Clutch in, shift gears

As I noted before, I’ve turned the corner on the novel. Normally this would be the point where threads start drawing together slowly, in preparation for the climax and ending. And that would be true if this was a stand-alone novel, but At The Queen’s Command is the first in a set. That means I get to break some rules and warp others. While some threads will begin to draw together to provide a satisfactory ending for this novel, others will continue to spread out so they can bind all the books together and find resolution elsewhere.

This process is pretty much the only way I know of to prevent the “second novel slump.” Lots of trilogies run into this problem. The second book is merely a tunnel through which the characters pass to reach the third, where everything is wrapped up. An alternative is that the first book ends, solving a small problem, but in the last chapter, or in the first chapter of the next book, we learn that the problem we just solved is “just the tip of the iceberg.” The action starts anew in this second book, accelerates outward, reaching no conclusion at the end, just to be resolved in the last book.

It’s very important to provide the reader with some satisfaction and resolution at the end of each book, while having issues and problems that continue through all the books. I really don’t think that doing this is very difficult. All it really requires is a little planning and resisting the urge to solve a problem two chapters after creating it.

Today I did two chapters totaling 5334 words. I dealt with revelations and circumstance changes for one character, and viewed a more strategic sense of the world and conflict through another. I also began to dial in exactly how I’m going to resolve one problem in this novel, and discovered a couple of elements that connect some dots I’d been hoping to connect. Cryptic, I know, but to say more would either reveal too much, or cause a lot of confusion because I might decide I was wrong in these decisions a bit further in this book or series. 🙂

I also went out to the Changing Hands Bookstore and taught my “21 Days to a Novel” class. I had a really good turnout and things went very smoothly. The class actually went a bit faster than normal, so I was able to interject a bit more stuff about the relationship between writers and their audience. Everyone took copious notes and appeared to be dialed in to the lesson.

In some ways I think the most important part of that lesson, or any other, is for folks to be comfortable with the idea that they can mess something up and fix it later. Folks want permission to succeed, and the fear of failure often cripples them. Once they learn that failing is not only unavoidable but easily remedied, it’s not so big a deal. If they get past that, then they really can’t fail; so success is just a matter of putting the effort in to produce the work.

It was a good crew. I am hoping I’ll see their work showing up in stores in the coming years.

November Word Count: Hard: 30726 Soft: 6162