Forward, men! There's character development and timelines over that ridge!

At last, big developments have been made on Willow's character in the past week or so. I started filling out a character profile sheet for him, similar to the one I did for Colonel Carrington a while back and identical to the one I started for Captain Fetterman, and then found another really good and detailed one online so printed that one out and started answering that one too, this time handwritten instead of typed up. Therefore, most of his family background is done and his failures, successes, regrets, fears, friends (most significantly a Lewis Burton during the early days of the Civil War who taught him a lot about the army) and a lot of his physical appearance too. I have also come to adore him quite a lot as I imagine he's going to be a very fun character to describe and write, with his little incidents and stories and sassy personality, incidentally the first real lead character I have had who isn't all polite and sweet. He has now become my favourite fictional character of mine and has quite a few little scenes reserved for him.
These little scenes get written down, whatever idea they are, and when the plan is written, they will be slotted in. Usually, they are little silly ones but more recently, they have been serving as a development tool for the Fetterman-Willow relationship, where Willow has gone off Fetterman after the War because of how much he does recruiting instead of fighting, which is not really his fault but Willow still dislikes it. So therefore, there are little scenes to make Willow like Fetterman again, such as Fetterman saving Willow from choking and also letting him out of the locked basement though that's got a different, long background to do it as well as being a little scene!
As well as this, I started a little excerpt of the story for my dad when he went on holiday to send him in parts. It is turning out to be longer than I first imagined but it is very nice to start writing some of this story, as well as planning it (although I do love doing that too!). I don't think the excerpt will be directly used in the story but I'll still try and use some lines. It was especially fun to write Carrington's character as the excerpt was set in the December 6th fight where Carrington is now quite jealous of Fetterman and gets very frustrated that he, himself, isn't doing very well in front of his men, especially when he falls into the icy cold water of the Big Piney Creek in front of everybody. Another good thing about writing this 'little' excerpt was that I had to plan it too and although that dug up quite a bit of confusion with where certain people *Grummond and Carrington* were a bit of the time, I'm glad I finished the plan because I'll probably use that for the plan of the chapter in the story about December 6th.
Too, I started carrying on with the timelines, which need to be finished, really, for the story's plan to begin to take form. July was finally finished, though some handwritten notes may be written around the edges of the printed copy from other books (especially the John H Monnett book), like what happened to the other printed timelines (namely the 1865 and the 1866 January-June timelines), and the August 1866 timeline has also been started.
In other news, there was a rather stupid article in our Isle of Wight County Press the other day that had the writer insulting Native Americans at the Battle of the Little Bighorn by calling them 'those horrid Sioux Indians' and just generally being offensive towards them, while also comparing them to our government forcing our Island into doing something we didn't want to do and trying to join us with the mainland. In short, the article was pointless, inconsistent, confusing and offensive so needless to say, I wrote a letter in that I'm soon going to post to the newspaper! :) Getting to people the old fashioned way, Captain Benteen-style!

The Road Goes On

After ordering a new book about a week or so ago called Where A Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth by John H Monnett, it arrived last Friday and having a timeline to adjust, I got on with reading it. After the rather Carrington-centred Fetterman Massacre by Dee Brown, it was a nice balanced look at the fight and the events that led up to and succeeded it. Of course, I loved the Dee Brown version for the details about the journey of the 'Carrington Overland Circus' to Fort Phil Kearny but it didn't really dispute or question anything. Forty or so years later, Monnett's book (along with Shannon D Smith's Give Me Eighty Men I read a while back) was released and these two authors had access to a lot more information, a lot of it contradicting the statements made about Fetterman, saying he was arrogant and disobedient.
To be honest, I'm a lot happier with this new image of him in the story. Although Shannon D Smith's book turned everything on its head, the result was a better representation, I think, and now I've come to hate the arrogant and disobedient image of Fetterman. The new book I bought by David Monnett strengthened that and also helped with a lot of other details about the events that happened to the Powder River Country over the years. Therefore, the timelines that I've been writing over the past couple of weeks (ones that ended up as the 1865 timeline, the 1866 timeline from January to June and currently, the July 1866 timeline and eventually, stretching to 1867 with the Wagon Box Fight, the Hayfield Fight and the political events that came to be after the Fetterman fight) have had to be slowly adjusted - or added to - to constitute the new details.
As well as this, a sheet on the Other Characters of the story is slowly being written, with probably a lot more detail than I actually need, and a Log of Events has been created. For some reason, I decided to start this after a few months of research and development of the story, so I had to look through the diaries I've written to see what I'd done on particular days, which took a while but now, it's up to date. Also, Willow is being developed some more, with more and more being added to his Character Profile.
And luckily now, a week or so ago (maybe a bit more), my Laptop was fixed so that's back in action too!
The development goes on!