Henneth Annûn Story Archive

Toward the beginning you have "team" when you mean "teem."

Got it. Thanks for your eagle eyes, GA!

Your Aragorn is one of the finest I've read.

Ah, what a lovely compliment. Thank you!

You have left out the good part. Why?

Oh, lots of little reasons, none of which amount to much individually but together convinced me to post the excerpt separately.

Partly, my homebase is an archive that maintains a PG-13 cap. Not that we don't write or share harder scenes, we just don't put them in the archive because of having teen members. And then, I also wanted to write a story that a wider range of people could read. I know a few teens whose parents only allow them to read G to PG-13 rated material and have a few adult friends who stick to that level, too.

And, finally, and probably the real reason, it's the only scene like it in the whole story. From a plot POV, it would release the building tension far far too early in the proceedings. I'm relying pretty heavily on just that tension to propel the reader forward in the story.

So, although I joked about rationalizing the reason for writing this chapter more explicitly, in truth, it really was the reason why I wrote it. I felt like I needed to know more about their first encounter to fully grasp the unspoken dynamics of their relationship. Most times I have a pretty good idea what I want from a scene, but I never really know how a scene is going to develop until I sit down and start pecking at the keyboard. Often, I get a bug and the scene takes off somewhere unexpected. Sometimes I know it's just right, and sometimes I know it's just plain wrong. But, I never really know what it's going to be until I get there.

Being the curious, greedy, undisciplined sort that I am, I had to find the "missing" appendix to this chapter

LOL!

Good! I'm glad it's coming across as restrained. My writing sins tend toward melodrama and purple prose. I've been working on balancing my desire for deep feeling and a kind of magical quality to the beauty that can be found around us with a sparer prose... at some times more successfully than others.

Thanks Oshun, both for reading and your kind words!