Ramblings: Writing a Trilogy (Patreon)

So, making the decision to repackage Constant as a trilogy has proven interesting for me. First of all, because I'd initially intended Constant as a trilogy. When I first started writing it way back when, I plotted out three main story arcs.

The first, which went pretty much as planned (from Prologue through to David's "death" at the end of book 1).

The second, covering his waking up as Cindy through to his marriage to Tom. (No spoilers there - it's in the prologue!) I'd planned out chapter ten in some detail as a rather steamy post-wedding first coupling of husband and wife, and intended it to end with a sort of "happy-ever after" ruined by a final scene with Steele.

The third, starting with blissful married life and running through to the inevitably violent conclusion hinted at in the conclusion, with an epilogue.

I abandoned the idea of a trilogy when I decided it'd be best to focus on keeping the whole thing to an (ahem) reasonable length. Set SMART targets, right? With a focus on achievable - and having come out of not-writing for a decade, trimming the length seemed a good idea.

But as I started writing again, each successive chapter seemed to grow in length. Chapter 5 exceeded chapter 4; the Interlude was just silly; and chapter 6 (now chapter 1 of book 3) woudl've passed 40k if I hadn't trimmed a thousand words from it today.

I was growing worried that each chapter leading to the conclusion would swell to ridiculous length, and each post would be another part a/b/c thing, which works fine on TGS but not so much anywhere else.

By plotting across a trilogy, it creates a bit of space based on the current state of the story.

The current chapter 6 (already split in two) easily lends itself to the first chapter or three of "book three". Going forward, I'm aiming at chapters of approximately 20k in length. So, the "death of David Saunders" conceit creates a nice mini-arc of three chapters of reasonable length, I think. It also leaves plenty of space within which to (re-)organize the rest of the plot.

It also lends itself to some changes at the end of Book 2. I've never been satisfied with the ending of the Interlude. The meeting between Katherine and Sakura at the end makes for a fine cliffhanger, but one that never gets resolved - 40k words later and there's still no hint of what happened between them.

Instead, I think I'll go back and write an additional scene (or full chapter) or two, developing both that encounter and filling in some of the backstory that emerges from it. It seems a natural place to finally reveal both Sakura's story, as well as Agent K's. Both can then lead to a more satisfying conclusion to book 2, setting up the end of the trilogy - one in which it seems David's been abandonned to live out Cindy's life. 

So. Those are the plans for writing for the future. For now, I'm working on finishing the old Chapter 6. This next step is proving more difficult than anticipated - later this week, I'll share a sneak peek / cutting room floor post of my efforts at getting Cindy back at work whilst progressing the plot.

When I started revising the whole story and posting to TGS, I didn't quite expect it to take so long - so I apologise for what must seem like a reduction in writing output. It's been an education for me, though, tackling a major edit of the story, and I think the final outcome will be well worth it. It's certainly helped fix some earlier errors, identify some gaps, and conceptualise the whole story better. The whole thing to date currently sits at about 300k words in length--no wonder it's been a challenge to keep the whole thing straight in my head!

(I wonder whether I would've ever started it, had I known it would grow this long?)

So. All that to say that despite the distractions of revising and posting, progress continues apace with Constant, with a clearer roadmap ahead. There'll be a few additional chapters popping up at some point to fill in earlier gaps, and in the immediate future, I'll have more of the new chapter 1 to share later this week.