I like to write. Writing like this--blogging--is a type of talking, which I enjoy doing but feel too guilty about talking over someone when they try to say something to run on to a live audience the way I do in writing. But I also like to write stories, because I like stories. Stories are a large segment of my life. At least a quarter of any given obsession of mine is story-based. My main problem in writing stories, though, is a lack of sadism. Sadism is absolutely essential to a good plotter. A skilled author must be able to frame her hero for treason, with his sister being killed in the event he's accused of setting up and his brother believing the charges; convince the girl he'll marry* in the fourth book that he's a cad and a rogue whom she fears and despises; kill off one of my favorite characters in the first book, although I admit her death was necessary because her fiancee had to marry the woman the histories say he did;** have his brother nearly kill him; have his brother nurse him back to life, which, had you asked him at the time, was worse; have him covertly fighting a man everyone thinks is an angel and thinks he should follow*** who eventually almost gets him killed twice; force him to sacrifice the illegitimate son he was well on the way to adoring in order to take down the aforementioned fallen angel, leaving him to raise the illegitimate son of said enemy; have him learn he's illegitimate****; have him learn he's legitimate but his older brother isn't.....this series is really hard on its hero.
*One of those depressing "convenient" marriages in which there is mutual love, but neither party knows it's mutual, etc. etc. etc. I hate these, but I adore Lymond and Philippa and endure it with them. It took them ten damn years to work everything out though.
**I love her anyway. A wonderful character. The first female/love interest (not really, in Christian's case) to die.^
^Christian Stewart; Oonagh O'Dwyer (books two, three, and four); Joleta Reid Malett (safer to say "opposite female role" than "love interest". Remember Indy's Austrian slut in Last Crusade? Yeah); Kiaya Khatun/Guzel (mainly A Ringed Castle, number five); and lastly, Philippa, who shouldn't be on this list because she survived the last book but I couldn't resist ending with her.
***Lymond isn't very susceptible to peer pressure.
****Somewhat incestuously so.
Game of Kings
Queen's Play
The Disorderly Knights
Pawn in Frankincense
The Ringed Castle
Checkmate
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