘space limits’. You’ve read everything here? *blushes!* Thank you! I almost forgot I’ve said a thing or two about Cirellio a long time ago. He will be added to the characters site, soon. I really should’ve done that already!!