Coming from academia, I’m no stranger to the twists and turns of the writing process. My current scholarly project has suffered from no shortage of detours. I realized last fall, for example, that my initial concept had been turned on its head. Instead of working on a project about the ritual of the white wedding, using etiquette books as my case study, I realized that what I had on my hands was the exact opposite: a study of etiquette books, using the wedding as my case study (more on that madness can be found here).
I won’t lie — I threw a bit of a tantrum when I reached this happened (there’s nothing like watching a formerly established research plan go up like a puff of smoke to make one incredibly cranky) — but it was clear that I had two choices in front of me. I could go back to the drawing board and redo the project to follow the original path that I had anticipated, or I could be a bit adventurous and try something new. I chose the latter, as it was also the most practical choice (telling my thesis advisor that I needed to throw out 2 years worth of work definitely wasn’t an option), and I haven’t regretted it.
So when Path to the Peacock Throne took an unexpected left turn, I did the only thing that a resigned passenger can do: sit back, buckle up, and brace myself for sudden bumps in the road.
Granted, I’m ultimately the one in charge of my work, but both my scholarly research and my experiences with fiction have taught me that sometimes it’s okay to pursue an unexpected idea, no matter how strange or off-course it might be. In this case, I think my “off-roading” just might pay off.
Path to the Peacock Throne began as the coming of age tale of Liandre Hallivere, the reluctant heir to the throne of Vao Artan. One of the problems I kept running into was trying to figure out the source of her reluctance. I didn’t want to justify it with the explanation of ‘adolescent angst’ or ‘teenage rebellion.’ Either of those could have worked (particularly for a YA audience), but they just felt too worn-out, too tired and lazy. My solution draws on another trope (the “kidnapped princess” trope), but I actually think it’s fitting for a tale based on Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces” arc. The current plot, then, looks something like this:
