Brian Beam: The Dragon Gem: Chapter One Commentary

Alright, I don't have a ton of time for this with my family vacation coming up tomorrow, so I'll pretty much do what I did in the last blog and post some little facts about the Dragon Gem, this time pertaining to Chapter 1: Come on, It's Only a Game.

I wanted to start the book out with a little action to draw the reader in, but also give the reader a good feel for Korin in the first few pages. Korin's obviously the hero, good, but flawed. I wanted that to come across naturally by putting him in a dangerous situation (Nothing pulls out a character's personality more than great loss or danger in my little ol' opinion).
Korin was also the name of one of the protagonists of my first novel(the unfinished The Secret of the Kolari: Book One of the Broken Cycle Saga). He had a twin in that novel. Korin was planned to die at the end of the first book after appearing to be the good guy and his twin, Kris, the bad guy. I guess I used to have a little George R.R. Martin in me . . . on a much smaller scale.
The story begins in the city of Geeron, the same name as the village that The Secret of the Kolari started with.
Brennor was originally intended to be a recurring character, almost as comic relief. He was going to show up through the book several times, bumbling his attempts to retrieve the gem back from Korin. I quickly scrapped that idea; it was a bit sitcom-y and though I try to put a decent amount of humor in the book, I thought it was going a bit far. Therefore he only makes one more appearance, albeit in a more realistic and logical fashion.
At first, the chapter was written with Korin chasing after the black-cloaked gem thief, chapter 2 consisting of a chase through the city. I scrapped it in order to move into the story a little quicker. I felt that two major action pieces in the very beginning with no plot progression would make this a Michael Bay movie . . . er, would lose the reader's attention.

This chapter was a lot of fun to write, and with it under my belt in the 2nd ed., I really like how it flows (the 2nd ed. version can be found here. I'm nearly a fourth of the way through the 2nd edition edit/rewrite now, so progress is being made, even if slowly. I also have a new project that I'll be releasing later this year which I'll be announcing very soon.

Hope you've enjoyed these little tidbits, and if not, here's a cute picture of my son to make up for it :)