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Posts Tagged ‘sequels’

Resting a Story

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on January 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Woo Hoo!  I finally typed “The End” at the bottom of BLOOD IS THICKER.

It’s very strange. I enjoyed writing the first two-thirds of that story, but the last third was like pulling teeth. I felt like I had to carve every word out of granite.  I’m sure that’s a sign that the story went seriously off track somewhere. I’ll have to figure it out and fix it.

The good news is: I don’t have to do that right away. In fact, I shouldn’t even try to do it soon. What I need to do is let it rest for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Rest, I’ve come to believe, is one of the least appreciated steps in writing. When you finish a story of any length and you’re so totally in love with it that you can’t see it’s flaws–or when you hate the last third and can’t stand to look at it anymore–that’s the precisely worst time to start the revisions. You have to give yourself time to come back to it without those preconceptions.

I always give myself about a month from completion of the first draft before I start revisions. (I’m in the middle of the second draft of MAGIC’S FOOL right now and it’s going swimmingly.) I generally have an enforced rest again while the story is out to beta readers.

I’ve also come to the conclusion over the last year that that’s not enough. When I really think the story is finished and polished and ready to go, I need to take another break. A longer one, maybe as long as six months, before I start sending it out.

That’s very hard to do at first. A little easier when you have more than one story in the pipeline.

That’s why I’ve been letting SEVEN STARS rest for so long after I finished with the last set of revisions. I’m aiming to open that back up and reread it in another month or so. If I fall in love with it all over again, well, that will be a very good sign.

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Getting Around Blocks

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

A while back, I posted that I was stuck near the end of BLOOD IS THICKER. I’d lost the momentum and was having trouble getting it back. I played around with designing a cover for BLOOD WILL TELL for a while. (That’s still a work in progress, but it’s getting better.) But sooner or later, I had to come back and just find a way to finish BLOOD IS THICKER.

Well, this last week, I have. And here’s what I did:

I went ahead and wrote the last chapter. I had it all pretty much in my head anyway. That I could write with no problem. It was the stuff in between where I was and that ending that was the problem.

I outlined the half-dozen scenes I needed to get there. Generally, I’m more of a discovery writer than a plotter, but in an emergency I can outline. I usually just don’t find them very useful. I’m too apt to depart from them and end up being a pantser anyway. But, for a handful of scenes, it works fine.

Then I gave myself an assignment. Every day I would write one–just one–of those scenes. After that, I would let myself work on the second draft of MAGIC’S FOOL.

And that has been working for me. Just one more scene to go and then I can skip to the bottom and type “The End”.

Whew!

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Sequels and Series

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on November 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. Sequels and series are hard. And since I’m working on BLOOD IS THICKER, which is the first sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL, it’s on my mind right now.

You’d think they’d be easier. You’ve already got the world built. You know the characters inside and out. And that’s exactly the problem.

You know all that stuff. And so do readers of the first book. But a reader who picks up the second or third book cold won’t. I’ve stated before that I have a very strong preference for the books in a series to be able to stand alone. Okay, it might be a better reading experience if you read them in order, but each should be able to stand on its own. I can’t stand series (which shall be nameless) that go on and on and on and . . .  Well, you get the point. If it takes more than three books to get to a resolution, you’d better resolve something in between or you’ll lose me. So, I won’t write that kind of series.

Perhaps more so because I’m not counting on readers to have read the previous book(s), there’s a very delicate balancing act of trying to put in enough world building, at the right time, without boring someone who’s read the first book and already knows all of this. The tried and true learn-as-you-go method of showing the world is a little trickier the second time around.

This is where critiques from readers who haven’t read the first book can be invaluable. Precisely the places where they ask questions or say “Wait. What?” are the places where you need a little more world building. Either right there or even better a little earlier so when they get to that place, they understand what’s going on.

Then there are the characters. In the first book, you can start with one or two and build your cast of characters gradually. In the second book, all these characters have already been established. Once again, you have the balancing act of describing who these characters are to one another without bringing the story to a complete stop.

How difficult this is depends in part on how many characters you have to introduce in the early chapters. In the first sequel I ever wrote (now shelved), I think I had in the neighborhood of a dozen established characters in the same location as my main character when the story started. Way too many to introduce all at once. I won’t make that mistake again (I hope). Of course, that story had too many characters to begin with. BLOOD IS THICKER starts off with just two, fortunately.

At the same time, of course, you don’t want to load the first chapter with so much back story that you drag this story down. That’s what makes it a balancing act. I don’t expect to get it right on the first draft, of course. But it does help to have some readers point out the places where I’ll need to beef up the background in the next go round.

Added to that, I have a theory about sequels, series, and especially about trilogies. (BLOOD WILL TELL, BLOOD IS THICKER, and the as-yet-unamed third sequel will form a series, but not a trilogy. There will be overlapping settings and characters, but not an overarching conflict that ties them together as a unit.)

My theory is this: The second book is almost always the worst. In the first book, you have the joy of discovering this world and these characters. In fantasy, especially, hopefully also a sense of wonder. In the third book, you have the big bang of the trilogy climax. The middle book is, well, the middle. I can think of very few trilogies that avoided the pitfall of the second book.

Yet, that’s what I’m writing now. The second book in a series (not a trilogy).  Wish me luck.

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Update On My Multitasking Experiment

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on September 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

So far, I’m happy with my progress in this experiment. Having BLOOD IS THICKER to work on allowed me to let a particularly tricky scene for MAGIC’S FOOL sort of percolate in the back of my head until it was ready. BLOOD IS THICKER took the pressure to write something off and made that easier to do.

MAGIC’S FOOL continues to be slow going, although I’m starting Chapter 4 today. Spoiler alert: One character does not make it out of Chapter 4. After this, maybe I’ll pick up speed. Or maybe I’ll be called back into BLOOD IS THICKER.  Sooner or later, I expect one of them to take over and push the other to the back burner, but for now it’s working for me.

In MAGIC’S FOOL, I needed to write an action scene involving a game played on horseback with three (not two) teams. That’s what needed some time to gel for me. It’s not like I’ve actually seen a lot of three-sided games (apart from board games, which don’t count) to draw on. Plus, I had to work the rules of this game into the action. (There’s no scene like the one where quidditch is explained to Harry to make that easier. All these kids have grown up with this game.) But I think I’ve got it. Readers will let me know if I’m right about that.

In BLOOD IS THICKER, I’m ready to start Chapter 5, in which the extent of the problem they discovered in Chapter 4 will become apparent. Something will have to be done, involving some sacrifice and a change of scene. That should be fun. I’m already seeing a couple of the scenes in my mind’s eye.

On top of that, I’ve started doing some research for THE BARD’S GIFT, my YA alternate history. I found a great reference book (kindle for pc edition so I’ll always have it right with me when I’m writing) for the basic daily life sort of information. This is the stuff I’d usually make up as part of my world building, sometimes using historical models. With alternate history, though, it needs to be as close to the real history as I can make it. Well, apart from the things I intend to change. It is alternate history.

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Work In Process

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on September 6, 2011| 13 Comments »

Blogging a bit early this week. (Usually updates are on Wednesdays and Sundays.)

Since this is (near) the beginning of the Platform-Building Campaign and new people will be popping in to look at the blog, I thought I’d blog about my various projects today.

BLOOD WILL TELL

I’m actively querying this one. (Actually, this week I’m researching agents.) I have one full request out. Fingers crossed.

Being a half-blood is inconvenient on a good day, especially when the half you got from your mother is werewolf.  Valeriah can’t take wolf form, but the full moon still fills her with manic energy.  Running helps; a tired werewolf is a good werewolf.

Living perennially caught between two worlds–human and werewolf, magic and non-magic–doesn’t leave much room for love. That suits Valeriah just fine. She’s never had any luck with that anyway.

Until her cousin’s life is threatened, that is, and out of necessity she accepts the help of a mysterious young man to protect Cristel. Rolf is everything that makes Valeriah’s pulse speed up in spite of herself. Now, with Cristel’s life in the balance, is the worst possible time for that kind of complication.

But Rolf’s secrets could destroy her trust and that might cost her life.

BLOOD WILL TELL is a 97,000-word paranormal romance and potentially the first of a series.

MAGE STORM

I have queried this one, but a response from one agent who requested a full prompted some revisions which I’m still tinkering with.

Rell doesn’t want magic. He doesn’t dream of being a hero out of old legends or a mage. Certainly not a mage, after they all incinerated each other at the end of the Great Mage War. He’d just like not to be in his big brother’s shadow for a change. Someone should have reminded him to be careful what he wished for.

All he knows of magic are the violent, frighteningly aware mage storms formed of the ashes of those dead wizards. Mage storms seek out people on whom to vent their fury. When the ashes fall like rain, red cinders explode, white burn flesh like acid, orange ashes taint what they touch, and yellow cause withering death.

Caught in a mage storm, Rell is struck by a strange blue cinder that infects him with magic and protects him and his family from the storm. Rell starts to think that maybe magic’s not so bad after all, but he finds it only complicates his life. His father expects him to bring back the benefits of magic from before the war, but Rell doesn’t know how. Meanwhile, others who only remember the terrors of the war fear Rell and his new abilities. Frustration and anger only bring out one of the most dangerous aspects of his magic: fire.

Rell soon learns that whether he intends it or not, his magic will leak out, uncontrolled, whenever his emotions are too strong. If he can find some way to learn to use this “gift”, he may be able to reduce the threat of the storms. If not, he’ll probably end up adding his ashes to the mage storms.

MAGE STORM is a 56,000-word middle grade fantasy and potentially the first of a series.

SEVEN STARS

I’ve recently completed the third draft of this Young Adult Fantasy. The pitch is correspondingly very rough, still.

Because of her berserker blood, Casora has been raised as a warrior. Now that she has activated the Curse and allowed the berserker to rule her, she can never go home. She leads her band of exiled warriors turned mercenaries in the battle against the invaders who overran her homeland.

Tiaran is the youngest and least of princes, the one who will never be a warrior. He’s so desperate to get into the fighting when his country is threatened that his gullibilty leads him to run away–and straight into a suicide mission.

It’s up to Casora’s mercenaries to rescue the prince. Cut off from the commanders who are now besieged in the capital, Casora has to mold Tiaran into a warrior and together they have to find a way to defeat their common enemy.

MAGIC’S FOOL

I’ve really just started this one (half-way through chapter three). It’s a complete re-imagining of my first novel (well, if you don’t count the thing under the bed that we don’t talk about). This time as middle grade, which it probably always should have been. As such, the original 100 K word story will have to be broken up into two or even three separate novels, each with it’s own (related) arc. I confess, I’m just a bit nervous about that. I think I’ve got it figured out, but the only way I’m going to find out if it works is to try it.

So, that’s what I’m working on these days.

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Long Series

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

This subject comes up as I struggle to get a foothold in my new WIP. MAGIC’S FOOL (working title) is a rewrite/re-imagining of my very first novel. It starts considerably earlier. Also, since this time around it’s Middle Grade, the original plot has to be broken down into discreet segments, each with its own goal and completed conflict. I think I can do that, but I confess that I’m a little nervous about it.

However, there’s another point. My first novel, TSC (let’s just stick to the initials), was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, later expanded to possibly four books. Now, some of what was in those stories, particularly the middle two books, will simply be deleted. But still, if I break the remaining story down, that could easily come to six or eight books in the series.

Other successful series (Flanagan’s THE RANGER’S APPRENTICE comes to mind) suggest that that’s not too many.

The other thing that brings this topic to mind is that a favorite author of mine is about to wind up a series of five books. But then she’s going to start two more series in the same world, following different characters. That worries me.

The thing is, I can think of several series or conglomerations of series using the same world that lost me part way through. I can name at least three series in which I devoured the first three or four books and was hungry for more. I kept reading, but perhaps a little less avidly after that. My interest usually puttered out somewhere between books six and nine.

One of these series continued to use the same world, but followed a different cast of characters for three or four books and then switched again to another set of characters. That one kept my interest the longest–to about fourteen books.

But in every case, eventually, I just got tired of visiting that world and those characters. It wasn’t fresh anymore. I wanted something new.

Of course with some of them there were other reasons that they lost my interest. Some went on too long without any resolution. (I don’t think I need to name that series to any student of the fantasy genre.) Some just seemed to me to be the same story told over and over again. But sometimes it just was that I was tired of visiting that particular world. It had become so familiar that it almost didn’t feel fantastic anymore.

So, maybe it’s not a good thing to write too many stories in the same world.

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Backstory and Characters

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is what I’m wrestling with right now.  THE IGNORED PROPHECY is intended to be the second in a series (of four, hopefully).  However, I very much want it (and all of them) to stand on its own.  That requires a very delicate balance.  I need to give the reader enough background to understand how the characters got where they are now, how they know each other and relate to each other, and establish the milieu all over again.  All without sounding like an info dump or slowing the story down too much.  Piece of cake, right?

It was easier in THE SHAMAN’S CURSE.  I had a handful of characters, basically a nuclear family, with only one or two exceptions, to start.  All the other characters got introduced as my point-of-view character met them.  Simple.  Now, I’ve got all these characters–and I mentioned in an earlier post that there are quite a few–and I have to reintroduce them with enough information for the reader to go on with, but not so much that I stop everything every time a “new” character turns up.

Last pass, I clearly had way too many characters introduced in the first chapter.  Some of that was unnecessary.  Just because I know they’re there doesn’t mean they have to make and appearance.  I’ve cut that back.

I’ve added a little reflection by the main character to hopefully give the reader some understanding of how he got where he is now.  I’ve tried not to make it too long or an info dump, but only a reader will be able to tell me that for sure.

Now, I’ve still got to work in how the main character is related to various groups in the story and show a little more depth of the world-building.   Oh, and there are still several characters I need to do a better job introducing. 

This is nowhere near as easy as it sounds–and it never sounded easy.

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Series and Sequels

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on May 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

First an update:  Yesterday, I finished the second draft of DREAMER’S ROSE.  There were times during the first draft that I thought I’d never finish that story.  Now it’s finally starting to shape up.  Next, I need to have a couple of readers look it over.  Meanwhile, I’m going to start a major revision to THE IGNORED PROPHECY.

Which brings me to today’s topic: Series and Sequels.  THE IGNORED PROPHECY is a sequel to THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and second in what will likely be a four-book series.  Now, the conventional wisdom is that you shouldn’t write the second book in the series until you’ve sold the first.  It could just be a huge waste of time that you’re better off spending on something new.  I didn’t know that when I started THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  Even if I had, I learned an awful lot writing that book.

There is one exception to that rule, however–if the books are meant to stand alone.  This is one of the things that I wrestled with in THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  My intention is that the books should be able to stand alone.  You should be able to read THE IGNORED PROPHECY and know you’ve read a satisfying story even if you’ve never heard of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE.  So far, on the basis of readers who had not read the first book, I seem to be doing reasonably well at that.

This is my feeling about series and sequels in general.  As a reader, I like series, but I strongly prefer that each book contain a complete story of its own, especially when it may be a year or more before the next book comes out.  This has always been my preference, even before THE WHEEL OF TIME forever soured me on series that just go on and on and get more complicated with more characters and never resolve anything.

So, THE IGNORED PROPHECY is and should be a complete story in itself.  It’s harder to do that than it sounds.  So many things were set up in THE SHAMAN’S CURSE–rules of magic, cultures, characters and relationships.  Then I have to remember to establish all of that all over again–without using an info dump or confusing the reader with too much all at once.  Early readers found a few things that I hadn’t adequately explained in the second book, but that aspect looks pretty good at this point.

Next revision:

  1. Clean out left over material from a story line that got moved to book four (untitled).
  2. Move things closer together at the beginnng so the main character gets hit with several strange things happening all at once.  Knock him off balance and keep him there.  (Poor guy really got knocked around in the first book and now it’s off to the races again.  I guess he’ll have earned a rest by the end of the fourth book.)
  3. Move the resolution of one of the mysterious occurrences to later in the book.  Keep him off balance, scared, worried.
  4. Get deeper into the main character’s point of view to really show how all of these strange things are affecting him and up the stakes.

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