I promised something special and exclusive to the newsletter this week, and I'm here to deliver. I have unearthed, for your enjoyment, something that no one-- not my agent, not my editor, no one-- has read before: an alternate beginning to Carve the Mark!
Carve the Mark is a story I've written again and again, in about twenty different ways. That's not an exaggeration. It's been high fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, and a weird combination of all three. It's started in the middle and flashed back. It's gone through versions that completely omitted one of the main characters (Cyra). But I kept coming back to the idea of Akos, taken from his family when he was young, raised among his enemies.
A few things about this version:
-- In Carve the Mark, there are people who speak the Shotet language without ever having learned it. The Shotet people consider those people to belong to them, rather than wherever they were born. In this early version, it's a physical mark that signifies belonging, rather than language. Akos is born with that mark on his throat. He is therefore targeted and hunted from a young age, instead of being discovered later.
-- I hadn't figured out the languages yet, so all the names and places are different. Thuvhe is "Zold," etc. I'll talk more about that later!
-- You can either go through all the images (you'll probably have to click them to read the text) and then return for my commentary on each one, or read an image, then commentary, image, then commentary. It's up to you!
In this version, I hadn't yet developed the two languages for Shotet and Thuvhe, because I knew that would be time consuming, and I wanted to get the story figured out first. I was working for an Eastern European vibe-- the previous versions of the story had some elements of Polish folklore (Baba Yaga, kwiat paproci or the fern flower), since my mother is Polish. But I also wanted the language to feel unfamiliar, so I wouldn't unconsciously create a fantasy version of a culture, which wasn't what I was setting out to do. I wanted to make something unlike what we can see on Earth-- if not something completely invented (because I'm not sure that's entirely possible), then something that clashed with our expectations.
My placeholder language, therefore, was Hungarian. My husband and I lived in northwest Romania for five months after we got married, where the border between Romania and Hungary has not always been in the same place, so we made friends with a lot of Hungarian people there. Their language was like music to me, but also unrelated to anything I had ever heard before-- which is because it isn't! Hungarian isn't a Romance language, nor is it Slavic, or Germanic. It's basically alone on its own little language island. In other words: it was perfect as a temporary fix to my language problem.
As an example: the word "Shotet," one of the only Hungarian-based words I kept in the final draft, is based on the Hungarian word sötét, which means, among other things, "murky." From Akos's perspective, that's exactly what the Shotet are-- a people he understands only through legends and stories, a place he sees only through the eyes of the enemy.
Another difference: the fates used to be common knowledge, making Akos and his siblings a constant target for people who wanted to hurt them. This worked well when the beginning spent a lot of time in Akos's childhood, creating a sense of looming danger. But when I decided to improve the pace as much as I could, I lost a lot of Akos's childhood, and my priorities for the fates changed.
How did I get this far without talking about how Akos's sections used to be written in first person?! In the beginning of the story, that worked for him, but the farther along the story got, the stranger it felt. It was like listening to someone tell a story that had happened to someone else-- he got the facts right, but the emotion was missing. And when I thought about his currentgift-- pushing other currentgifts away-- and how he holds people at a distance, third person just made more sense for him.
I've heard people say that first person is easier than third person, but writers, if you're listening, I don't think that's the case at all. First person might feel easier at first, helping you get into the character's head and just presenting things as they happen. But first person quickly becomes restrictive as you try to reveal things that the character can't see or understand. So if you get stuck while writing, POV is something you should consider-- maybe that's something you can change up, to get yourself unstuck. (It's worth trying for a few pages, anyway.)
My mom peels apples the way Akos's mom peels saltfruit-- with a knife, in a spiral going all the way around the fruit from top to base.
…poor Akos.
I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed sharing with you!