The world around

raising those who live in it

In a great crowded hall, a woman in a coat speaks to a man in a top hat, forefinger raised; behind them, the press of tables trails off under the arcades.

I walk into this overfull café. The noise irritates me at once: the mugs clinking, the loud talk, the music underneath… Then, looking more closely, I catch sight of Morno at the table on the right. I am afraid he will see me, I turn back toward the door. Too late: he waves both arms and calls out my name at the top of his voice.

Your character is not the center of the world — only the one through whom you look at it. The world turns without him: actors want, pull taut, questions ripen in the shade.

Here is who lives in it: how you it, who deserves to be kept, what you write about those ones.

◆ Populating the world: backdrop or actor

Not everything you come across goes on the . The innkeeper, the guard you dodge, the alley crossed once: Backdrop, pure color, forgettable.

What will come back and weigh over time: an actor. A single test decides: what does it want? If you can lend it a , it is an actor: enter it on the standing page. Otherwise, it is Backdrop.

◆ A Backdrop that becomes an actor, played

For months Regiord has frequented the starport bar: three words at the counter, never more, before boarding a friend’s starship. The barman? Backdrop. A face behind glasses. Today, the friend does not come.

I wait. An hour, two. Vael’s freighter shows on no screen in the hall. The barman has served me again without a word, as always — I have never really looked at him. Nothing to draw, nothing to ask: I write what comes.

He wipes a glass, at length, then says without raising his eyes: “You are waiting for your friend. The freighter man.” — “Yes. He was to take me along.” He puts the glass away. “Left this morning, early.” A pause. “If you wait until the end of my shift — I run the same route. My starship is small, but she flies. I will drop you off.”

I read my sentence back, and an idea comes to me about this barman: it comes from no draw, it comes from what I have just written. And there, I see him. Really. This man is not a wall: he has a route of his own, a starship, a destination — mine, into the bargain. The test falls of its own accord: what does it want? This one wants something. A desire can be lent to him. I anchor him, not for what he is, for what he wants:

Astore (his name, which I will learn later) — calm, entire, the look of someone who has already arrived somewhere — brought us together without my seeing it coming · wants: to carry every voyage through to its end, to close the circles · what is a man that quiet doing behind a counter?

I look at him differently now. The counter, the glasses, the evening shift: a disguise — I do not yet know for what. “I will wait,” I say. He smiles, barely. “I know.”

An actor does not always arrive with a fanfare — sometimes he has been pouring your drinks for months, waiting for you to raise your eyes.

◆ The surroundings — three points of interest

Populating one card at a time is usually enough. But there is a broader gesture, for the moments when you want a place to teem all at once: look at the surroundings.

Draw three cards, lay them side by side (three living things within arm’s reach), and read them quickly, without dwelling: a figure at the counter, a book forgotten on a table, a door that is never opened. Then choose one, the one that calls you, and play it now.

Here nothing is lost: the two cards you do not play stay on the table, points of interest asleep. The goes on around them, and the day your attention lands on them, they are already there, ready to rise.

Page of Cups — The surroundings — no card goes away.

Eight of Pentacles — The surroundings — no card goes away.

A among the three does not bring in (it comes in only at the ). But it marks that point as important: not a passer-by, but someone who will count; not an object, but a charged object; not a door, but a threshold that will weigh.

◆ The surroundings, under a question

In a great entrance hall, beneath a candle chandelier, a man in a hat and long coat has stopped in the middle of the floor; before him a staircase climbs towards the light, and figures pass at the top of the steps.

Sometimes a question itches at you during a scene. How do I get out of here? Where do I find enough to last until morning? Which way do I go without being seen? Do not keep it muffled: the surroundings can answer it.

The gesture is the same — three cards, read quickly, one only played — but you are no longer asking the place what it contains: you are asking it what it contains for someone looking for that. Not “how do I escape,” but “what is there here for someone who wants to flee.” The nuance is thin and it counts: put on you, the question admits only answers; put on the place, it lets the place answer something other than what you were hoping for: a guarded way out, a way out that costs, or somebody else trying to flee too.

◆ A question put to the place, played

The question itches in mid-scene. Put on you, it admits only answers; put on the place, it gives back something other than what you were hoping for.

Nera, the lower city, the light going. The forearm burned to the elbow since this morning’s bad landing, and the sleeve sticking to it.

Where do I find something for this before nightfall? I do not ask the district whether it has a herbalist: it has one or it does not, and there I am, deciding on my own. I ask it what it holds for someone looking for plants.

Three of Wands — What the district holds for someone looking for plants.

Three doors, and not one promise in common. The Seven of Pentacles grows things: a yard where they cultivate their own, safe and slow, come back tomorrow. The Three of Wands brings things in: the shopfront by the port sells what a vessel brought back, dear, and the next one does not arrive tonight. The Seven of Swords, for its part, asks for no name. That is the one I play; the other two stay on the table.

The back room has no sign. They open to me without raising their eyes, they ask me neither my name nor where the burn came from, and the salve is on the table before nightfall. The woman pushes the pot toward me, then waits for me to leave.

Outside, the sleeve rolled up and the arm no longer burning. She asked for nothing, that one. She knows what I was looking for.

The district did not give me back a herbalist. It gave me back a price.

◆ One card for a presence

Two moments call for the same single card, each in its own way.

The first is discovering people. The world is peopled, and you do not have to decide alone who lives in it: draw one card and read who is there, whom you are dealing with. A card is worth more than a face invented out of nothing: chance finds people you would not have imagined.

The second is seeing someone again. There, no need to rediscover who he is: what has changed is the moment. Draw one card for his state of the day: what is occupying him, a worry he is going through, a thought he is chewing over. The person is the same; the card says only in what disposition you find him, and where to come in.

◆ A presence, drawn

You do not decide who pushes the door open. You draw, and in comes someone who arrives in the middle of his own story.

Nera, the common room of a waystation, waiting out the rain. The door opens.

Five of Wands: five staves knocking against one another without any of them winning. This is not a face, it is a temper, and it is better than a face.

He comes in talking, and it is to nobody. “… the load was weighed, weighed in front of him, and he counted it again anyway.” He puts his gloves down on a table that is not his, turns to the room to call on people he does not know as witnesses, and picks his account up again out loud.

He carries his quarrel on him. He will speak of it before anyone asks his name, and he is not looking for trouble: he already has some. So he is not dangerous, he is busy, and that is the way in.

“Counted it again,” I say. He stops dead, and looks at me properly for the first time. “Counted it again.”

Left to decide on my own, I would have made an innkeeper. With that card in hand, I make someone who arrives in the middle of his own story.

◆ Actors, a presence that wants

An actor exists outside the scenes. Note him in one stroke: a name; what he wants, what makes him move; a bond, what you are to each other, now (see below); and what you still do not know about him.

Loudia — strategist, authority, calculation — sent me on a mission then lost sight of me — ally, or manipulator? · wants: to take back, to let nothing go.

An actor you never play does not exist: better three living actors than ten forgotten ones. Anchor sparingly, and let their desires compost among themselves. And the one you stop revisiting fades of his own accord: a departure, a death, a silence. Come back to him only if you feel like it.

◆ An actor’s portrait

An actor who counts ends up overflowing one line. Make him a portrait.

The standing page keeps the overview: who exists, in one line. The portrait keeps the life: what he wants, what you do not know about him, what has happened between you. It is not written at one go, and it is not corrected: the day the person changes, you write another one, further on, without touching the first. The last portrait holds for what it says; what it does not say again stays true from the previous one. Read them one after the other, and you have someone’s trajectory.

◆ The bond — what you are to each other

In that portrait, a line of its own: the bond. One sentence, each time something has moved it, with its anchor: since what. Write it from your character’s point of view, so always with a “seems”: she seems to hold it against me, he seems to have forgiven me. What an actor is to you, you already know; what you are to him, you do not.

The new bond is written under the old. Cross out, and all you have is a state; stack them, and you have a history. Everything else moves: a desire dies out, what fate has broken remakes itself other; a bond stays, and is read back.