I still don’t think I’m quite there with my story and being able to sit down and pump out north of six thousand words in a day, but I think I’m doing alright. I also think we’re getting closer with the massive word count days, which is exciting.
I’m someone who is not a HUGE fan of exposition because I think it’s often down poorly, especially in movies when they’ll just have someone narrating everything you need to know over the opening credits. It hurts my soul a little. That being said, the world I’m creating both in this series, and in a broader sense, for my all my stories, requires exposition and sharing a lot of information. The nice thing is that I know I have a lot of stories that will help to build and shape my world, the downside is, with several books lined up for this particular story, there’s a lot that needs to be conveyed. It doesn’t need to all come out at once, thankfully, but I feel like the start of each book will always be a little heavy with it. I mean, I think a lot of books are a little slow at the start as you establish everything. Even though it’s a series, I don’t want to completely abandon the first book. I need to draw it into the second book, so it feels like a nice continuation. But, I also need to do some explaining, just in case someone picks it up. I want it to stand on its own, while also contributing to something greater.
I think that’s why I’ve been struggling a bit. I’ve been setting up this new little world and, as much as I LOVE world building (I could honestly spend every moment of my time doing it), I don’t love writing it out as much. I would rather do it all in point form and then share it with everyone I see. That doesn’t work so well for an actual novel though. The nice thing, though, is that I’ve done the world planning already. It’s actually kind of the sad part, because, like I said, I love doing it. But, I have my planning guides that I created before I started writing the books, and those have been LIFE SAVERS.
In one, I have all my characters and places, and in the other, I have my books, each split into three acts. They aren’t perfect, for sure, but they are pretty good. Overall, I managed to get most of my characters and places in the first run through. I spent a few months working on it, and it shows. I, of course, missed a few people or places that I added after the fact, and I changed things about a few characters, but that’s why the insides are covered in notations and Post-It notes. I think it’s mostly because I’m just always trying to world build. The books aren’t as good as the characters and places for two reasons. One, I definitely screwed up the planning for the first book because I figured I knew it well enough. Turns out it was too much for one book, and if I had planned it better, and actually written out everything that happened, I probably would have figured that out beforehand. Alas. The series definitely isn’t a trilogy anymore, but that’s okay. Secondly, when I do this for my next book, or series, or whatever it is, I’m not only going to break the books down into acts, but I’m going to break the acts into chapters. I thought about going this at the time, but honestly, I was lazy. It probably would have made things a little easier now had I done it. But we live and learn, and overall, the guides have been an invaluable tool for me. Any time I have a question, I can usually find the answer in one of the guides. In fact, the other day, I was trying to figure out what type of clothes my main character wears, and I had a breakdown for that in the section about her. Honestly, even just writing about them is making me so happy. I poured so much time, love, and effort into them, and it has paid off ten fold.
All this planning, and even the dreaded exposition at the beginning of the books has been paving the way for me to get to where I currently am in the story, which is the exciting, plot/character driven stuff. I’m so excited about it, and I can’t wait until I get into the thick of it, as right now, I’m still skirting the edges. I’ve also made some big changes (in my head) from draft one, and am looking forward to getting there so I can get them down on paper.
Yes, I’m feeling good about things now.