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Making some headway
Just some progress report. Behind he tag so that those not interested in Gondor trivia can skip it entirely.
The Shoemaker's Daughter is starting to take shape. I've written 6 pages of the first chapter. But it's a slow process. So far, I managed to give the reader a crash course on Halabor's history (1.5 pages), a summary of the life of Henderch the Brave (almost 2 pages), a description of the town's northern gate (0.5 page), a description of young Lord Herumor, the son of the town's ruler (0.5 page), and actually managed to write some dialogue between the two original characters above.
It's an incredibly research-heavy project. I practically have to create a fishing town from the scratch, with all the peoples and buildings and history and visuals and stuff. To be honest, I enjoy it greatly, and I also have a model after which I build my little town: the medieval village of Yvoire in France. A place I actually had been fortunate to visit, if only for a few hours.
But, of course, a model is just a beginning. Fortunately, Yvoire has a very good homepage, with lots of photos and a map and a listing of traditional food and trades and stuff like that. But it's still just an inspiration.
This story is part of my Sons of Gondor series, where stories like Cold Comfort, Face of the Enemy, Exercise of Vital Powers belong. And, first and foremost, Shadows of the Past, of course. This is the prequel and/or sequel to that, as it tells the tale of about two and a half decades of Angharad's life. So, this is actually the story of a daughter of Gondor. *g*
I started to research for the Sons of Gondor series almost a year ago. The data piles are growing and growing. Aside from researching Tolkien-related facts, I also had to do research on medieval clothing, medieval architecture, medieval cookery, medieval weapons and armoury, and, and, and.
As I said, I enjoy the geeky research work very much. Most of the time, anyway. Although tonight I got a little riled up while studying all the fish that are supposed to live in the waters of Yvoire... I mean, Halabor. All I know about fish is that sahrks are creepy and goldfish are red. And the names don't say me a thing anyway; will have to look up in a big, fat dictionary what sort of creatures they might be.
If I found them, of course. The site is originally in French, and the Google translations are hilarious. *g* But this is a damn fishing town, where people life from the fish, and I'll have twelve years worth of story before it gets destroyed, so I can't very well avoid to mention the slippery beasts entirely.
Erm... yes. No more fish for me today. Let's talk about people. The townsfolk - the common crowd - are not Dúnedain at all. Like the peoples of Lossarnach, they are the pre-Númenórean bunch: shorter, swarthier, broader and much simpler people. Yeah, I like them - what can I do? They grow on you after a while.
So, I gave them some simple beliefs - they have two major deities, Rollo, the God of War and Nurria, the Goddes of the Pastures, and probably lots of superstitious things, too, but I still haven't figured out that part. Touching religion in a LOTR-related fic is always a delicate matter. I'm still not sure if I really want to make Rollo the God of War. Maybe I should simply make him the God of Fire. That'd be better. These deities don't get actively worshipped. They are simply supposed to protect the gates and the livestock and help people in general.
They also supposed to have different names. Baring any linguistic skills myself, I simply went for the sound of it and made up names without any meaning. Sometimes I use bastardised versions of the names from The Prydain Chronicles, or other, non-related sources. Heck, I even used the name of Worf's father, Mogh, for a Dunlending. It sounds so... well, so Dunlandish for me. *g*
Anyway, I'm still figuring out who the people living in this town actually are. So far, I have a list of 20 characters, with short biographies. There are supposed to live 650-700 people. I certainly don't intend to list all of them, but I'll need more. In the first couple of chapters there will be nobody else than OCs, interacting with each other, so I'll have to make it at least interesting.
Then there have to be people in the garrison of Cair Andros. And, since one chapter will take place in Osgiliath, the soldiers of that garrison. I already have a short list of Boromir's officers and other people there, but that's really, really short, so far. Well, at least they have a little personal background.
I decided to have my people use the month and day names of the Shire/Bree calendar... well, the more archaic form of them. Not an ideal solution, but I can always lie through my teeth and say they took it over from the Rohirrim, right?
So. There we are, right now. The next step will be to take the map of Yvoire (damn small size, I tell you) and try to place the most important buildings of Halabor on it. So that I know where my characters go when they move around their town.
I realize that it was probably more than anyone ever wanted to know. But I needed to correlate the data a little. I began to get lost in all that information.
The Shoemaker's Daughter is starting to take shape. I've written 6 pages of the first chapter. But it's a slow process. So far, I managed to give the reader a crash course on Halabor's history (1.5 pages), a summary of the life of Henderch the Brave (almost 2 pages), a description of the town's northern gate (0.5 page), a description of young Lord Herumor, the son of the town's ruler (0.5 page), and actually managed to write some dialogue between the two original characters above.
It's an incredibly research-heavy project. I practically have to create a fishing town from the scratch, with all the peoples and buildings and history and visuals and stuff. To be honest, I enjoy it greatly, and I also have a model after which I build my little town: the medieval village of Yvoire in France. A place I actually had been fortunate to visit, if only for a few hours.
But, of course, a model is just a beginning. Fortunately, Yvoire has a very good homepage, with lots of photos and a map and a listing of traditional food and trades and stuff like that. But it's still just an inspiration.
This story is part of my Sons of Gondor series, where stories like Cold Comfort, Face of the Enemy, Exercise of Vital Powers belong. And, first and foremost, Shadows of the Past, of course. This is the prequel and/or sequel to that, as it tells the tale of about two and a half decades of Angharad's life. So, this is actually the story of a daughter of Gondor. *g*
I started to research for the Sons of Gondor series almost a year ago. The data piles are growing and growing. Aside from researching Tolkien-related facts, I also had to do research on medieval clothing, medieval architecture, medieval cookery, medieval weapons and armoury, and, and, and.
As I said, I enjoy the geeky research work very much. Most of the time, anyway. Although tonight I got a little riled up while studying all the fish that are supposed to live in the waters of Yvoire... I mean, Halabor. All I know about fish is that sahrks are creepy and goldfish are red. And the names don't say me a thing anyway; will have to look up in a big, fat dictionary what sort of creatures they might be.
If I found them, of course. The site is originally in French, and the Google translations are hilarious. *g* But this is a damn fishing town, where people life from the fish, and I'll have twelve years worth of story before it gets destroyed, so I can't very well avoid to mention the slippery beasts entirely.
Erm... yes. No more fish for me today. Let's talk about people. The townsfolk - the common crowd - are not Dúnedain at all. Like the peoples of Lossarnach, they are the pre-Númenórean bunch: shorter, swarthier, broader and much simpler people. Yeah, I like them - what can I do? They grow on you after a while.
So, I gave them some simple beliefs - they have two major deities, Rollo, the God of War and Nurria, the Goddes of the Pastures, and probably lots of superstitious things, too, but I still haven't figured out that part. Touching religion in a LOTR-related fic is always a delicate matter. I'm still not sure if I really want to make Rollo the God of War. Maybe I should simply make him the God of Fire. That'd be better. These deities don't get actively worshipped. They are simply supposed to protect the gates and the livestock and help people in general.
They also supposed to have different names. Baring any linguistic skills myself, I simply went for the sound of it and made up names without any meaning. Sometimes I use bastardised versions of the names from The Prydain Chronicles, or other, non-related sources. Heck, I even used the name of Worf's father, Mogh, for a Dunlending. It sounds so... well, so Dunlandish for me. *g*
Anyway, I'm still figuring out who the people living in this town actually are. So far, I have a list of 20 characters, with short biographies. There are supposed to live 650-700 people. I certainly don't intend to list all of them, but I'll need more. In the first couple of chapters there will be nobody else than OCs, interacting with each other, so I'll have to make it at least interesting.
Then there have to be people in the garrison of Cair Andros. And, since one chapter will take place in Osgiliath, the soldiers of that garrison. I already have a short list of Boromir's officers and other people there, but that's really, really short, so far. Well, at least they have a little personal background.
I decided to have my people use the month and day names of the Shire/Bree calendar... well, the more archaic form of them. Not an ideal solution, but I can always lie through my teeth and say they took it over from the Rohirrim, right?
So. There we are, right now. The next step will be to take the map of Yvoire (damn small size, I tell you) and try to place the most important buildings of Halabor on it. So that I know where my characters go when they move around their town.
I realize that it was probably more than anyone ever wanted to know. But I needed to correlate the data a little. I began to get lost in all that information.
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Then I need to make thoughts about the tavern - what it looked like, etc. The old woman who runs it will be modelled after my Granny who was an incredible cook - and a formidable personality, and I've never written her into a story before. She was a force of nature, aven at the age of 96, so I guess someone like her would be able to handle all those soldiers and merchants.
Thank you for the mule idea, BTW! Seems how much I know about these things, it never occurred to me.
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I can't wait to read about the lady who runs the tavern, what a nice tribute to your Gran! I bet she'd help you with all the details of your village if she could.
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I daresay your Granny doesn't mind that the tavern-keeping was on the other side of the family, she's probably pleased to remembered in this fashion!
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Granny was Hungarian. She had seven siblings. Her father was the shoemaker. People were rather astonished when Grandpa married her - it wasn't considered a sensible match, but they actually worked very well together, even though the rich German in-laws gave Granny much grief at first. They should have been glad to have some fresh blood in the family after generations of inbreedig...
I didn't know my other grandparents, but the my father's mother was Rumanian. They used to have their own small piece of land and grew vegetables, I think.
Such mixed families were common in Transylvania, where various nationalities lived together.
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Actually, mixed heritage is common here too with all the imigrants.
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People are afraid of those different to them, and that fear leads to hatred, not healthy curiosity as it should.
One of the prominant original members of the Waler Horse Society happens to be aboriginal. When her name came up for life membership it is surprising how many people who claimed to be her friends objected on the basis of her race!
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