GDC Chapter 2
This chapter is where Scamp crosses from the natural life he has known into the supernatural—or at least when he receives the opportunity or call to do so. One of the keys to great stories is having proactive characters, especially the protagonist. Readers quickly lose patience with characters who simply allow themselves to be beaten on by the world. We don’t have great tolerance for willing victims. Great characters are larger than life, which doesn’t necessarily mean larger and more capable than the challenges that beset them. It does mean that when the supernatural presents itself, they consciously take some action to transgress that line of the mundane. Great characters always want something powerfully enough to act in order to get it.
In this chapter, Scamp confronts a world he knows only in theory and a child’s memory—the world of war and death, but also a world where people control their own destinies, so very different from the fearful refugees of Tarban. Metaphorically, what he sees is less a dragon and dragonslayers than the complexity of adulthood, where for better or worse people are acting and enduring the consequences of their actions. He is then forced to chose: will he act in a way far more daring than anything he’s ever done, or will he retreat to things the way they were? It is his response to this sudden expansion of the possible that determines whether he will be heroic or not. Will his fear and doubt cause him to leave the chest behind and forsake hope for greater influence on his fate and that of his family, or will he risk danger and the unknown to grasp greater claim on shaping destiny? Where chapter one was mostly about getting readers to identify with and like Scamp, this chapter is the moment of decision. From here on out, Scamp is involved in something that means there really is no going back. And what better way to introduce such an expansion of possibility—and the precipice of choice—than to confront a boy with dragons!
Pg 14, paragraphs 2-3: The Bristly Briar. This great knot of steelstring is metaphorical of all puzzles or particularly perplexing challenges in life. In these things that are for others a hopeless tangle, Scamp finds fascination and even refuge. He is at heart a problem solver. His defining characteristic is his curiosity and the creativity that this engenders. This allows him to come up with odd solutions to problems that others cannot solve—just as he can navigate this tangled steelstring that catches others like a net. From the very beginning of the story, Scamp is not confined by the same boxes or limits that other characters in the book are. This more than anything else makes him the hero of the story.
Pg 15, paragraph 3: Another example of Scamp’s self awareness, as we find him telling himself how he feels: “—not sad, of course—” Naturally, he is sad, as he is whenever his big brother fails to come to his aid. The very fact that he’s telling himself how he feels shows his vulnerability and that he is acting in an attempt to change those emotions. I hope this makes him genuine and vulnerable, despite his profession at the end of the paragraph.
Pg 15, paragraph 4: The first line of this paragraph was the last line of my original first chapter. That isn’t the only substantial revision in this area. In the draft I originally sent Mirrorstone, this one paragraph was about a page and a half of material. This moment of supernatural change, where Scamp is confronted with the beginning of his journey in the form of a falling dragon corpse, was much more drawn out and intense. Don’t you mean verbose. Excuse me, have you been listening to our previous exchanges? I’m Hemmingway (except for his misogynistic minimist aspects—yes, I realize that doesn’t leave all that much) to your Henry James (sans the talent). And for a supposed wordsmith, you are remarkably free with those false syllogisms. Your expression is more slipshod than mine, thus you are Earnest Hemmingway. And everything that is fluffy and soft is Tanis Half-Elven’s beard. Anyway, this is one area of the book where the final product got substantially shorter and simpler, for better or worse.
Pg 17, paragraph 5, last line: ” Scamp suddenly felt that this wonderful creature, born to soar, had been nailed to the dirt.” This page and the next is the largest section of description in the book. I believe I get away with this because the description is in Scamp’s voice and reveals his character. We watch in time with the boy as his awe increases then realization sets in. This last line takes the majestic perception already established and moves it into ruination, which casts the green dragon’s death as tragic. That unusual sentiment—admiration and even pity for a green dragon—was essential to the theme of this story. It warns the reader to be aware that the story isn’t going to allow them their assumptions about the characters and events in this story. It challenges them, in a simple, child-friendly way, to examine how right and wrong, heroism and villainy, actually work. The simple sadness of this line, in particular, and how it plays against stereotype, makes it one of my favorite in the book.
Pg 18, paragraphs 1-4: Children cannot know what it is like to be an adult, so they imagine. Inevitably, the imagine an existence just like childhood only far more wondrous, where you get to do what you want when you want. As a boy, Scamp could no more understand the reality of a dragon than he could being adult, but having commenced his journey we now find a symbol of what awaits him—the dragon’s corpse. It represents all the unhappy realities that the imagination fails to see. Being an adult doesn’t mean possessing absolute control of your life any more than being a dragon makes you immortal. Here Scamp receives his first tangible warning that growing up is going to keep getting tougher, and being grown up won’t be any different.
Pg 18-19, last paragraph to paragraph 2: Giving a character’s thoughts as they happen, even in third person, reveals character and emotion perhaps better than any other tactic. Here we get a number of emotions on Scamp’s part, some contradictory, such as his oppositional suspicion and respect for the dragon. We see him trying to work out the problem, considering options, and get information on how he feels about these options, such as his brother and neighbors. No storytelling tactic is more intimate than sharing the point of view character’s thoughts, which is the single greatest strength of written story. Oral and visual storytelling forms each have their strengths, some of which outstrip the written word. But nothing gets you closer to a character than written story, which shares the words they keep in their very heads and hearts.
Pg 19, paragraph 5: Here again I attempt to upturn the assumptions of how things work in the Dragonlance realm. Where Scamp feels admiration and awe when he first sees the green dragon, he feels fear at the appearance of the Bronze. In a world where things are simple and static, and good and evil are inherent traits unaffected by agency, such things cannot happen. Much of life is a given. I wanted my story to incorporate the milieu and be true to the realm while challenging some of its basic assumptions. I wanted to emphasize that the power to chose who and what we become is really the greatest power in life, even in a fantasy realm of magic and spell-granting gods.
Pg 21, paragraph 3: Artifacts made of dragon flesh, bone, saliva, scales, claws, and just about every other bit of the beast are one of the oldest and most established tropes in story. A number of cultures even have stories about pieces of dragons and dragon-gods being used to make the world. My intent here was not to play upon the notion of mystical power of such an artifact—the slayers’ dragonarmor—but rather to point out the barbarity of such. Good or evil, dragons are frequently portrayed as sentient beings, often with understanding far more mature and sophisticated than that of mortal races. Dragonlance embraces this understanding of the dragon. To wear pieces of such a creature is like taking scalps or other body parts as trophies. Anyone who would wear such a relic is clearly base, callous to the point of being less human than the dragon from whom the skin was taken. Such is the case with these dragonslayers, who have let their grief turn to hatred and desire for revenge, which has turned cancerous and stolen their humanity. There are now just as evil and merciless as the creatures they hunt, as will be established as the story goes on.
Pg 21, paragraph 5-6: Here again we see Scamp’s self-possession and his exercise of forethought. We also see that children of war are not children in a pure sense. If childhood is innocence, then it can be stolen by things other than the passing of years: violence, cruelty, indifference, famine, and many other hardships can wear away that simple shine on a person that is their childhood. Scamp’s creativity, curiosity, and persistent optimism show there is much that’s childlike in him still, and will likely be even in his adulthood—but we see that even as resolute a character as Scamp doesn’t escape the influence of war without losing a little of his shine to cautious wisdom.
Pg 22, paragraph 3, lines 3-5: “…he prayed to any god—new or old—that he would not be found.” This passage is a fine documentation of the unique cosmological flux brought to Krynn during the War of the Lance and the years directly following. After the godless years following the Cataclysm, when either men abandoned the gods or the dieties abandoned mortals, depending on whom you ask, a powerful skepticism of spirit had entrenched itself among the mortal races of the world. Those few who rejected agnosticism or atheism tended to turn to primal forces of nature or bald superstition for cosmological meaning, which made many easy pray to unscrupulous hedge-wizards and the like. With the return of the gods during the War of the Lance and their overt assertion of influence on world events, mortals faced a dramatic evolution of faith and thought. Within a single generation the world went from a godless abandoned realm to the central battleground and prize in a divine war for mortal souls. Those who lived during this time of turmoil found it excessively difficult to determine which of the many theological paradigms were real (to an even greater extent than is normally the case). Scamp’s prayer to any god that would listen and act, old or new, is illustrative of the profound confusion and conflict of belief typical of these years of spiritual transition.
Pg 24, paragraph 3 to the end of the chapter: Here is where Scamp makes his choice to cross into the supernatural—to accept his hero’s journey. Prior to this point he’s been an observer, had a glimpse of the wider, wilder world that is out there, but hasn’t crossed into it. He could have walked away, hidden in his bed, and that would have been the end. But he doesn’t. No protagonist ever reaches their heroic potential without proactively choosing to accept the challenge of adventure. Scamp does this for a number of reasons: his desire to help his parents; his need to prove himself to his older brother; his longing to escape the war-torn conditions of his life, perhaps to retrieve the innocence experience has taken; and, of course, pure unadulterated curiosity. These are all desires and characteristics of this boy that make him different and distinctive, in that he feels powerfully enough to do what others wouldn’t—to dive back into the fire when a large part of him doesn’t want to. From this moment on, there is no going back. Scamp’s hero’s journey has begun.