From boy to king: The swithen book 5

Greetings folks! Surely you know that my book series The Swithen is a 25-novel telling of the actual Arthurian legend, where I’m not allowed to change anything from the old legend, but can only add in character psychology or connecting material. Books 1-4, taking us from the birth of Merlin to Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, flowed quite quickly and easily. Then came the pandemic, and I’m now in the middle of writing Book 5… Here’s a report on how it’s going.

I’ve actually tried three times to write about the progress of Book 5, but each time it just didn’t come across. Suffice to say that it is not coming easy, and the fact that we’re all stuck inside for hours afraid for our health isn’t helping either. A ton of time to write—you would think. And I have been making steady progress, I’m just… I know I’m not supposed to say “shapeless” about my own book, but… let’s just say it follows the “jellyfish” structure. 

This book begins just after Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone and ends with him being coroneted as king (Ummmm, SPOILER). We see his training, we see his growth, a lot of important new characters are woven into the story, the world of the series expands immensely, and by the end of the book, he is ready to become the King Arthur we know. 

Only, there are some challenges I didn’t quite foresee when I started. At the beginning of the book, Arthur is a fourteen-year-old country boy, and by the end (six months later), we have to believe that he could plausibly step into the role of king. How does that happen?

A little more troubling, Arthur begins as that fourteen-year-old country boy, and six months later we have to believe he is ready to step into the role of a warlord king, with at least three major battles coming in Book 6. How does that happen?

Oh, and the challenge of writing a book in which our boy hero, whom we are supposed to be entirely behind, is learning to kill people. 

These are the storytelling challenges you encounter when trying to write the life of King Arthur. 

One of the weird things about it is that… in the book, Arthur is in a state of disbelief—he has just found out that he is the foretold king. Writing his psychological transformation in which he comes to believe that he is, will be, and should be king is, shall we say, a writing challenge. 

Conveying various states of incredulity is also a writing challenge. Arthur is in disbelief, his family is in disbelief, the ruling kings are in disbelief… and that’s just not the easiest state of mind to get across, let alone make interesting as it occurs in so many different people. 

Because of this, Arthur really has no time to think and goes into a state where he just to plow forward as best he can. The weird thing is that the writing of this book just happened to coincide with the pandemic. In which we also are finding everything changing around us, great and pervasive uncertainty, having to just charge forward while having no idea where we will end up. 

So in a very odd way, I have had an unusual amount of real-life experience to draw on—not that I, or anyone, asked for it or wanted it. But in terms of being unable to think about the future, having to just keep putting one foot in front of the other… I could apply all of that uncertainty to Arthur’s state of mind in the novel.

I have 320 pages now, and am beginning to calm myself as to how it might turn out. First was to simply accept that it’s the middle novel of a trilogy, and it’s more about a process… a trip that begins here (naïve boy just pulled the sword) and ends there (more mature boy ready to become a young king). In this way, it’s about his path, and I grew comfortable with the fact that his path would be meandering. 

Secondly, I realized that it is about transformation, not so much the final end point. This helped to calm me about its winding structure, as all of that is necessary to bring this character to the point where he can become the young King Arthur we know from Le Morte D’Arthur or other medieval sources at the beginning of Book 6. 

So I am learning to quiet those doubting voices and just keep writing. I made the decision that Books 4 and 5 would cover periods that are blank spaces in Arthur’s history, first his childhood, then the period in which he is trained to be king.

As for this one—now I see why this section is not covered at all in the actual legend! But I think that when more of the series is in place, we’ll be grateful to have to crucial section of our beloved king’s life filled in.