I’m about 111k into Weigenland, the sequel to Erekos — and although I knew going in that it would be a very different book, I’m startled at times by all of the very small ways in which it’s different.
- The characters’ speech is never rendered in dialect. I read enough Brian Jacques when I was a child to have developed a well-conditioned aversion to dialect, but it worked for me in Erekos because the narrator’s voice was coming from a strong oral/folkloric tradition. In a very orthographic way, the narrator was “doing voices” as the characters spoke. The narrator of Weigenland just notes in passing whether the character’s accent is strong and what its characteristics are.
- While we’re on the subject, the narrator doesn’t jerk the readers around as much. A friend of mine said to me a few days ago, “I laughed at some of your romantic descriptions of the weather, and I don’t think I was supposed to.” I answered, “Yeah, you kind of were supposed to. This narrator is the kind of jerk who will give you a romantic description of a storm with a straight face and dare you to laugh. The kind of jerk who will quote Lord of the Rings and see if you noticed.” In fact, if it hadn’t been for my editorial team, the narrator of Erekos would’ve been even more insufferable; they (wisely) counseled me to cut a few scenes where the narrator essentially calls the reader on the carpet and asks what kind of story she thinks this is, anyway. The narrator of Weigenland is a much less intrusive, garrulous, self-aware narrator; this narrator is not trying to prod or call out the reader, but instead to give an accurate and careful portrait of what characters are doing, thinking, and feeling, and why they might choose not to show it.
- The third-person perspective is deeper. In Erekos, I used alternating third-person perspective (more or less), but because I had such a talky narrator, I never felt weird about telling the readers what other characters were thinking and feeling while I was in someone else’s head. It was a sort of omniscient narration that was very comfortable for me to write, because as the writer, I do always know what all of the characters are thinking at any point in an interaction. However, in Weigenland, I’m very alert to what my editors would call “POV slips” — I’m not allowed to settle even briefly in a second character’s head, and my characters instead have to infer what the people around them are thinking through gesture, expression, and intonation. It must be incredibly frustrating for the poor dears.
- It’s harder to make clear that everyone has a legitimate agenda. One of the gifts of writing Erekos — and the gift I least expected — was how many readers recognized that Milaus was really and earnestly trying to do the best he could for his country, and he simply didn’t have the tools to do it at present. In Weigenland, I have to keep reminding myself that because some of the less overtly sympathetic characters don’t get chapters of their own, I need to work harder in other characters’ chapters in order to establish their competence, their judgment, and why they might genuinely be liked.
- Above all else, Weigenland is a character-driven novel. In the writing circles in which I move, people generally shake down into at least one of a few categories: character-driven, plot-driven, world-driven, or theme-driven writers. Myself, I’m world-driven, as the geographic titles of my books suggest. Theme takes a very close second; some of my favorite reviews are the ones that speculate on what Erekos was “about.” I’m weaker on character, and so it’s been a bit of a wild ride, throwing myself into a novel governed by the characters’ choices, sentiments, and beliefs. I’ve gotten to know all of the recurring characters better (and particularly Jeiger), and I’ve been so proud to watch the new characters learn about themselves and realize that they’ve made serious mistakes. It’s been more rewarding than I ever could’ve imagined.
