Weekend Writing Warriors: Snippet 140- Devyn

It’s time for Weekend Writing Warriors! Every Sunday, a bunch of writers post 8-10-sentence snippets from their WIPs on their blogs. There’s a lot of reading, commenting and great writing. Click on the link to see the full list.

Happy Canada Day and Happy (almost) 4th of July! This week I’ll continue with a snippet from Shield of Kings. It’s starting to come back from beta readers, and so far, responses are positive-yay!

Anyway, last week Devyn and Maryna were talking about their uncle, King Arryk of Norovaea being chased out of his capital by the ruling council. Devyn is indignant at the uppity council, but the pious Maryna is disappointed in her uncle, who abandoned his faith to please his new wife. Edited from the original and badly punctuated.

Devyn felt bad, knowing his sister already had her hands full, trying to put her war-ravaged kingdom back together; she shouldn’t have to worry about this too. Then he saw how he’d get out of here. “I’ll go help him,” he said, trying not to sound too excited.

“Oh no,” Maryna said, “I need you here.”

“No, you don’t,” Devyn allowed a small smile, “Andres can take over for me.” His younger brother wasn’t terribly militaristic, but at sixteen, it was time for him to apply his training.

“I can’t spare any troops,” Maryna was shaking her head, but Devyn sensed she was softening. She probably wanted to keep him away from her secretary.

“I’ll raise my own–not from here,” he said quickly, since they could barely field a small defensive force as it was.

Maryna kept shaking her head, but she seemed amused, rather than obstinate, “Where then, and with what money?”

I’ll have to leave Devyn here, at least for now, since I don’t know how much farther I can go without some big spoilers for the Desolate Empire. He does go help his uncle, but I can’t go into detail beyond that. 🙂

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17 Comments on “Weekend Writing Warriors: Snippet 140- Devyn

  1. The calm acceptance of what’s necessary to raise a private army says a lot about the times your novel is set in. Nowadays, such a thing would be unthinkable.

    • It’s definitely a foreign way of thinking for us. I think we even tend to look back on the hiring of the Hessian mercenaries by the British during the American Revolution as strange and barbaric.

    • She’s just about the only person in the world who can actually boss him around, but she wants to help her uncle too, fortunately for Devyn. 🙂

      • I agree, he’s definitely starting to sound more mature! Just a little nitpicky thing (I’m currently revising my own WIP so in ‘edit’ mode! 🙂 ) “Maryna was shaking her head, but Devyn sensed she was softening.” Could I suggest “Maryna shook her head” rather than ‘was shaking’ to cut out one ‘was’ which is not only a repeat in the same sentence but is also ‘passive’ and tends to distance the reader.

  2. I’m intrigued to hear his answer. She’s very patient with him. He’s still young and needs some growing up yet.

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