I was reading Cordelia’s Honor today and since it was a volume that included Shards of Honor and Barrayar, there was not too much stuff to read <g> but I discovered an interesting snippet that Bujold says towards the end, something that I’ve noted before in A Clash of Kings. The passage is reproduced:

[..] I now had in hand a messy first draft of about a hundred pages of narrative, with no chapter breaks, that clearly wasn’t long enough to be a novel. I paused briefly, flirted with a really bad scenario about a convenient alien invasion that would force Barrayar and Beta to ally, decided “Why should I make things easy on my characters?”, and plunged on to the much better and more inherent idea of the Escobar invasion, thus accidentally discovering my first application of the rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask “So what’s the worst possible thing I can do to this guy?” And then do it [..]

It is interesting that authors use negative emotions to drive a positive result. There must be a word for this writing tool which rhymes with sadism, but I’m unable to find it now =) /Me is Adding this to another thing that he must explore. And soon.

For patient readers of Kharke, there is good news and bad. I’ve been thinking of rewriting the story in the vein of George R.R. Martin since it seems so exciting (and pointedly refreshing) to change narrators often, but come what may, I’ve made a promise to myself, Chapter 4 will hit Vysnu before the new year is out. I love you all =)