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The trouble with book three of a series
is that books one and two exist.
After I finished my daily word count yesterday, I sketched a few notes for the next chapter. I'd come up with a brilliant plot twist that would further the narrative, and add depth to the conflicts between the central characters. I congratulated myself on my brilliant insight, and forced my critique partner to listen to this great idea and make the usual "Yes, yes, you're brilliant, now could you pass the chocolate" noises.
I made more notes on the idea and outlined the scene during last night's meeting of the local romance writer's group, where I'd shown up to lend support for the mass photo shoot.
Then I went home, and slept the sleep of the just. When I woke up this morning, I realized two things a) the alarm is incredibly annoying, and b) the plot twist won't work. Lady Ysobel can't discover ShockingRevelation(tm), since she already knows this from back in book one.
Grr. Argh. It was so perfect! So lovely! And now it was doomed.
Sadly I got up and showered. Later as I was caffeinating, I realized that the twist could still be salvaged. Lady Ysobel knows ShockingRevelation(tm), but she can't convince anyone else, since on the surface it is completely absurd. This will create tension between herself and her closest ally, as well as still letting me have the big reveal, only this time from another character's POV.
Twist salvaged. Sigh of relief heard. Now off to the day job.
After I finished my daily word count yesterday, I sketched a few notes for the next chapter. I'd come up with a brilliant plot twist that would further the narrative, and add depth to the conflicts between the central characters. I congratulated myself on my brilliant insight, and forced my critique partner to listen to this great idea and make the usual "Yes, yes, you're brilliant, now could you pass the chocolate" noises.
I made more notes on the idea and outlined the scene during last night's meeting of the local romance writer's group, where I'd shown up to lend support for the mass photo shoot.
Then I went home, and slept the sleep of the just. When I woke up this morning, I realized two things a) the alarm is incredibly annoying, and b) the plot twist won't work. Lady Ysobel can't discover ShockingRevelation(tm), since she already knows this from back in book one.
Grr. Argh. It was so perfect! So lovely! And now it was doomed.
Sadly I got up and showered. Later as I was caffeinating, I realized that the twist could still be salvaged. Lady Ysobel knows ShockingRevelation(tm), but she can't convince anyone else, since on the surface it is completely absurd. This will create tension between herself and her closest ally, as well as still letting me have the big reveal, only this time from another character's POV.
Twist salvaged. Sigh of relief heard. Now off to the day job.
no subject
One of my critique partners calls me a "seat-of-the-pants writer", and I think she's right. My book started off as a scene in a garden, a fairly real-worldy England-in-the-early-thirties country-house garden, and then magic and gods elbowed their way in and it became fantasy, and the period shifted back a century and a bit and that changed everything from technologies to relationships, and it stopped being in England at all ... And that's not even to mention all the things I expected to happen that didn't, mostly because the characters stopped what they were doing, folded their arms, raised one eyebrow, and said, "Excuse me? You want us to do what?"
BTW, should I ever sell this book, conversations like this are going to figure largely in the Acknowledgements. You have no idea how validating it is to talk about this stuff with a real actual writer and not be laughed at!! (Well, maybe you do...)
no subject
Your writing style sounds very much like my critique partner's. She once tried to convince me that she was writing the second book in a series, where the two books were set in the same fantasy "world" only hundreds of years apart and set on different continents, so not only were there no continuing characters, she wasn't even writing about the same countries or cultures. It had just sort of happened that way....
no subject