The MC's journey to self-knowledge

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M.K. Jemisin

DONALD MASS WRITE TIP #75 ¾

 What are five stages on your MC’s journey to self-knowledge?  Build one external event to strongly provoke or dramatize each.

"Kella!" Ronague whispered. His lips shaped my name against my ear. His fingers dug into my shoulders. “Treaty, be damned! I can’t let you go. I will stop you."

I froze. I had to go – my life was forsworn. First, I had to find a way to diffuse the boiling mass of loneliness, pent up anger, self-loathing that had only ever been held back by a thin new love. Now, he was desperate.  In less than a heartbeat, he would be unreachable. This moment was all I had. No weapon, or knot, would hold him back if he turned his strength on me - if he lost control. But, how many times had he saved my life? How many ways had he shown how much he loved me? I wrapped my arms around him… rested my cheek over his heart. Every organ inside me burned. How could I drag myself from him when all I wanted to do was stay?

The five stages of self-knowledge:

pre-contemplation

contemplation

preparation

action

maintenance

WHERE IS YOUR MC ON THE JOURNEY TO SELF-KNOWLEDGE?

I would like to say thank you to everyone who read my May posts - there have a been a lot of you. Thank you to all those who commented too - that was very encouraging. The small sections took a lot of preparation and work to get them written, edited and posted. This month has tied in with my writing goal of experimenting with characterisation. For the next few months, at least, I will be returning to my normal schedule so I will be posting three times a week.

THE WORST MISTAKE AN MC CAN MAKE

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Joe Haldeman

 DONALD MASS WRITE TIP #74

What’s your MC’s worst mistake? The worst consequence? Work backwards: earlier your MC swears *never* to make this mistake.

I was thinking about the first time I saw you," Deann said. "I watched girls dance at the foot of the wall you’d climbed. They walk backwards into the road so they could keep you in view. They couldn’t take their eyes off you. I swore I’d never let myself be that dazzled – not by anyone. When I persuaded Booker to let me be the one to follow you, and to make the first approach, I said it was because no one else could be trusted around you. Even back then, when the fact that you were straddling the razor wire and the broken glass should have been uppermost in my mind, I noticed how you clung to Fyern. To keep her safe... I thought. Poor, weak and needy Fyern. Why would she put herself in that much danger to share reckless thrills with you? But, then, when you seemed to wobble. I pushed out until my power supported Fyern. She was the one who gripped you. I saved you. She helped you get your balance. I intervened... before you became one of us. That haunted me. It was a shadow on my soul. Why? I was never the kind of girl who sees Stupid and then does it. And, I’d seen many attractive boys – wrapped in dark auras and black leather – I felt nothing. For me, they were burnt out cinders...no smoulder. I said I didn’t want you, I just needed to secure your skills for The Brudd.”

Strang grinned. After all our training, his dark power found enough energy in the half-light to radiate across the space between us. “You secured me.”

WHAT WAS YOUR MCs WORST MISTAKE?

A WEIGHTLESS MOMENT OF CHANGE?

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Kirsten Imani Kasai

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #101

What’s a moment when everything could change? Pause. Explore. What does it feel like to be weightless? Add it

I stared dry-eyed at the spitting rain that threw itself at the window before clustering for comfort and sliding out of view.  I was less substantial than a raindrop. I didn't have it in me to cry. Besides, crying would  be pointless. I was a support network of one – more of a strand really. Hell, if I cried I’d even have to go and find the tissues for myself.

He came. He saw. He concubined.

I killed him.

I loved him, that hadn’t been pretend. I felt substantially changed. Even now, he was in me. Cellular. To the ends of fingertips, he was grafted into the keratin. Wrapped around my heart – like cling film – he'd nurtured like plastic wrap.

I gave him all that I could be. And, he made me weak.

Sickening.

My physical body knew what my mind refused to see. With him in my life, I made a passable blanket. Or, more accurately, a better rug.

I almost let the light in me go out – just to keep him. Now, he was gone. My cheeks heated at the thought of how far from goodly I'd slipped; so far from me. I banished him to where the Numbered ought to be. In that moment, in my room, despair became a tangible thing. Greater than any misery I had allowed myself to feel.

I could welcome despair. We’d be a good fit. Bleak. Blind. Unforgiving.

I shivered. And I shut my eyes.

Behind my eyelids, there was a glow.

The light? Or the will to live? Or hope?

It was the germ of a feeling. 
A  lonely tear began to run down my cheek.  I drew in a deep, desperate breath.  
Revelation. 
I was alive. It was possible to live without him. I could grow again.

HAVE YOU CREATED A MOMENT OF CHANGE WHERE ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE?

IS YOUR MC SO SURE ABOUT SOMETHING IT JUST HAS TO BE WRONG?

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ROBERT V. S. REDICK

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #100

About what is your MC utterly right? Pull the rug. Prove her utterly wrong. Force her to rebuild.

The Wyrd Wielder gripped the door. In the neon lights, Elleree could see that the veins stood out as if the flow of his blood was damned there.

“This is your last chance to walk away,” he said desperately. “Elleree! If you go now…I know I could let you leave and not go looking for you later.” The words gritted out between his teeth when he begged. “Don’t leave it until it’s too late. I want to get this right.”

“Kayl, I know you aren’t bad. You're a good person. You told me to leave you. Don’t you see? You proved you have goodness inside.”

“Any one is capable of one good act – if it sneaks up on them and the let it slide because they have other things to occupy them. When you go I won’t feel good about it.”

“That’s because you’ll miss me.” Elleree reached out for him but he shrank back behind the protection of the door, and her fingers hardly disturbed the fabric of his robe.

He shuddered. “That’s one way to describe it.”

Elleree ignored Kayl’s frown. She tried again. “But…We love each other.

“That one I can’t deny. I recognise the way my body feels.”

“Let me stay. I’ve kept up the stupid boundaries you demanded I use for too long. I want to hold you and help you find the good in you. Every day, I want to tell you that you are good – that you deserve to be loved.”

“No. You need to go. You have to go,” he said as soon as she’d finished. “There’s only so much light in here and it’s fading…fast.

She stared around at the neons he'd installed on every surface of his room. She shook her head. “You weren’t born dark inside. No one is born that way,” Elleree said desperately. “If you think about it, it was the things that happened to you after you were born that messed you up. But you know what they did to you –it was awful – but you know… so we can work through it.”

“I can’t keep saying this much longer – Elleree, you have to go.”

“Please, no. You might have more temptation – more of an inclination to the bad – but, it’s the way you live your life that defines you.”

Kayl made a strangled noise. He was laughing and crying at the same time. “No. No”

“Poor, poor Kayl. Don’t be sad. Everyone knows what it’s like to want to do something bad.” Her voice tightened. “Sometimes they even do it… that doesn’t make them bad. I’m not perfect, you know.”

“Poor Kayl,” he said and his voice dripped with sarcasm. He smiled. “I know what I am. I accept my nature – I relish it.” There was no humour softening his face; his teeth and eyes were unnaturally bright and sharp.

Elleree stumbled, shivering hot then cold,  as she edged away from him. The opening was narrow, the corridor dark. Even safely on the other side of the door, her heart raced.

“So…You let your self-control go sometimes, Elleree?” The Wielder tilted his head towards  his shoulder, and narrowed his eyes as he studied her. “I would like to see that.”

She shook her head. From the soft light of the corridor, she could see him: cloaked in his power, he looked impervious -- far from human. “Oh, Kayl,” she whispered.

“As I see it, I am all that really matters. And I am so very good at being really and truly bad,” Kayl said with absolute clarity.

IS YOUR MC SO SURE ABOUT SOMETHING IT JUST HAS TO BE WRONG? 

AT YOUR MOST FEARLESS, WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE?

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SCOTT EAGLE

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #98

Imagine that a more fearless writer than you creates an event for your story. What is it? Use it.

With delicate movements of both hands, Leeah drew the binding circle and with little more than a thought she pulled it taut. A step in any direction sent her rebounding back, arcing up before falling into the centre again. As she learned the strength of the structure she’d woven, she reinforced its integrity. She judged her movements with care. The balance between carefree and reckless was essential if he was to be drawn into the sphere without activating his innate sense of self-preservation. On the other side of the room, Apol laughed out loud.

Leeah ran towards the wall. This time she was able to race a few steps higher before the power she’d incorporated threw her spiralling up and over. She wondered what else she could do to draw him in.

But he moved fast, blurred into invisibility. The force of his arrival knocked her backward, and they sank slowly together towards the chalky dust she’d sprinkled over the floor. The success of her plan rested on the fact that he would not realise the danger before she was ready. Some of his strength must be bound in earth if she was to rid the world of the parasite. To make sure he remained ignorant, Leeah gripped his shoulder and threw all her weight to one side. He grinned up at her. Let her move them so when they landed she straddled him.

Apol reached out and ran his finger through the energy-absorbing powdered rock. He turned his head to confirm what his body must have already told him. It was only then that, eyebrows drawn together, he looked at the gold blade that had already pierced through clothes and skin. Guided by his rib bones, it had cut through to the muscle that cradled his life force long after rhythm ceased to rock it. “Hey, friend.”

“We’re not friends,” said Claire as she leaned a little harder on the dagger. “How could we ever be anything as uncomplicated as friends?”

 “This is a bit permanent… for a break up. Think about this for a minute–”

“I have thought… who said love’s got anything to do with thinking – In my head, I always knew I shouldn’t love you. I hate what you make me feel. Do you think I liked knowing what you did for a living?”

“You make me sound like a banker.”

“You are soo much worse.”

Keeping still, Apol stared warily at the blade that was sinking into his body. “You’re not really going to kill me.”

“You aren’t really alive.”

“I’m hurting plenty for a dead man.”

“You really shouldn’t remind me about you and dead men.” Leeah leaned and pushed the blade a little deeper.

“What are you doing? You can’t do this!” Cracks showed beneath the surface of his skin. “Leeah, don’t you care?”

She closed her eyes unable to see the hurt she could hear painted thick in his voice. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “I do care.”

In her mind she pictured the thread the dagger point must become, she drew the thread to his heart and bound it. Fine, fine filaments of golden thread bound his heart. It would draw away the power it found there.

“But, I love you,” he gasped, faintly.

She couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “You loved tapping me for my life force”

“I enjoyed tapping you for a lot of reasons.”

“I hate this! I hate that I find killing you so hard.”

“And me,” said Apol as the thread began its final revolution. He was silent. Flakes drifted across her skin like a caress as they rose from him and drifted towards the whirling vortex that had opened inside the dome. “Could we get it over with… the suspense is killing me?”

Raising her head so she could see his eyes, Leeah gasped. “I thought you’d gone!”

 “Sorry for my long slow fade… only I was a quip short of my quota.” Apol whispered before he fragmented and so much stolen energy streamed away from him that it rebalanced the depleted life force circulating through the universe.

I THINK A MORE FEARLESS WRITER WOULD ALLOW THE MC TO KILL THE PERSON THEY HAD GROWN TO LOVE.

AT YOUR MOST FEARLESS, WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE?

WARRIORS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY PERFECT FOR 8 SENTENCE SUNDAY

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As I'm only a weekend writer of Romance, Darrah is still having trouble with Sark Hale Tarla. In a time long past in our history, a Sarkisian ship is stranded on Earth. Assimilation is at an early stage but it has not proven to be an easy option for either people. Now, Hale has been assigned to Darrah and her arm of men. His role is to smooth over any diplomatic - or worse - problems that might arise in the Outlands, where the Sarkisians were allowed to settle, when they are sent to find the missing human heir to the Thorn Throne, Erishdren. Rogue Sarkisians are thought to have been behind the abduction.

“Why didn’t you tell Rylo what happened between us?” Hale asked from his position on boulder at the edge of the camp.

“You have no right to use his proper name,” Darrah snapped.

“He is your lover?”

He observed how Darrah’s back became stiff, registered the increase in her heart rate, and how her pupils dilated.

“He is Second of this arm – anything beyond that designation is none of your business.”

Hale calculated the possibility that Darrah might have had a deeper relationship with Rylo before he shook his head and relaxed his shoulders. “All truths that could be related to the disappearance of your future king are my business.”

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #99

Blah scene? What changes here? Exactly when? How would an outside observer know? Add that. 

WHAT CHANGE TAKES PLACE IN YOUR WWW 8?

WHO WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO LOVE?

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Gregory Norman Bossert

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #97

In your story what love is forbidden? Make it more impossible in 3 ways. Then make it happen.

“So you say Immortal," Deena said. “I say Undead.”

“That’s…. way different!” Constantine said, and he nodded.

"You snack from the pumping-iron end of the juice bar.”

“Hah! That makes you safe. With your craving for lettuce, what have you got that I could sink my teeth into?”

Wrapping her arms, along with her cardigan, around her stomach, Deena nodded, much too slowly, "OK."

"I crave platelets with my plasma.” Constantine waved his hand in her direction.

Deena moved her mouth until it formed a crooked kind of smile. Anything else would take too much effort. “As long as we – both - know.”

Constantine blinked and stared at her as if she was suddenly unrecognisable. "What did I say?"

"You don’t like like me, of course," she explained trying to keep her voice from breaking. "I’m such an idiot. Subtlety is the worst form of defence. You should have just said." She aimed for sophisticated but crashed somewhere just above pathetic, and then settled for that. Deena knew her cheeks were a riot of colour that no BB cream was going to tone down but she was more worried about the clenching in her stomach that went with the need to be violently sick.

Stumbling over the tuftless carpet, Constantine moved closer. "You’re sad? No! I just... Hell. Not that. I... See, Deena, you’re like porcelain.”

"I'm porcelain?" Deena said looking down at her sizeable curves.

“Too me– Yes. You’re delicate… fragile."

"Underneath all this padding, I’m all hard bone and sharp angles. You're the delicate one. Scream! Argh! No… not the sunlight! You’re all desperate, and craving, and skulking about in the dark.”

He froze. “You think I’m a cross between a tick and a rodent?”

“No. Oh, Great and Immortal Being… Come on, you know how you look."

"How do you think I look?" He sounded relieved. Smiling, he held his hands so his fingers hovered over her arms as if something there already reached him.

She sighed. "As monsters go, you’re fairly passable."

“No--You think I’m hot.”

Deena tried to keep her lips resolutely closed. Hot just did not do him justice. "Cold. And not human either." Perfectly so. It was undeadly unfair. 

"No?" he asked, but he was smiling so wide his teeth glinted in glow of the downlighter.

"You did that deliberately didn’t you?"

He shook his head.

"You’re a freak," Deena said uncrossing her arms.

“Yeah,” he said, “but, you love me anyway.”

IS THERE A DEFECT THAT WOULD MAKE A CHARACTER IMPOSSIBLE TO LOVE?

IF SOMETHING IS WRONG IN YOUR WORLD, REMEMBER IT COULD ALWAYS BE WORSE

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Lev Grossman
Is obsessive serious? *hehehe

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #96

Something’s wrong in your story world. It’s a whirlpool. Who else can be sucked into its vortex? Do it

“Minister Tone? What about Marl’s trial?”

“Really, Larette" he asked with a patronising smile, "My dear, Larette, what relevance would a trial have upon these proceedings?”

He looked so confident. Dependable. I gave myself permission to hope it had all been a stupid misunderstanding. “The trial?”

“Is over.”

“No one was called to give any evidence.” I looked around to make sure we were alone. The speed of the proceedings had been too hasty. What if people talked? No one must ever say that Minister Tone showed favouritism to his son. “Don’t you think someone should have discussed the Rule of Law in there?”

If anything his smile became wider. I could feel cheeks tightening as if I wanted to grin at him too. “To be quite honest, Larette, I don’t think anyone troubles themselves with technicalities like that. Not anymore.”

Slowly, his words were translated from vibrations into concepts in my mind, and I realised what he had said. “Isn’t that actually wrong?”

“Pragmatic, I would say.”

While I looked towards the door and wondered when Marl would be allowed to walk through to join us the minister shook out his purple robe and smoothed it to make sure it fell in perfect folds to the ground. “Sir - You - No one asked Marl what happened.”

He raised his head, nodding and smiling and clasping the gilded badge of his high office over his contently rounded stomach. “Every question we needed to ask was answered in full.”

“No one asked–”

The centre of the First Minister’s forehead peaked into spikes that were so unlike the gentle curves shown by Marl’s lie detector. “Larette, you should stop now. You are drawing attention to yourself.”

I stared around. We were the only people in the gleaming corridor or the Palace of Justice. Somehow, my mouth kept on moving. “Can I ask what the verdict was?” I said, shaking my head.

“Guilty. Of course.”

“How could he be?”

Minister Tone stiffened, his face smoothed into a perfect and unpleasant mask of fake civility. “Larette, love cannot turn a wrong into a right. Democracy is not enough. Only a deep and abiding respect for justice will serve here. Any justice flies above your sentimental grasping for the mythical rule of law.”

Is something wrong in your story world? 

IS YOUR MC HAVING TROUBLE WITH SPELLING?

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Ekaterina Sedia
So, of course, today's post turned out to be long ;)

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #95

Who in your story has been cast under a spell?  What locks that spell in place, never to be broken?  Break it.

“Don’t be foolish, my beautiful girl. I am magic. Magic doesn’t shoot out of the end of my fingers. I can't help myself," Tauran said with a shrug. “The more surface I show – the less I have to wonder if my magic is working. I am my will.”

“So, that’s your answer? Getting naked is the answer?”

“I am all power,” he said. He raised an eyebrow as he rolled up his sleeve. “I’m thinking dull thoughts like road kills and supermarket queues. Can you see the power shimmer? I’m really trying to slow things down.”

Incredibly, she could see. Like heat on a road, the rising power charged the air around him – it played havoc with the light. “Oh!”

“I can’t help it,” he said with a grin. “Some people have to work at their talents. But, the goddess surely gifted me.”

Lyna shook her head, something she wasn’t listening to, or looking at, was important.

“Lyna? What is it? Focus. Am I too turned up full for you?”

            “No. You’re not. This is crazy. Evil.”

He stiffened. “Nothing about magic is evil.”

“How you use it is,” she said, gasping as she realised how many times she’d witnessed Tauran going to work. He pushed up his sleeves to get down to business. Her stomach twisted. He opened a button at the neck of his shirt every time she entered a room. She’d thought it was because her presence disturbed his fastidious, buttoned-down nature. How wrong could she have been? He manipulated her, and he thought nothing of it. Hell, he might not even be aware he was doing it.

“Come on,” Tauran said. “It’s no worry. I love you. If I keep loving you, I know you’ll learn to love me too.”

She smiled, but it was a sad cold thing. “I won’t. Can’t.”

“Lyna,” he crooned as he closed the distance between them. “I know you’ll learn to love me.”

She shook her head. It was true she’d thought she liked him. Now she realised she’d liked how he made her feel. But, he was more magic that man so how could she know what was real and what was manipulation?

As if he sensed her hesitation – which he probably did - Tauran laughed.

It could have been magically enhanced, but he sounded so happy. Probably not for much longer. Her heart ached. It hurt her to think about hurting him.  What was that about? A shudder ran through her. Really, surrendering to this glorious kind of love would be too easy.

“I can’t trust myself,” she admitted aloud, but she really hoped she could. Hope. That was a kind of magic too. She had to find a way to resist his formidable power. After a life-time of neglect, it was time to knock the dust off a little faith. Somewhere inside, alongside the belief that she had the ability to be heard, were the words her NannaJan had told her she was going to need, one day.

But Tauran’s hands were on her neck, running up into her short-cropped hair. He cradled her head. With only the slightest of pressure he angled her ready for his kiss.

Lyna shuddered. The eyes that filled the sky above her were bright. His smile was triumphant, as he lowered his head towards her.

Teeth and tongue, his mouth was open. The scent of him made her head swim. Oh, no. If Tauran opened his mouth on hers, if she tasted him, she knew she would be lost. Forever.

“Lyna?” he whispered. “Say, Yes.”

She pulled her head back, her neck aching, her head full of sound. His voice rang with a bell-like tone.

“No.”

“No?” The fingers on the back of her head became a cage. “Don’t say, No. You can’t mean, No.”

The words filled her mouth. They echoed back from her aching heart. “Rush like wind. Flow like water. Burn like fire. Settle like earth. Elemental Being, I say be gone.” And then, as she blinked, he vanished.

DO YOU HAVE A CHARACTER WHO HAS TROUBLE WITH SPELLING?

 CAN IT BE BROKEN?

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WITH AN UNBREAKABLE TRUST?

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Ann VanderMeer

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #94

Pick an ally of your MC. What’s their shared history? What’s their unshakable trust? Shatter it

“No one wins when two countries convince themselves they’re right.” she said, but even to her the words sounded limp.

Guido glared at a point over her head, it seemed he could not bear to bring her face into focus. “I never thought about nations, I thought about you and me–and did whatever it took to keep us alive.”

“I know, and you did.” Heels off the polish marble floor, Perry tried to stand as tall as she could. She’d never felt so far below him.

With a gasp, Guido doubled over. “So many battles. Scything through fields of men. Wading in their blood.” Guido cried anguished. “All for nothing?”

“No. The power is new.” She shook her head, fervently. Her stomach churned. How could she convince him that her abilities had manifested late? That no allegiance that had ever been important to her could have made her turn them on him? “This – it’s all new. That’s the truth—”

“Lies. It was all lies.”

Perry reached out a hand towards him. If only she could return to the moment on the castle wall. Instead of looking to find that dormant ability, if she’d just thrown herself under downward arc of the sword, sacrifice herself to save him, was snuffed out before the talen changed her green eyes to this unnatural violet, then, she would have died loved. “But, it came out all right. Neither of us were hurt.”

Guido pulled his shoulders back. In that moment, he became something more than human too. He became royal: regal and removed. “At least, stab wounds have a chance to heal–betrayal can’t.”

Does you MC have an ally? What could make the trust between them shatter?

GIVE YOUR MC REASONS NOT TO CARE

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DAVID DRAKE
Do you see how joined-up I can be? ;)

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #93

What does your MC most need to know about him/herself? Give him/her 3 reasons not to care…then tear them down

“The human workers are trapped in the open. You can’t tell me you can stand there and watch while they suffer,” said Rose.

Nyne closed his eyes. “I may take a step away from the window. Maybe put my fingers in my ears.”

“Don’t you care about them?" she asked. "But the wolves will rip them apart!”

“That may be the one time they won’t be insisting that whoever made the mess should remember to tidy it up.”

Rose stared at him in bewilderment. “You have to care.”

“There is no care in Cared For–just so much rejection.” Nyne took a step away. “Care costs about £8 an hour and it doesn’t give change.”

“You don’t care?” Rose held out a hand towards him.

“They taught me well,” he said. His breath hissed through his teeth. “I don’t care.”

“There’s no reason to be mean. That’s not fair. You push everyone away.”

Nyne blinked. He dug his fingers into the spaces between the bricks under the window sill. “I don’t mean to be mean - chalk that down to my Forcefield of Sarcasm.”

“Aren’t they like your family?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said angrily and kicking at the wooden skirting board he stepped away from the window and folded his arms. “I’m sure, if that was me out there they’d all care enough to line for the job of standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside me – hell they’d put themselves between me and the terminal trouble.”

Everything in the old cottage fell silent. Rose frowned. She nodded. “I would.”

Nyne let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

What does your MC need to know about him/herself? 

DOES S/HE CARE?

WARRIORS AND ROMANCE, PERFECT FOR 8 SENTENCE SUNDAY

If you are interested in follow this link: WWW

I didn’t sign up for this week because I felt so bad about not getting around to read everyone else’s 8 last week. Sorry. Watford FC won an important game and so celebrating seemed like a good idea. Alcohol bad.

As I'm only a weekend writer of Romance, Darrah is still having trouble with Sark Hale Tarla. In a time long past in our history, a Sarkisian ship is stranded on Earth. Assimilation is at an early stage but it has not proven to be an easy option for either people. Now, Hale has been assigned to Darrah and her arm of men. His role is to smooth over any diplomatic - or worse - problems that might arise in the Outlands, where the Sarkisians were allowed to settle, when they are sent to find the missing human heir to the Thorn Throne, Erishdren. Rogue Sarkisians are thought to have been behind the abduction.

In this piece I have returned to Darrah. She has been facing her friend, Rylo, the Factor -   second-in-command in her Arm of men – since he touched her shoulder to attract her attention. Rylo is worried. Darrah is still frayed and on edge after Hale goaded her into attacking him so he could prove a point: that in single combat, between a Sarkisian and one of her men, it would not be the human who came out the victor. They were both burned by the encounter.

I missed out a small gap where Hale explains his past, and my plot.

“Rylo?”

“With you, Koman.”

Darrah stared beyond her Factor towards the mountains, around the clearing, then down at the ground near her feet.

Rylo brought his bow up and tapped it against the one Darrah held, armed and ready. “Without enemies, you hone your skills on rodents? I feel sorry for the scurries, already.”

“Never could abide creatures that get the first gnaw on my food. I don’t mind the sharing, but tiny tooth marks push me over the edge.”

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #92

What’s your antagonist missing?  What hasn’t he yet seen, figured out or found?  Plant that discovery.

Hale has been working out what he was missing. 

WHAT CAN YOUR MC SEE?

 MAY IS HOSTED BY WRITING TIPS BY WRITERS, Hand in Hand, DONALD MAASS'  TWEETS ON CREATING THE PERFECT NOVEL ;)  and SECTIONS INSPIRED BY THESE:

C.S.E. COONEY - her advice comes in many directions.
Prepare to remove your
head so you can see all the elements. 

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #91

What does your MC see, know or get about people that few others do? Create three demonstrations of that.

“I do see you, Verda."

"You don’t see me, though."

            Tanner stared at her, confused. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to that."

"I wish you could see me," she said. Her voice was hollow, her mouth turned down and aching, her eyes half-closed and veiled to block out the light. "I want you to see me. 
"I tried to force your sight when the sun was eclipsed. 
"Sometimes it’s like you can – could – see me. I catch you staring and your eyes have that glazed look. It almost makes me believe you do see me."

Tanner's back had become rigid with the force of his will. "And what do you think I should see?" he said defensively. He shook his head. "You’re a girl. I’m sure I know how you-all are put together."

"Is this all you see?" Verda shook her head and sent her long plait dancing.

She released her breath with an explosive sigh. "Why am I bothering?”

"No! Yes. Let me try to understand," Tanner said quickly, unaware that he was shaking his head, no longer even trying to meet Verda’s eyes. "If I did see you, what would I see then? Because, if you’re telling me you’re a reworking of the old species I’ve looked enough for me to tell you I’m sure I would have noticed."

"Maybe… not.”

“I think, Yes.”

“But, your eyes can only see a fraction of the light in the world," she whispered. Her hands were clenched so tightly she could feel individual nails piercing her palms. "And, your brain can only process information from the visible light rays.”

"My brain–?"

“Sees the vibrations red through to violet.”

His heart was racing, even though his thoughts were thick like sludge. “Did I complain that you never tell me anything? The pressure - I feel like the pressure in my head is expanding ‘til it’ll explode – I almost want it to – but if it did then I wouldn’t know what you mean."

Verda’s found it hard to speak; she opened her mouth only to close it again. She wanted to run through her calculations and this time recomputed until the data indicate that telling Tanner the truth wasn’t worth the risk. "This is difficult for me," she confessed.

“Not so me,” gasped Tanner. “It’s a skip in the park over here.”

Her hands trembled. The fact that every part of her body was flooded with positive and negative reactions amazed her. It made her careless. “I am more than–“

“Don’t! I don’t care. I am looking at you. Even if I can’t see the all you’re worried about, I love you. Loving you makes me more than I could ever have been…if I hadn’t seen you that morning in the woods. So, we’re even. I want to belong to you. Completely. If you – seeing everything, and more, like you always do – if you want me too.”

CAN YOUR MC SEE MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE AROUND HER?