Rick Ellrod asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Rereading _A Civil Campaign_ for the Nth time, I wondered about whether you had already developed the plot of that book while you were writing _Komarr_ -- the latter story makes such brilliant use of the plot elements set up in the earlier one. Did you have the main plot of ACC laid out when writing Komarr?

Lois McMaster Bujold Only in the broadest sense of "a Barrayaran Regency/Shakespearean romantic comedy". Komarr was the romantic drama half, and it would have been a tonal mismatch to try to jam both parts together into one book.

Parts that came up only well after I started writing the first draft were Mark's butter bug plot, recycled from an abandoned short story idea, and Ivan's plot with Donna/Dono. Ivan's subplot gave me fits, as I generated and slew several bad ideas, till Dono arrived and took over, in all her/his thematic perfection.

Viewpoint, and limiting it, mattered hugely in structuring and centering the story. At one point I had an early scene from Pym's point of view, which would have pulled the tale off-course into a study of armsmen in the capital, which, however intrinsically interesting, was not what turned out to be thematically on-point. Also I dimly recall (it's been over 20 years, yowza) a scene either written or outlined from Gregor's point of view, which would have had a similar problem. His romance was told in Memory and did not need revisited.

More high-level fannish musing on ACC here: http://dendarii.com/accc.html

Ta, L.

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