Hi folks! If you’re new here, this is the 200 Word Novel, where I’m writing a book 200 words at a time, Monday through Friday. Each week I post the last week’s progress, raw and largely unedited, along with some reflections on the past week’s writing. If you’re here primarily to read the story, you can find the start of the novel here. If you’re mostly interested in the weekly life update and introspection on writing, you can find that down below.
Bria smiled. For all his complaining, Tavi always showed up when it mattered—and always paid closer attention than you gave him credit for. The two slid to a halt, the sled gliding to a pause beside them. Bria bound out of the snow and onto the sled, the runners barely crunching deeper into the snow under her light weight. Tavi took hold of the rope and leaned against the sled, reaching a hand up to crank the claw brake. Meanwhile, Bria dug into her satchel (Scurryers standard issue canvas packs, made to keep letters and parcels dry in any weather!) and pulled out the poppyseed biscuits she’d been saving, breaking half for Tavi. The two nibbled on their snack in a comfortable silence, broken by the occasional staccato pop of tree branches crackling as frozen sap burst brittle bark.
Bria treasured moments like this. Even when the work was hard or full of peril, the quiet in betweens, the moments of stillness set against landscapes new to her, previously unseen and unknown, made her nose quiver and whiskers dance with gratitude. That she got to share it with Tavi these days was delicious lemon curd frosting on the biscuit, as it were.
Tavi let out a little burp, utterly ruining the moment. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, a few crumbs escaping his mouth, “that vole grandma sure can bake.”
“I’m sure she’ll have more for purchase when we return,” Bria replied, suppressing a smile. “Also, you have frosting on your nose.”
Tavi wiped the lemon curd from his snout with the back of his paw. “Onwards!” He cried, and before Bria could admonish him, he grabbed the rope in his mouth and bound off, pulling the surprised field mouse along on the sled. A laugh escaped Bria as the duo began to glide down the soft sloping hill, the sled gaining momentum as Tavi ran.
“I see why you volunteered for this next stretch now,” Bria teased as the sled began sliding past the running otter. She reached out a paw, and Tavi grabbed it. Bria gave him a pull, and with surprising ease hoisted the much larger otter up onto the sled. Tavi nimbly landed onto the footboards, his long, lithe body flexing to compensate and find his balance with ease.
“Don’t worry,” Tavi said through pants, “this doesn’t count as my turn.”
“You always make me worry,” Bria retorted. The two grinned as the biting cold air whipped past their faces, enjoying the momentary reprieve from pulling.
“…you know how to drive this thing, right?” Bria asked after a moment.
“You’re the one steering!” Tavi replied. But Bria saw he had already slipped a subtle paw on the brake lever, the other held fast on the steering bar. Yet another talent her Scurryfolk partner hadn’t disclosed. But Tavi always liked playing up his “mysterious past,” as he’d put it. Bria could practically hear him giving a faux offended retort of “you’ve never asked, Bria,” in response to her would-be inquiry.
As the ground ahead evened out from the soft hill behind them, the sled slowly lost speed, gliding to a soft pace as it lost momentum. Tavi leaned on the steering bar, navigating smoothly around the occasional tree in their direct path. Both mouse and otter felt rather than heard the hush fall over this part of the woods as they continued, the already sparse sound of bugsong fading to silence as they continued onwards. Bria caught glimpses of char marks on the barren trees, and her nose trembled at the faint but unmistakable scent of animals still lingering in the air.
“How kind of Feral bandits to always smell so ripe,” Tavi muttered.
Bria bit back her instinctual desire to quote Scurryer protocol around language and nomenclature, and instead offered her observation after another sniff. “Scent smells stale though. At least two to three days old.”
Tavi leapt off the sled as they slowed practically to a halt, taking up the rope in his paws and looping it over a shoulder before looking back to Bria. “Checks out with the timeline the mayor gave then,” he said. “If the rest of her information is accurate, the caravan carts should be nearby.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “Eyes sharp, Bria. Could still be trouble.”
Bria gave a quiet nod as the two made their way forward, the soft slush of sled runners on snow the only sound as they continued on. Bria’s nose quivered as she tried to keep the scent, distinguishing between older and more fresh smells to try and deduce a directionality to the trail. At the same time, her ears flickered as she listened for any unexpected sounds, instinctually tracking their surroundings for danger. Her eyes were fixed on finding a path through the snow ahead, scouting out the shallowest path through the drifts, so she didn’t see Tavi suppress an admiring smile at the sight of his companion’s deep focus.
The pair made good if tense progress, and in short order found themselves coming across a clearing of sorts. To call the opening among the trees a clearing, however, implied both a naturalness to the formation and a size to the space that would be inaccurate. Here, dense clusters of trees had been scorched and burned, with blackened branches littering the ground, a few trunks lying snapped and scattered across the space. A few claw marks marred the lower regions of some trees, and jutting through the snow along the natural wooden debris, Bria saw some broken planks and the odd spokes of a wheel.
“This is definitely the spot,” Tavi said, leaning back on the sled. He put a gentle paw on Bria’s shoulder as he leaned in. “Do you smell that, underneath the burned wood?”
Bria nodded. “Blood,” she said, pointing to a particularly fluffy looking snow bank.
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Another Way In
In my career, I do a lot of worldbuilding. I’ve crafted detailed documentation on brand new settings for big, ambitious video and tabletop games. I’ve also worked hard to wrangle decades of accumulated (and often conflicting) lore into a fantastical world that makes cohesive sense and better supports future storytelling in the setting. I’ve done a lot of planning and design around fantastical places and events and magic systems.
Which is part of what makes just going for it with my novel all the more fun.
How much planning is the right amount of planning?
The internet likes to flatten process into “this OR that”. Do you plan your stories or do you make them up as you go along? The reality is, most “second world” fantasies (stories that take place in fictional worlds) need some work done in establishing at least the fundamentals of how things work. If things are wildly inconsistent, believability drops, and stakes become unclear.
But what I’ve found is that discovering truths as you tell your story often serves far more efficiently in worldbuilding than doing too much pre-planning.
This is true, even (and especially) for big scale games or franchises. If you do too much worldbuilding and establish hard “rules” about how the world works, you might find that something that would be really great to happen in the current story conflicts with the historical record of the world that you painstakingly created, or doesn’t align with how exactly the force your [copyrightable magic power that permeates your setting] works.
With this novel, the further I get into the story, the more I’m starting to make little notes about truths I’m establishing on the fly, or things that are implied. There’s an organization called the Scurryers that deliver packages. In a world of intelligent animals, bugsong instead of birdsong suggests insects take place of creatures in the biodiversity of the setting. I’m also noting little emergent details that might be fun to dig deeper into later on. Bria obsessively quotes from a Scurryer handbook, which suggests a comprehensive tome that covers package delivery scenarios and protocol.
Writing by following characters rather than by pre-constructing plot feels very anthropological. I’m unearthing little details about a culture and world as I go, and each rib bone or uncovered tooth tells me something new in how the structure and skeleton of this piece actually all fits together.
Welcome to Everden
I’ve mentioned in previous reflections that I did not expect my “woodland animal adventures” to be quite as bloody and gruesome as it currently is, especially in the Gruber chapters. (So much for my “middle grade light hearted fiction” arc a la Diane from Bojack Horseman.) I’m still discovering the shape, tone, and experience of the world as it shifts and evolves and finds its footing.
Realizing 3 chapters in that there’s a different group of characters I also wanna follow in this setting really has cracked open something fun and exciting for me, and rebalanced the overall tone and thrust of the story in a way that makes me enthusiastic to explore. It feels like I now know something about the tone of the world and setting of Everden that I didn’t quite have before. I’m delighted my woodland fantasy fic has found a bit more pastoral whimsy and cozy charm.
Thanks as always for coming along for the ride. 💙