From my Fantasy Writing Desk:
I’m in the early laying-out stage with the next Tesha book. It seemed like a good time to read Libbie Hawker’s highly regarded book on outlining, Take Off Your Pants. I already outline—or perhaps I should call what I do storyboarding. You’ve seen photos of those boards recently if you read my blog. But Libbie describes a somewhat different approach, so I’m absorbing it now while I’m able to put what she says into direct action. She puts more emphasis on character arc than my current method, and that strikes me as a good thing because it’s the central concept but that sometimes gets lost on my boards. She also holds pacing and theme as equal elements with character arc—which again seems exactly right, and it works well with how I think about my novels. So far so happy. I’ll let you know how this new thinking works alongside my tried and true boards. Writing is always a growing process.
While I had character arc so prominently on my mind, I came across Donald Maass’s latest post on Writer Unboxed entitled “The Anti-Arc.” Character arc refers to character change, so what the heck is an anti-arc? Maass says in his post,
“In fiction the amazement and emotional punch that come with change result not from the eventual change but from the growing, step-by-step understanding in readers that change—no matter how necessary, desired or hoped for—is not possible. Thus, constructing an arc of change for a character really means constructing a defense against that change.
Donald Maass
We can call that the anti-arc.”
To make full sense of this intriguing concept you’ll have to click through to “The Anti-Arc” on Writer Unboxed to read his whole argument. I’m enjoying the mental fermenting. Here’s to the writing process as a metaphorical beer!
Archaeology I Enjoyed:
Unusual Biblical Scene for a Mosaic
Archaeologists in Galilee excavating a 5th century BCE synagogue found a mosaic depicting the oasis at Elim. The Biblical book of Exodus mentions Elim as a location the Israelites rested shortly after they fled Egypt.
This episode has not appeared in ancient art previously. This synagogue excavation has uncovered a number of more commonly found topics for mosaics: Jonah and the whale, the tower of Babel, Noah’s ark, and Pharaoh’s soldiers being swallowed up by the Red Sea.
The new Elim scene depicts men harvesting dates from palm trees, rows of wells, and the arched gate of a city flanked by a crenelated tower. On the arch are the words, “And they came to Elim.” Sometimes ancient people make identifying an object so much easier! Now if they’d just find a similar identification for each Bronze Age site I write about—“This pile of ruins used to be Troy. Sorry Schliemann made such a mess. That came a lot later.” Click here for Times of Israel “First artistic depiction of little known Exodus story uncovered in Galilee”
Founding Hittite King Destroyed This City
Surprise! There’s a Bronze Age city under there. The University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute has excavated since 2006 at a site called Zincirli in southern Turkey. In the process they have documented the rise and fall of an Iron Age kingdom called Sam’al.
Recently they discovered underneath the Iron Age city, a distinct Bronze Age city burn layer with buildings sealed under collapsed bricks and roof debris.
Burn layers from war capture “a day in the life of a city” so to speak because everything is abandoned in place. “It’s an incredibly lucky find. Every archaeologist hopes for an intact destruction layer because it gives you a snapshot of a day in the life of this town,” said David Schloen, a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a leading scholar of the ancient Middle Eastern world who co-directs the excavation. “Pottery is still sitting inside the buildings where the inhabitants left it in 1650 B.C. You know that everything is where it would be on a typical day, which is really valuable cultural knowledge.”
This particular burn layer is even more revealing because researchers can identify which leader and army destroyed this city and when. The Oriental Institute has worked for years on translating the excavated writings of the Hittites, and thus they have developed the knowledge needed for this identification. Putting that research together with the site’s archaeological evidence, they can say with unusual certainty that the Hittite King Hattusili I destroyed this city in 1650 BCE.
Hattusili was the founding king who established the Hittite Empire and its capital at Hattusha. Upon becoming king, he gave himself the name Hattusili, which means ‘man of the land of Hatti.’ One of my main characters is based on Hattusili III, a later king (1267-1237 BCE) who took the same renowned name.
Hattusili I was testing out expansionist policies and increasing his territory with success—from his point of view. The absence of human remains in the burn layer means the city’s inhabitants must have been taken as slaves, the usual practice both in this early period of the Hittite kingdom and the later one I write about. So much tragedy and sorrow trapped in this time capsule of an excavation. One king’s foreign policy is a whole city’s grief and misfortune. Click here for Archaeology News Network “Burned buildings reveal sacking of ancient Anatolian city 3,500 years ago”