Siri Is Bathed, Then Sent to the God King

This was a strange sequence of chapters to write. I’ve spoken before on writing characters of the opposite gender. This has grown easier and easier for me over the years, partially—I think—because I started out so bad at it that I insisted on forcing myself to practice and practice. Now, it’s usually as easy for me as writing men. In fact, I don’t even think about the gender of the character when I’m writing—I think about who the character is. What their motivations and conflicts are. How they see the world and how they react to things. True, their gender does influence this—just as it influences their personalities. But I don’t sit down and say, “I’m going to write a woman now.” I sit down and say, “I’m going to write Siri.” I know who Siri is, so I can see through her eyes and show how she reacts.

All that said, I’d never before tried writing a wedding night from the viewpoint of a woman. It presented a few interesting challenges. For one, there’s a whole lot more nudity in this book than in my other books. I don’t shy away from this (even though I myself am probably more conservative than most of my readers in areas of sexuality), as I feel that what you do with your imagination is your own business. This scene could be done in a PG way, a PG-13 way, or an R way. It’s completely up to you how you want to imagine it.

One interesting thing to note is that my own wedding happened during the process of writing this book. I wrote this chapter before then, but I was engaged at the time. While working on the novel I got to go through the entire progression of awkward moments of a wedding night myself. (Yes, it was our first time, by choice.)

I think that probably colored how I wrote Siri’s viewpoints throughout the entire book.

The Royal Locks

A group of people whose hair changes color based on their emotions is another one of those little story seeds that had been bouncing around in my head for years before I wrote this book. I even did a few test chapters in other settings with characters who had this physical attribute. (Dark One, which I don’t know if I’ll ever finish, toyed with it. As did a book set in the Aether world.)

Eventually, this attribute slid into Warbreaker. I’m glad I found a good home for it; I love how it adds a little bit of flavor to Siri and Vivenna, making them distinctive in a way that doesn’t have much of anything to do with the plot. I always talk about making things connected, and that’s very important. But you have to be careful not to make everything too neat. That leads to its own problems, as I mentioned in an earlier annotation.

The Royal Locks do work into the worldbuilding, as you’ll find out eventually in the book. However, mostly they’re around to give a distinctive feel to the world and the royal line, to show you that there is something unique about the royals. It hopefully enhances your understanding of why Hallandren would work so hard to bring them back into their own line of kings.

Go to the book.