Writing Excuses 10.8: Q & A on Character

Sketch out the events before and after your dead-drop scene from last week and three weeks ago.

Possible backstory from earlier? Lachlan and Livonia met each other as the result of a kidnapping adventure story, and have kept in touch with each other despite their social disparity.

Scenes included mention of prior surveillance by Pembroke - more to this story than starting with market drop scene?

When did Lachlan learn carving? Possibility of other coded messages?

Possible earlier scenes:

- carving the item while on return trip from New Glasgow/New Edinburgh (need to figure out which city Livonia’s family inhabits - nobles as colonists? In the absence of a plantation system in the Darien colony, what are they there for?

- earlier scene where they set up the arrangement with the toy seller? Need to make him an actual character, rather than a piece of the scenery.

- run this through either short form template or STC to see where the market scene fits?

Possible later scenes:

- Conversation with Livonia. How do they arrange more face time?

- Party invitation? Butler not the final word…

- Are there any circumstances in which a young man in trade could be in the company of a young lady of quality? Chaperones? Public events?

- Another rescue? Rewrite original rescue outline to include this scene?

Writing Excuses 10.7: Who Are All These People?

Pick one of the dead-drop characters from the exercise two weeks ago, and turn them into a secondary character. Now take one of the characters with whom they interacted, and write the same scene again, but from this new character’s POV.

Pembroke stalked through the marketplace. How could he have been so oblivious? The young mistress had always been obstinate, and her interests were vexingly eccentric, but it was his job to notice patterns of behavior and curtail any that posed a danger to her person - or her station. This obsession with carved figures of animals had seemed harmless enough, after all. The family’s peculiar attachment to Presbyterianism meant that a carved Noah’s Ark was one of the few toys deemed acceptable, and it dovetailed neatly with her new interest in “Natural Science”, which was considerably less acceptable to the elder Stewarts - but as long as she kept the scientific interest quiet, it was easy enough to explain away the growing collection of carved animals as a young girl’s whimsy.

The carver being the actual object of interest hadn’t even occurred to Pembroke, until one of the maidservants had happened to complain that MIss Stewart always went to a particular stall that was inconveniently located at the other end of the market from a stall operated by the maidservant’s particular object of interest - a tall native fellow with intricate tattooing on his face and chest. It was at that point that Pembroke suddenly realized that the Ark was not only full of native Panamanian animals, but contained pairs of European and African animals, carved with the same cunning skill. In hindsight, it was certainly possible that a Native carver had consulted the same picture books available to colonists - after all, the bookseller was only a few stalls down from the carver - but it was at that point that his suspicions were aroused.
Taking his liberty on the day before market day had been no great trouble, and he had staked out the carver’s shop for nearly a month before the connection finally made itself clear - the MacAuslander whelp. He’d been sneaking his own carvings into the inventory of the toy shop, with the obvious collusion of the carver. Pembroke waited in the bookseller’s stall, peering carefully around the bookshelf that formed an interior wall as Lachlan made his own cautious approach to the toy dealer. He smiled grimly to himself as the youngster ducked inside, and followed silently as only a butler can.