Call me slow if you must, but my inherent desire for clarity and openness has been one of my biggest stumbling blocks in learning one of the core elements of novel-writing: the art of concealment.

I’ve been creeping toward this realization little by littles, but it wasn’t until I was re-reading a (cut!) conversation between the prince and his retainer (Torb was telling Rickard exactly what he thought of R’s lady-friend) I realized, Prince Torbjorn would *never* talk this way.

The reality is very few people talk this way.

Not only do few people take the time to analyze what they think or why they’re doing something, even fewer verbalize their conclusions.

And while I’ve recently resigned myself to a main character that is similar to me in some ways (it is just a first novel, after all), this particular tendency of mine is one way that I feel none of my characters could believably behave.

“Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”

–Mark Twain