This may be a slightly shorter entry because I'm currently fighting some kind of killer death virus that is attacking my sinuses and throat and making me woozy. Apologies in advance for any sentences that don't make sense, major tonal inconsistencies, or any other problems my nonexistent readership might care to point out.

I feel like shit, be nice to me :c

Defining a protagonist

I've always struggled in my writing with building a full, believable protagonist. Oftentimes, they end up as the self-insert pawn in my perfect little game of plot chess, making moves that make sense to my narrative intent without considering how the character would actually react in that situation. I've heard people call it Mary Sue¹ syndrome, so I'm going to try to be really intentional about defining Ruth of the 11th, my protagonist, as multidimensionally as possible. This is going to reveal some major plot ideas I have, so I guess if you're really interested in not getting this (not yet extant) book spoiled for you, stop reading now.

Ruth of the 11th

Ruth was born almost exactly 3 cycles (3.2 cycles, if we want to be precise, or just under 9 years in our reckoning) before the start of our story. She lives on the 11th row (hence her name - this is how all names are reckoned in The Caravan²) with her family, who are tentmakers of moderate prominence. She is not quite wealthy enough to have been betrothed at birth, so she is awaiting her betrothal as we open the story; this is, of course, a combination political move and meant to safeguard her from being bound into service as a Mother. However, her parents managed to find a motorsmith's son on the 9th row who is of similar age and are actively preparing to have the two promised to each other so that her future is secured (and, as a bonus, her stature rises to the 9th Row).

Ruth is in my mind of light but not pale complexion, owing to her being just on the dark side of the terminator line (which cuts right down the middle of the 15th and 16th rows). She gets Sun occasionally but not so much that she would end up with particularly dark skin. This is also another semi-permanent marker of social stratification: though the Caravan is diverse in its ethnic backgrounds and have all blended to a somewhat Mediterranean tone over hundreds and hundreds of years and tens of generations, the darkness of your skin reflects how regularly you are on the light side of the line, where poorer folks tend to live. She has frizzy hair locked in tight braids, and is of somewhat knobbly complexion, even compared to other children of her age. Chronic malnutrition due to the harsh conditions makes all children in the Caravan look somewhat thin, but she is especially so.

As mentioned, Ruth's parents are Tentmakers. This is a profession I'm holding in pretty high regard in the Caravan: when someone dies they aren't cremated or buried permanently. Rather, they are put in a tent made of silk and hemp fibers treated with tannins; a single handful of a rich mushroom-based compost is thrown in, and the tent is buried until the Caravan comes across it again. When the Caravan reaches the spot where the tent was buried, a new bag of compost is unearthed, the body having been consumed by the fungi and bacteria in the starter compost. This is the only way arable soil can be made, so this process is extremely important to everyone's survival. Her parents thus spend their days meticulously growing milkweed and hemp, gathering hemp and silk fibers, and weaving it into beautiful patterned cloth that is used as the inner layer of the tent.

Ruth's parents are over at the motorsmiths' crawler when a catastrophe strikes: a fire breaks out, and the extra batteries the motorsmiths' crawler uses to test newly built motors explode. The motorsmiths, Ruth's tentmaker parents, and the boy she is to be betrothed to are all maimed just weeks before she is to be wed. Her parents and the Motorsmith's parents, weak and frail as they are, decide that because there is still a girl older than Ruth in the Row, she will be safe and decide to postpone the ceremony until after the Festival of the Turning. However, on the night of the Festival, the girl who is meant to be chosen, a seventeen year old girl named Zeresh refuses to go, saying she "knows what the mothers will do to her" and that she would rather die. She impales herself on a guard's spear, and all eyes turn to Ruth. She is forced to go, and forever hates that she lacked the courage to do the same. I think we'll reveal that this is an uncommon, but not unheard of, sentiment and reaction to being chosen as a Daughter. Zeresh will probably be the first in 10 or 12 cycles to have done so, and there will be stories of other girls who are pressured to commit suicide by their families or who suddenly go missing, choosing dying of cold or heat rather than becoming a mother.

Ruth, at 3.2 cycles old, is the youngest Daughter of the Turning in a generation, and suffers greatly during her training. She befriends another girl, Phoebe, who is only a bit older than her at 4 cycles old when she is chosen. The two go through their training together and while Ruth avoids the worst of the psychological symptoms of the training Phoebe becomes slowly less sane over the course of the story. Ruth decides early on in her training that she will become Head Mother because she wants revenge on every mother who abuses her during her training.

That's where I'm going to leave things for today, but I have lots more I want to write about Ruth's life and motivations before I begin writing to make sure I understand her deeply as a character.

Today's picture

This was, I shit you not, a macro shot of a pile of compost scraps on my cutting board while making beef-n-barley soup. I thought I might be able to make something interesting out of it, and...I did.