I am diving into Chapter 13 (working title ‘A Strange Land’) and already slashing away the superflous material, rearranging point of view etcetera. One thing that I have had a great time doing during the second round revisions is really building out the characters emotions and what motivates them.

One way which I have focused on when making the characters much more three-dimensional is to introduce family history and influences. This is especially important with children who are heavily affected by their parents and the resulting attention (or lack thereof) can heavy influence their personalities, motivations and their perception of people. Angel Smits, summed it up well in a post that “motivation is what makes a book character-driven”. Also Ken Follett, NY Times best selling author uses some great technics called Character Trees to effectively keep track of his timelines and characters.

In chapter 13, we start to see one of the characters, Gideon, who has had a well, how can I say it, troubled childhood, and has battled with regular teasing from classmates all of his life is reaching the end of his patience. Now armed with a magical relic of extraordinary powers Gideon is ready to take those simmering emotions and unleash them with dangerous consequences. Another great example of character motivations is of course Harry Potter and the Mirror of Erised  that has the power to reflect a characters deepest desires.

The other result of introducing more family history and motivations is that it allows a writer to draw upon a wealth of material for subplots that guide a characters journeys. Many of these subplots will only be fully realized in Book 2 and 3 of the Talent Tree series but they begin to coalesce in the first book. In particular during chapter 13 the children meet a magical race of creatures called the Dragonkin. The Dragonkin are an ancient species that are now almost extinct. The encounter with the race of magical beings is brief in The Seed of Hope but they certainly play a larger, very critical role going forward. The trick is not to overdo the subplots – they should not take away from the primary thread of the tale, rather they should re-enforce the reason why the characters act the way they do and add the richness of detail and not just for potential story fodder. Every plot, influence, motivation or theme must pay a part somewhere in furthering the story.

I am learning the hard way as a lot of good material which wasn’t critical to the story didn’t make the revision process. Of course I am not throwing it away and may use the material later but for now it stays filed away.

So read closely and pay attention to the details. The subplots and influences that made the cut are certainly going to be important later.

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