Letters to the Editor: Pure Team — Writing Teamwork in Fiction Without a Single Command

Letters to the Editor.
Editor: Hi Mike. Want to talk about Chapter 10? This is a quiet chapter on the surface — no storm, no attack, nothing actually happens in the plot sense. And yet it's one of the most important turns in the whole book. Shane picks out the main dorsal, asks permission for a demonstration, and they build the spearhead formation together. What gets me is the line "There is no language between us. We simply duplicate each other on pure concept." That's not a fantasy device — that's a whole philosophy of communication in two sentences. Where did that come from for you?
Mike: I have seen that so much and have been doing so myself since I was young. You see this with master dog trainers or horse trainers. Man and animal know each other so well. It is just pure intention. Nothing to do with words.
Editor: Master dog trainers, horse whisperers — yes, exactly that. You watch a great trainer work and there's a point where the commands become almost ceremonial. The real communication already happened before the word was spoken. The animal isn't obeying the sound — it's duplicating the intention.
The thing I love about how you wrote it is that Shane doesn't train the dorsal. There's no dominance in it at all.
[MIDDLE SECTION — see note below]
Every player is fully themselves, fully contributing, all pointed the same way. It's actually rare enough that when it happens, it's almost visible — like a glow around the whole side.
And that's exactly what the chapter title is doing quietly in the background. A Formidable Team. Not "a formidable Lord." The chapter where Shane's confidence finally lands isn't the chapter where he discovers more power — it's the chapter where he stops being alone. The last line says it straight: "I had the ability and the team behind me to reach the pinnacle of my destiny." Ability and team. He'd had the ability the whole time. The team is what changed the maths.
There's also something structurally clever here that I don't think a reader would consciously notice, but they'd feel it: this is the exact midpoint breath before everything gets dangerous. The slicers are already circling, the dive is coming — and right here in the middle, the book pauses to assemble the team properly. So when the loyalty is tested later, the reader already believes it completely. It was earned on the page, in peacetime, before it was ever put under fire.
And the ending question — "my destination lay far beneath the surface. How I would reach those treacherous depths, I did not yet know" — that's the honest note. The team is formidable, but the problem isn't solved. Which is true of every real team too. Agreement doesn't remove the mountain. It just makes the climb possible.
Mike: Exactly mate.
More chapters, more letters, coming soon.
— Mike
This post is part of an ongoing series where real conversations from the editing process become the raw material for reflections on writing Lord of Water. Read Chapter 1 free.