Scraps from the Notebook: "Dog in the Vineyard"

[queenlua]

I love looking at artists' sketchbooks and works-in-progress - there's just something so fun about seeing the lines and shapes in a rough sketch, or watching how a project progresses and changes as it gets closer to completion.

I really love looking at the writers' equivalent, too - drafts, outlines, notes, and so on - but for whatever reason, writers don't really share such things nearly as readily as artists do.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some bits from my notebook, written while I was planning "Dog in the Vineyard," for anyone who's similarly interested in such things.



I think these may be the first notes I took for "Dog in the Vineyard." And my, how everything changed:

• I'd originally planned to have the opening scene be Sothe and Micaiah introducing Volug to the party, and Leonardo being suspicious but saying nothing. Instead, I changed the opening scene to Edward and Volug hanging out together, and Leonardo acting pissy about it - which was the right choice, I think, since Edward's relationship with Volug ends up being one of the big reasons Leonardo does end up accepting Volug.
• It's mentioned somewhere in Leonardo's backstory that he was the son of a noble, and I played with the idea of him having some residual bitterness about his fall from grace (from noble to outlaw refugee). He'd spend the whole story suspicious about Volug's true identity, but he wouldn't know the truth for certain until Nailah and Volug, accompanied by human-form Rafiel, came to help the brigade in the swamp. Then he'd have this crushing realization, and think bitterly/selfishly to himself, I was a noble in Nevassa, and now I'm mucking around with commoners and half-breeds. And he'd half-hate himself for thinking that. I ended up scrapping that as well, because (a) I wasn't sure bitter-about-loss-of-nobility entirely jibed with his canon personality and his personality as I was developing it, and (b) properly developing both his former-noble-ness and his history of hatred toward the laguz was going to be a rather tall order for one short story.
• I wanted to conclude the fic with Leonardo telling off some fellow Daein soldiers who were scared of and/or antagonistic toward Volug - but that ended up getting scrapped as well, probably for the better. Again, much of Leonardo's eventual acceptance of Volug was because of Edward, so it was really important Edward be a fundamental player in that scene. Plus, I realized pretty fast that Leonardo's hatred toward the laguz was strong enough that any acceptance he developed during the story couldn't be so dramatic or flashy - a quiet, grudging acceptance, urged on by Edward, was far more fitting.

...annnd, here I talk to myself ("fuck need another scene"). By this point I already knew it was going to be a fairly long piece, and when I realized I needed yet another scene for everything to make sense, I was like, "Really? Am I writing a novella here or something?"

This sort of page is usually a rarity in my notebooks - I do a lot of my outlining, planning, and note-taking on paper, but when I'm writing full paragraphs, it's generally on a computer. (My sentences/paragraphs end up too short/choppy when I'm writing on paper.) But at the time, I was on a long car ride, and I really wanted to write, so notebook was the only option. Behold, ugly handwriting!

(And yeah, the bits about Desmond/Faraday and Wade Hammond are not related to the fic :P)