TAG | Chapter 4
Short chapter!
I’m a big believer in the Chapter, and keeping things moving. Say what needs to be said, and move on. I always have Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing in my head; if it feels like writing, cut it. And don’t write the stuff people skip. He has other rules, but these are the ones I abide by.
Since we have a little break here, and not much to talk about, it’s a good place to talk about Heden’s mannerisms.
An early draft of Priest was very boring. I was bored reading it, always a terrible sign. Finally I realized it was boring was because all the characters sounded alike. They were all speaking with the same voice. And it was not an interesting one. It wasn’t even MY voice, it was just Generic Character voice.
I didn’t know why that was, I only recognized the problem. Looking back, I know why. I didn’t have Heden’s voice. Gwiddon and Domnall are two very different people, but they both sounded the same because until I had Heden’s voice, I couldn’t lay down the others.
I knew instinctively that the problem lay with Heden and the way he talked. I thought solving that was the first step, I didn’t realize it was the only step. I didn’t realize that finding his voice, all the others would instantly fall into line, every character defining himself off Heden.
So I thought about it and as with many things, once I knew what the problem was, the solution came pretty fast.
One of the big influences on me and this series is Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series. Hardboiled detective fiction. Priest is, essentially, a murder mystery. Parker didn’t invent the tone in Spenser, he just mastered it. Well, I’m no master, I’ve got to figure it out on my own and there’s every reason to believe it may be many books before I really get it. But I knew the answer lay somewhere in Spenser.
Spenser does this thing I’ve never encountered in anything else I’ve read. He has this neutral statement he makes every once in a while; “sure.” And it’s not “sure, I understand, go ahead,” and it’s not “yeah, right.” It’s not encouraging, it’s not sardonic or patronizing, it’s completely neutral.
I needed to give Heden something that expressed the same thing, but I felt “sure” was both too modern, and too much from Spenser. It wasn’t that I needed something of my own, I felt likeHeden needed something of his own.
I was rewriting the scene between Heden and Gwiddon, one of my favorites, and Heden was replying to Gwiddon. I read his reply and I thought about it. It was just a lot of words, and very literal. The whole book was very literal at the time. And I thought “what if he just didn’t say anything?”
So I cut the line and replaced it with “Heden shrugged.”
That’s when I found his voice. That’s when he became terse, world-weary. That’s when he became Heden instead of my Main Character. Heden’s shrug was my “sure.” It didn’t matter how much I used it, it was Heden’s. I could not overuse it, because Heden cannot be more Heden than Heden!
It’s not accurate to say that every Heden is, is in that shrug, but finding the shrug led me to everything else. I suddenly knew who Heden was. He was now free to borrow Spenser’s “sure.” I think probably this was influenced by Parker’s other character, Virgil Cole from his excellent western series, and Robert Deniro’s character from HEAT. I was reading Parker’s westerns at the time, and HEAT was on AMC like twice a day for a month while I was writing that section.
As a side note, if you want to hear the Spenser “sure,” go watch the fantastic Caine Mutiny. The first act is kinda crap, but stick with it. Eventually Miguel Ferrer shows up as a navy lawyer and at one point says “Sure,” in that flat, neutral tone. Great character, great movie. Especially Act III.
Heden, I said I’d…” Domnal stopped. All the guards in the main room stopped to look at him.
Heden was carrying the young girl, asleep, in his arms. She felt almost weightless to him. They saw the leather strap he put around her head. They didn’t know what it signified, but they knew something had not gone according to plan, and Domnal was upset.
Domnal scowled. “Is she alive?”
Half of the Eseldics had been processed and assigned cells. The rest were still here, manacled and gagged. Someone had cleaned up the bodies. All the guards stood around tensely looking from Domnal to Heden. All except Teagan who leaned on one of the heavy wooden beams holding the roof up, his long legs crossed at the ankles. Teagan didn’t seem to be looking at anything.
Heden just looked at Domnal. Domnal’s pained face betrayed his understanding of what Heden had discovered.
“Heden I can’t…you know what the church said. You can’t take her out of here!”
“I’m taking her out of here,” Heden said.
Domnal ran his thick fingers across his jowls. He was unsure of what to do.
Heden began to walk out, which meant walking at Domnal. Heden didn’t look at him.
“I don’t care what you tell the church,” Heden said, walking past the guards. They looked to Domnal, wondering if he would order them to stop Heden. “Tell them you saw me carry the body out myself. Be as vague as you want. I don’t care what you tell them.”
Domnal, upset but unable to bring himself to do anything about it, stepped out of the way.
“I don’t care what you tell Megan either,” Heden said after he’d passed Domnal.
He stopped at the door and threw a look at the guard next to it. The older man realized what Heden wanted, and rushed to open the door for him, letting Heden out into the new day.
Domnal wiped his hand over his forehead and into his hair. “Shit,” he said. The other guards just stared at him, uncomprehending.
Teagan just smiled and shook his head.
