So, here we get the payoff for several hundred pages worth of hinting at Iadon’s insecurity and paranoia. Plotting is all about payoffs, in my estimation. You have to earn your plot. You do that by putting the pieces together in the right places, so when you finally get to a climax (even a smaller one) your readers accept what is happening.
The build-up doesn’t have to always be subtle—and it doesn’t even have to be done through traditional foreshadowing. For instance, if you want a character to be able to defeat a small group of bandits, you have to have earned the payoff that says that he/she is competent with a weapon. It’s like an chemical equation—you balance all of your pieces on the one side, and they should equal what comes out on the other end.
In order for Sarene’s speech in this chapter to work, I needed to do several things. I needed to build up that she’d be both capable enough to make it and brash enough to go through with it. I also needed to build up that Iadon would crack beneath this kind of external pressure, which I hope I did.
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