Draft 2 Complete--and Unification Continues!

Wattpad link for "Murmuration"

Draft 2 of "A Murmuration of Dragons" is now finished, although there are more revisions to come. It's a process. I've posted the story on Wattpad twice: the revised story and the original Draft 1, so anyone interested in seeing the changes can look.

Creation is a higher order thinking process called synthesis, a combining of possibilities into something new. The best beginning point for this process, of course, is the field of all possibilities at the source of thought. That way a writer or any artist has more choice.

This short story began as just that--a short story about a character called "Cobb," son of a cobbler. It transformed during the creative process, though.

1. Cobb became a secondary character, preceded by Fingers, a pickpocket.
2. Third person, focusing on Cobb, changed to first person point of view, from Fingers' perspective.
3. Cobb became the character Caul; Fingers became the character Gnossos, telling about his youth, when he was called Fingers.
4. The chararcter "Trot" was removed, and the character Old Jin was just mentioned in the story.
5. The "murmuration" idea was introduced to the story.

The short story will now also most likely be a prelude to the prequel of the novel The Stone Dragon. The prequel is titled A Mage That Gathers, and is about the youth of Alma-Ata, who is old in The Stone Dragon. Also, I may write the prequel from Gnossos' point of view, eight years after "Murmuration," or I may alternate between chronicles (reports to the Order of Thom) by Gnossos and third-person limited narrative of Alma-Ata.

This synthesizing, or taking diverse elements and creating one story, is an interaction of inner possibilities and, in the revision process, the existing reality of the words on the paper. I enjoy it, although I have to be careful I don't enjoy it so much that I never finish a project--a fantasy version of Apocalypse Now, off in the jungle (field of all possibilities) with no road home.

Enjoy the story at Wattpad.