The Seventh Moon's Rise: Chapter One Reflection

Nov 28, 2022

[This article will be looking over Chapter One of The Seventh Moon’s Rise, link HERE]

Oh boy. I feel like I have a lot to say about this one, though it can probably be broken down into a few simple criticisms.

For any new or first-time readers, The Seventh Moon’s Rise is a book I wrote when I was around fourteen to fifteen for a high school competition. I never ended up pursuing publishing with the thing, and now have been using it as a sort of educational and reflective experience for us here on Author’s Notes.

I don’t hate this chapter, but I really don’t like it. Let’s get into why.

The Names

I’ll start off with a small criticism, but an important one that deserved to be touched on more. I really don’t like my choice of names for these characters, especially our protagonists. Given all the naming conventions in the entire world that I could choose, for my fantasy wolf war story, I chose… Orchidhart, Kristofir, and Oscar.

These names are serviceable, don’t get me wrong, but they really REALLY don’t scream fantasy to me. Orchidhart at best feels like a fantastical last name, maybe, but Oscar and Kristofir? Of which, Kristofir was part blatant tree pun?

Names are a very important part of a story. They aren’t the end-all-be-all of a narrative, but a good name can really enhance a story and immerse the reader in the world. None of these names do that. They feel disjointed and strange. Some wolves have normal people names, others have two-part names, and others have gibberish names. It doesn’t come off as there being a variety of name origins in this world — it comes off as sloppy.

I think I’ve been much more cognizant of this in future stories, in part because of how disjointed the names were here, though I did struggle with it for a bit longer. I have a very distinct memory of going to a writer’s forum at one point in the development of People of the Anthill and explaining that I had the perfect name for one of my characters, but my protagonist’s name just didn’t sound right. The name I liked was Abigail Pilots. The name I didn’t like was, if I remember correctly, something in the range of Jessica or Jennifer.

On their own, Jessica and Jennifer are wonderful names and I have nothing against them. However, “Abigail Pilots” represented the linguistic ideal of how I wanted these names to sound — slightly vintage, as would be the nature of a stagnated Americana culture post nuclear fallout. Jessica was just far too modern for anything like that.

In the end I was pointed to a site called nameberry.com (#NotSponsored), where I was able to input Abigail’s name and get a list of names with similar vibes. It was partially through this, and partially through the existence of the famous pilot, Amelia Earhart, that our protagonist got her name — Emilia O’Hearne.

Emilia’s name being a reference to a pilot, and Abigail’s last name being Pilots, the names felt like they fit together. Though I liked Amelia better, I did change it to Emilia to avoid two protagonists having names that started with the same vowel. Having two important characters with the same letter starting their name is far from taboo, but I do try to avoid it when possible so at a glance the names and the feelings of the names aloud aren’t similar enough to confuse.

The Cardinal Directive has two characters with names that are almost anagrams of each other — Sloan and Solena Reyes, which was (if you can believe it), not intentional. Solena had been with us since the start of the story and Sloan came in later, but even searching far and wide for names like Sloan, I couldn’t find anything that carried the same gravity that “Sloan” did for that character.

My solution was a simple one. In most scenes where they are pictured together, Sloan uses Solena’s last name, Reyes, while Solena refers to Sloan as (the) Outrider.

Names are incredibly important to the way you tell your story. I highly recommend taking the time to choose them wisely, purposefully, and all together. The name should fit not only the spirit of the character, but the spirit of the story you’re trying to tell. It won’t kill your narrative if you don’t, but you’ll find that it can enhance it quite a bit to have names that feel appropriate for your setting and genre.

The Paragraphs

So, I left the paragraphs as they were for this one — in part because I discovered the issues with the document not being updated and didn’t have time, and in part so I could talk about it here.

The length of most paragraphs in this chapter isn’t egregious, but it is longer than I’m generally comfortable with now that I’ve developed more of my own style and know more about how to direct a reader’s “vision”.

Honestly, this deserves its own breakdown article, but the basics of how you break up paragraphs revolve around pacing, dialogue, and directing your reader’s understanding of a scene.

Here are some reasons to break up a paragraph. This list is not extensive:

You’re introducing a new idea
Pacing
You’re “panning” from one character to another
Someone else is speaking
You want a line to stand alone for additional impact
You’re switching perspectives from one character to another
A new action is occuring separate from the previous actions/interactions

For example, let’s take one of the paragraphs from Chapter One and talk about how I would break it up and why.

He was petrified, not knowing what the she-wolf had just done. But then, before his eyes, Orchid’s markings flickered back on, faint at first, but glowing brighter with every second. And then, her eyes slowly opened. Kristofir’s ears perked and he turned to ask the stranger what she had done… but when he whipped his head around, water flying from his coat, she was gone. He gave a pause, but a pained groan sounded from Orchid, and his attention returned to her immediately. He was startled to see that something about her was wrong. Her markings. They had been blue before, right? Her eyes, they were still the same light blue from before, but her markings… Her markings were purple, like the stranger’s. He shook his head. He wouldn’t tell her. She was obviously too disoriented to notice it yet, and he was worried all the shock would be a little too much. He kept his mouth shut.

Okay. Kristo has just seen his best friend get struck by lightning, then brought back to life by a stranger, who quickly vanishes. Orchid comes back a little strange, but it’s nothing he’ll tell her immediately. There are some grammatical changes that I would’ve made to this section as well, but for the sake of today’s article, we’ll be focusing purely on the spacing of the paragraph. Here’s how I would break it up nowadays:

He was petrified, not knowing what the she-wolf had just done.
But then, before his eyes, Orchid’s markings flickered back on, faint at first, but glowing brighter with every second. And then, her eyes slowly opened.
Kristofir’s ears perked and he turned to ask the stranger what she had done… but when he whipped his head around, water flying from his coat, she was gone. He gave a pause, but a pained groan sounded from Orchid, and his attention returned to her immediately.
He was startled to see that something about her was wrong. Her markings. They had been blue before, right? Her eyes, they were still the same light blue from before, but her markings…
Her markings were purple, like the stranger’s.
He shook his head. He wouldn’t tell her. She was obviously too disoriented to notice it yet, and he was worried all the shock would be a little too much. He kept his mouth shut.

The first paragraph break is there for pacing reasons. Kristo is shocked and scared by everything that’s just happened in such a short window, and the audience should feel the same pause he does. We do this by letting the line stand on its own, putting artificial space between this section of the narrative and the rest.
The second break is there because we switch from what he’s seeing (Orchid, returning from death), to what he’s doing (ears perking, looking around). This is the metaphorical panning of the camera between the two characters.
The third paragraph break is the same in reverse. We’ve just seen what Kristo is doing, and now are panning back to what he sees is happening to Orchid.
The fourth break is there for the same reason as the first. Kristo has just realized something very strange, and very important. So, we allow this line to stand on its own — “Her markings were purple, like the stranger’s.” Its solitary space points the reader to how important this is, demanding that they pay attention to this line and its significance for the rest of the story to come.
The next break happens as Kristofir, processing this information, snaps back to himself and decides not to tell Orchid immediately. We switch from experiencing his thoughts to watching the actions and effects his realization have caused.

This is far from an extensive breakdown on paragraphs, but I hope it has helped demystify some of the process that goes into breaking up paragraphs and helps you do the same in your own writing.

The Pacing

Like a lot of things in this book, it’s… sloppy. I understand where I was going with my ideas, but I do strongly feel that there are better ways to accomplish what I wanted now that I’m a better writer.

We kicked off chapter one with an introduction to Orchid, and then the story of the winged wolves, therein providing a significant amount of foreshadowing for later events in the story. What bothers me about this starting scene really comes down to two things:

It’s an info-dump. It’s framed as a story within a story, which makes things easier, but it’s still an info-dump. The older storyteller wolf is directly acting as my conduit for history in this scene.
I feel like we could’ve gotten a lot more mileage out of seeing something related to these disgraced winged wolves and their return before hearing this backstory about what the winged wolves did and why they are back now. Maybe Orchid could have seen waterlight warriors returning from battle, battered but having held off the invading forces for now. Maybe this story could have taken place in an elder’s den rather than the pup den, and we could have gotten the story in response to some of the old battle wounds and scars they bore.
The purpose of this scene was to show how young the wolves are when it’s first engrained into them that the winged wolves are bad, which is important to the rest of the story, but it could have been done in a more organic way.
The scene feels almost like a video game cutscene. Orchid starts with sitting at the entrance to the den, goes within, the story is told, and then she returns right back to where she started. I know exactly why this happened, though I really can’t say why I didn’t change it.
This happened because this was a section of the story that wasn’t in the original draft. Originally, Orchid was just sitting at the entrance to the den and Kristo came up to her immediately, but I wanted to take the time to explain everything with the winged wolves, so I inserted that whole scene inbetween those interactions.
What bothers me the most about this is that it’s an incredibly simple fix! Either Orchid doesn’t start at the entrance to the den, or she ends up somewhere OTHER than the entrance of the den! That’s all it’d take to have fixed that, but I guess I really wanted things to happen that way, so I left it in.

This was almost definitely caused by an old practice of mine where I’d put my inciting incident right in the first chapter. It was great for kicking things into high gear immediately, but my ability to expand on characters and settings before everything went crazy was severely limited.

If I were to write this all over again, we likely wouldn’t have seen Orchidhart’s deathly experience for a few chapters at least as we got to know both her, Kristofir, and the setting. It would’ve given me far more time to expand on who the wolves are fighting and why without having to give the story at the top of the chapter.

It also would’ve been nice to have met and interacted more with some of the wolves in Breeze Pack, adding impact to the scene where they are being overrun.

The harsh truth is that it’s hard to care about Orchid’s death experience as much as Kristo does because we barely even know her. This experience doesn’t resonate because we haven’t seen enough of her or their interactions to feel like much was lost — and the same goes for the wolves of Breeze Pack. Putting a face to that carnage and what was lost would’ve served the story far more than it does in the current version.

Along with this, this chapter is split into several locations trying to set up way too much in too short a timespan. Giving myself more time to expand on any of these three groups (Storm Pack, Breeze Pack, or the disgraced winged wolves) could’ve been instrumental to making this story work.

As it stands, this chapter moves far too quickly, and honestly acts as a secondary, much longer prologue when viewed within the scope of the entire book — not as a chapter one. It’s not horrible, but it committed several writing sins in how it was structured and paced, and the story struggled because of it.

The Premise.

And finally, let’s get into the actual content of the story.

There’s a lot going on here. For the purposes of our story, I decided to focus on one of the packs in particular, the Storm Pack, which consists of wolves called Waterlights. Waterlights got their name from their unique markings, which are traditionally gained when a waterlight pup enters the river running through their territory for the first time. These markings match the color of their eyes, unless outside forces dictate otherwise.

Though it was never said, the canonical explaination in my mind for this was that this story takes place after a world-ending apocalypse, and the markings are caused by radioactive material in the water that is absorbed into their fur. The patterns formed therein were a result of the particles moving in the current.

In any case, tradition dictates that while a waterlight can technically get their markings from any water source, they specifically get their markings from this river. This was an important milestone for a waterlight pup, because it marked the beginning of their transition into responsibility and freedom.

Waterlights are the biggest, fastest growing wolves in this story. They’re considered ready to join the adults at three weeks of age, by which time they are the size of the average wolf in our world.

The premise of this chapter is that Orchidhart thinks it’s going to rain and is impatient about getting her markings. She doesn’t want rain to cancel her ceremony.

…but then she ropes her friend into stealing food, to prove that they can, knowing that if they get caught it’ll delay their ceremony. Which they do, and it does.

They’re caught, their graduation to full members of the pack is delayed by a week, which is a big deal for an animal that’s only three weeks old. So, she and Kristo opt to get their markings anyway. Or, rather, Orchid does, and Kristo won’t let her go alone.

They go by themselves to the river, Orchid gets struck by lightning, and then brought back to life by Irshka, one of the invader wolves, who then promptly disappears.

This chapter did an alright job of setting up their roles in relation to each other, but the entire premise of why things happened the way they did was flawed and rushed. If Orchid was impatient about her marking ceremony, why would she do something she knew would postpone it?

I think a more effective showcase of both these characters and execution of this premise would’ve been that Kristofir was the one worried about the rain and a ceremony delay, while Orchid was flippant. Orchid does something that gets them both in trouble, and then breaks the rules again to try and get Kristofir his markings on time to make it up to him.

And herein lies the crux of the issue: the premise of this chapter just wasn’t well executed.

As explored in the prologue, the leaders of the packs had enacted part of a prophecy in order to keep the invading wolves from winning. This prophecy went awry though, as Orchid was born at the same time as the prophecy pup. To rectify this, Arrow, the quasi-saint/goddess of these wolves, sent lightning to kill Orchid and preserve the prophecy. However, the invading wolves were able to bring her back to life, and were assured that this would somehow block Arrow from being able to interfere with Orchidhart’s life any further.

This is the creation of the wedge that will be driven between Orchidhart and Oscar in future chapters. Oscar is the chosen, and Orchid is his foil, the anti-chosen as it were.

To do that, I needed Orchid to end up in a situation where she would be killed, and I needed it to be far enough away that she was largely alone and the existence of this strange wolf that had saved her life would also be largely unknown. I wanted it to happen as she gained her markings, causing them to turn a different color than they should’ve been.

The way I decided to do this was to get the two in trouble, but the trouble they got themselves into was very forced. They had no good reason to steal food, and they really didn’t need to be in trouble in the first place.

The more you question the premise, the more it falls apart. Why did they steal food? Why were they so worried about their ceremony being postponed? Would a day or two of waiting have killed them? Was Orchid driven by some influence from Arrow to break this rule so Arrow could smite her and keep the prophecy intact? Why in the world did anything in this chapter happen the way it did?

Orchid in this chapter just makes decisions that make no sense and have no valid reasons or explanations.

What I’d Do Differently

Here’s my pitch for a revised chapter one.

Break it up into 2-4 chapters instead of one. Give myself lots of time to set up how this pack and its culture works. Give insights into Breeze Pack’s leaders and structures too, as well as what Oscar is going over there while all this is going on. Make a point of how Storm Pack is the best defended of all the packs, in part due to their militaristic lifestyle and large statures.
Make sure that all these previous chapters happen during a storm, so Orchid and Kristo are largely confined to their quarters because tradition dictates that a Waterlight’s markings are only supposed to come from the river. Make them a bit older, implying that this storm has been going on for some time, delaying their graduation to adulthood. It makes them antsy to get out there and get their markings.
Show waterlight warriors fresh from protecting their clan and then get into the conversation of who they’re fighting and why.
On the day this chapter takes place, there’s finally a break in the storm. The wolves in charge of taking them to the river aren’t sure it’ll be long enough to make it to the river, but the waterlights can always use more wolves of warrior-age, so they decide to go anyway. They get trapped out in the storm and are forced to wait in a cave for it to subside, but Orchid is too impatient. She runs out into the rain, breaking the traditions/rules she already is established to care less about.
Having gained her markings, she runs, happy and wild, around the forest, but is abruptly stricken down by lightning at some point, where Irshka finds her and revives her. She awakes changed as the storm dies down.
There’s a possibility that Kristo takes off after her, breaking tradition himself to try to keep her from running off by herself, but in the end she is stricken and revived as established.
Meanwhile we would have met some of the Breeze Pack wolves as well, only to see them slaughtered by the invading wolves before Brogan carries Oscar to safety, narrowly keeping their chosen wolf alive.

It’s not a perfect beginning, but I feel it makes far more sense than the original. It would give me the time necessary to expand on who these wolves are, what their relation is to each other, and how that plays into their lives and roles in the coming chapters.

An important consideration I always make when talking about my old writing is that I’m going to find a lot of things wrong with it, but that changing things would make a completely different project.

Think about it like art. If you looked at a drawing from when you were five and started criticizing the proportions of your animals and stick men, of course you’d find lots to criticize. And if you grew up to be an artist and redrew it again, of course it would look better! You’re not five anymore and you’ve far outleveled your five-year-old self in drawing skills!

However, it definitely wouldn’t feel the same. If you redrew a waving stick man as a photorealistic waving guy, of course you’d be able to see how much you’d improved, but the drawings would be so drastically different that it wouldn’t feel like the same drawing.

This is part of the reason why I’m not currently pursuiting a complete rewrite of this story. This story is my stick man drawing. I could absolutely do it better these days, but the way it exists now is unique to the person and skill level I was at when I wrote it, and to remake it would be to lose the majority of what makes this story what it is.

I don’t doubt that a rewritten version of this would be better, but it wouldn’t be the same book as the one I wrote when I was fifteen.

If it is something you all would be interested in seeing fully updated and rewritten, I’d be up for doing a trial run of the first few chapters and gauging how it feels. However, as it stands, I think Seventh Moon’s Rise will remain a teaching experience more than anything else, as well as a testament to how much I’ve grown since that time.

That’s all for now, thank you all for waiting a few hours for this to release! I hope it has helped you in your writing, or at the very least given some insight into the way a writer’s brain works to construct the stories you love. Thank you all for reading, subscribe for more content, and I’ll see you all again soon!

Author's Notes

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