Epic Quest

Finally moving forward again with The Early Fox. Yes, I'm re-using some concepts and snippets of description, but still basically I hacked out almost a thousand words today on the Part II opening.

(And still not really happy with explicit "Parts." I might end up using the "vignettes from the past" as dividers instead. Or I might end up cutting those, leaving only the "White Sands girl" prologue and having the rest of the book in simple first-person, past tense, chronologically linear narrative.)

Which was also one of the big reasons to rewrite the "Pickup truck" and "Roswell" chapters so thoroughly. My first draft used au vis openings and that meant a whole bunch of back-filling in awkward past perfect.

That revised opening sequence, though, is finally taking proper shape on the page. There's a certain feel I'm trying to achieve with it.

Yeah, I've mentioned just how amazing the Horizon Zero Dawn series is at organic world-building, where your understanding of the world and the back story, the nature of the quest and the stakes evolve in parallel with Aloy's own understanding. Even on a second or third playthrough, you feel this opening up as the game takes you through these huge changes of perspective; from the Proving, where Aloy's world expands radically from being an outcast of the Nora to learning there are other tribes, history and politics in her land -- and some of those other forces have just taken an active interest in her, to when she enters Carja Lands, especially Meridian, and both enters a new nation and new (desert) biome, but also becomes an active part of political events there.

And it just keeps on, with the final revelation that you are trying to stop a techno-god from eating the world happening extremely late in the game.

Forbidden West has less of this, although the moment the Zeniths enter is a startling game-changer. It remains, however, a slow burn game. That opening title there is at least an hour of game-play in.

And notice how gentle it is. Three minutes, with a song to boot. Not a cramped cinematic of explosions and fisticuffs and world-ending stakes -- although these are very much there, from the start of the game. This is almost elegiac, and no accident, as her ride takes her through the territories of the previous game one more time before you move on to a new setting.

The other reason for why it unfolds this way is the story isn't just about Aloy trying to save the world. It is about her accepting the help of others, even if some of them will die on the way. Through the game, she stops being the one person who can save the world and begins to share her knowledge and skills.

Not really directions I'm going with my own opening cinematic. There is a thread I'm carrying through the book, the image of a woman carrying her child as she journeys to a new world, but for various reason The Early Fox is about cutting Penny off from chatty companions and letting her experience a desert solitude. So my Part II opening is about the lure and the loneliness of the open road.

Oh, and this is Penny's story. Penny without an existing role or expectation to fall back on. Which means, very possibly, the name "Athena Fox" will never be spoken within this book.

One more question for the cover creator.