For your amusement

[den]

elynne asked "you writer folks" how one does a first draft, so I answered anyway. I went looking for one of my first drafts, and I found lurking on my G: drive the plot outline of my very first attempt at writing a sword&sorcery story.

It's bad! I must have read too much Tolkien and Pratchett in one sitting. I can't believe how crap that story would have turned out. At some point in 1994 I had a Great Character Purge. Only two survived intact: Pen the wizard and Mavrik the dragon. One other character, "Smuts" in the outline, underwent a major career change, name change and relocation. He is now known as Brentford, and is the little scientist in my SF stories.

I show you this story because it contains elements that made their way into the Mavrik stories: the dwarf canal, the nomad ice-ships and the ice pirates, the wizard's tower, Rainbow Fen, The Welling River (later called the Whelming) and Wellington (later to become Town-By-Whelming), the evil wizard Craka. The Bogong Tower still exists by hasn't been written yet. It also gives you a hint at the very final outcome of the Mavrik stories

In this story dragons are The Bad Guys. I'm really glad I changed my mind about that.