character POV | Stephanie Flint

How do Hahven and Alia see the world of Cirena?

Both are fighters of a sort. Hahven is a duelist. Alia is a former guard.

Both have a desire to protect.

But whereas Hahven looks to protect his students from the dangers of the world around them, Alia tries to switch wagons and become a merchant after an attempt to protect people goes horribly wrong.

And how they view the world differently is really fun to write.

Hahven is annoyed with the gods but willing to deal with them if it means protecting someone. Alia is trying to honor her new patron deity of merchants, but still feels honor-bound to step in and protect if no one else can.

Their perceptions of the world, and their biases about the world, each plays a large role in how they interact with the world and with each other.

One thing I strive for with storytelling is writing with character perceptions and biases in mind, especially for any point-of-view characters, so that the world we see is heavily influenced by their perception and biases.

It’s something I’ve been trying to do with the Wishing Blade universe since Magic’s Stealing (we briefly see Aifa and Shevanlagiy’s points of view, in addition to Toranih), and especially the further we go as more character POVs and arcs are added. By the time we get to Magebane, we’re also in Daernan’s head and Siklana’s head. The same events take on different flavors depending on which character approaches that event.

(For my Wishing Blade Universe newsletter, I’ve been working on a draft with a WIP title of “Twins in Ferta”/”the Ferta Story,” and that’s been really fun to write. Not just because Ehmina and Lesi each see the world a bit differently, but because I got to hop into young Isahna’s head… and that led me to some unexpected revelations about his character and backstory).

As for Legends of Cirena, the first six stories each focus on a singular character, but since they’re short stories and novellas, I got to do something similar to the Wishing Blade series, where I’ve been able to explore the world through different characters in different regions with different perceptions.

For example, on one end you have characters like Livena (The Wind Mage of Maijev and The Wind Mage and the Wolf), who is very confident in her beliefs about how the world should be, tends to comment on the social structure of her surroundings, and speaks negatively about magic. On the other end, in The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear, you have a shapeshifting rogue who is completely comfortable using her magic to fool a gryphon (well, as comfortable as anyone can be while trying not to become a gryphon’s dinner).

Or Ro’nor (The Restless Sands of Neel), who really just wants to settle down someplace nice and cool, and isn’t sure what to think of his talkative, very excitable guide. Meanwhile, his guide is friendly and curious and wants to know more about him and where he came from, but that’s maybe too friendly when he’s tired of being asked the same questions about dragons when he doesn’t have any of the powers in question.

Then there’s Hahven and Alia (The Cursed Halls of Kalecen, The Scars of Her Past, and The Trial of Bells and Blood)… Both are jaded by events from their past (Hahven more recently), but whereas Alia leans into her faith in the gods and worries over the cost of having accidentally broken the code of her first patron god, Hahven didn’t really worship any of the gods and doesn’t mind griping about the god he’s become a champion for.

Knowing what the characters value and what they despise or distrust can be a great way to figure out their goals or where they clash. And being able to write from multiple character POVs (points of view) and showing how they react to other familiar characters is one of the things that I’m particularly enjoying with the crossover stories The Wind Mage and the Wolf, The Trial of Bells and Blood, and the upcoming The Dark Forest of Aneth.

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Read the very different perspectives of Hahven and Alia…