[Horus Heresy] Angel exterminatus de Graham McNeill

Begin at the Beginning...
Beginnings are important. Here's a verbatim snippet of text from Tubb03's Blog that encapsulates it perfectly, it's a Grade 07/08 Blog that shows that even pretty young kids know it:

“The beginning is the time the catch and keep your readers. A beginning of a story is very important, if you don’t get you readers eye at the beginning they are not going to read the rest of your story, even if the middle of the story or the end of the story is really good they will never know.”

Out of the mouths of babes and innocents, eh?

So, with Priests of Mars off with the Editors, I'm in the early stages of my next Heresy novel, Angel Exterminatus, in the pleasing position of having all the novel synopsises (do you know how many times I typed that word...?) ahead of me till the end of the year done. Since my last venture into Heresyland, I've been to Arkham, the 41st Millennium, the Age of Legends and the Old World, but now it's time to get back to the treason of the Warmaster, and boy, am I looking forward to this one. Last time, I dabbled in the fascinating, murky waters around the main thrust of the Heresy with The Outcast Dead, but now I'm getting back to playing with the Big Toys; Space Marine Legions and the Primarchs. Angel Exterminatus is going to be a big book for a number of reasons, and in a number of ways, most of which I can't really elaborate on for fear of spoiling the surprise or venturing into waters I haven't yet charted, since this book is still in its Beginning Phase.


And that's kind of the theme of this blog entry, new beginnings.

I sometimes struggle with the beginnings of books. I know the plots, the characters and the overarching themes/plots I want to cover, but getting the right fit up front is so important to me that I often spend the first few weeks on the opening two or three chapters, which is a lot longer than I want to spend there. But I'm a firm believer that if the foundations you set up at the beginning of a book aren't right, then the rest of the novel just won't stand up straight, you'll constantly be pulled askew by the bad start you've made and won't be able to get back without building it all up again from scratch (see, all those years at university studying architecture and building surveying weren't wasted!). I've scrapped beginning after beginning, rewritten, rearranged and re-just-about-everything-else with quite a few of my novels, because that nagging voice in my head keeps telling me that something's not quite right. That voice is almost never wrong. The other voices...? Well, time will tell...

With Angel Exterminatus, I'm in that stage of a novel where I'm finding the fit of it all, the right voice for the characters, the clothes they're wearing and and the scenery they ought to be chewing in their dialogue. I'm feeling my way around. I know this place, but it's been a while since I visited, so I'm limbering up for a long haul. It's a slow process, like going on a date with a whole lot of people at once, some you know vaguely, some are new to you and some are strangers who've just walked in after hearing that there's a free buffet. And you have to impress them all. Like going on speed dating and hoping to get everyone's number at the end of it all. It takes a lot for everything to align at once, but when it does, as it has now...then it's a great feeling to know, just know with utter certainty, that it's working, that it's bloody right. That this is how it ought to be done.

The first couple of chapters of Angel Exterminatus are set post-Isstvan V and deal with the Iron Warriors prior to the arrival of the Emperor's Children for a meeting between Perturabo and Fulgrim. It's taken a while to get right, inventing new things to make sure that the Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children feel like no other Legions, that they have their own character and don't inadvertently end up as pantomime villains – a common pitfall of portraying the Chaos Space Marines. I want to ensure that the scenes, dialogue and vibe the reader gets will lead them to the Iron Warriors or Emperor's Children even if I took out all the specific names and unit types. It means striking a balance between what people already know, what they want to see and what I want to achieve with the book. Certainly these legions are very close to my heart, and I know that a lot of people like them too (the steady sales of Storm of Iron and Fulgrim tell me as much...). And since it's a joint novel between them, I don't want one to overshadow the other. At least until the end...

I'm at that point now, with a through line that works in what was established for the Legions back in the Index Astartes days and what's come since. Over the years other people have written the Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children, of course, but in my head, they're still mine. Which is a patently ridiculous notion, given that they exist in a shared universe, tie-in fiction realm, but still...they're mine. Which is how you have to feel if you're going to write anything with conviction and love and passion. If you don't write thinking that this is the only way these guys can be portrayed, then you're not invested enough. So I want to make sure they meet everyone's expectations of the masters of siege warfare and decadent excess (not least of all, again, mine...). To make them my own, I wanted to invent new traditions, new colour schemes, new units, new names and new....everything, all of which needed to be introduced in a way that didn't feel like an Index Astartes article or an excerpt from a Codex. All that white heat of creation takes time and effort and imagination that combines in a witches brew of sitting around looking like I'm not doing very much at all, doodling with words and sounds on a notepad and scouring my books/net for interesting resonances with the subject matter. All of which is a long way of saying that the beginnings of a novel are just about the most important part of a novel, so get it right...

But. There's always a but. There's always the danger that in that obsessive quest for perfection you end up spending the lion's share of the time you have to write the novel on the beginning. It's a trap I've not often fallen into, thankfully, but it would be apt in this case since the Emperor's Children are just about to turn up...

Zoomsur les Eldars pas vraiment vivants


Zoom sur les 2 primarques: Perturabo et Fulgrim

Solathen a écrit:

Mac neil " ...
So I want to make sure they meet everyone's expectations of the masters of siege warfare and decadent excess (not least of all, again, mine...). To make them my own, I wanted to invent new traditions, new colour schemes, new units, new names and new....everything, all of which needed to be introduced in a way that didn't feel like an Index Astartes article or an excerpt from a Codex.

Maestitia a écrit:Donc si j'ai bien suivis, Priest of Mars est en cours d'impression et McNeill dans Angel Exterminatus nous racontera l'HH du point de vue de Iron Warriors.

Hum, je suis vraiment curieux de connaître leur fluff.

PS : merci d'avoir mis la source

Spoiler:

"Something fell from the sky, vast and iron, monstrous and cold. It landed in the heart of the citadel with the booming clang of a funeral bell; the Olympian master of battle, a demigod in burnished warplate, a hammer-wielding avatar of thunder.

Perturabo, the Lord of Iron."

Was going to write some scenes for the Emperor's Children today, but realised they're too juicy to use this early in the book. Fabius and the head...

J'allais écrire certaines scènes pour les Emperor's Children aujourd'hui,mais j'ai réalisé qu'elles étaient trop juteuses de les utiliser sitôt dans le livre. Fabius et la tête...

‎'It is an ancient name, my lord,' said Karuchi Vohra. 'One never spoken aloud. It means the beautiful eagle from hell that brings the end of all things. Which translates imperfectly as–'
'The Angel Exterminatus,' finished Perturabo.

« C'est un ancien nom, mon Seigneur, » dit Karuchi Vohra. « On ne le prononce jamais à voix haute. Cela signifie l'aigle magnifique de l'enfer qui apporte à la fin de toutes choses. Ce qui se traduit imparfaitement par
–' « L'Ange Exterminatus, » fini Perturabo

Sanguinius a écrit:Eh oui, les primarques loyalistes reflètent bien la grandeur de papy, surtout moi.