The Big Picture

Most of my brainstorming lately has been about the big picture of the story--the motivations and character arcs that stretch across the entire series. We've seen only bits and pieces of that so far, although I've discovered that I did manage to seed a pretty good number of hints to start us off. I think the main purpose of the second book is going to be to establish that overarching plot.

I think of it like this--the first book established the characters and the world. We've met, or at least heard about, most of the major players. (There is one exception that you haven't heard about yet, but that won't be too long awfully long in coming.) Some, like the Patroness we've only heard about, but will be meeting very soon. I can't WAIT for that.

But I'm starting to wonder if I've structured book 2 properly to accomplish this. Currently it's bopping back and forth between two time periods. I like that in general, but I'm not sure if it's clear from the story just where everyone is. I kind of think I need to restructure it in this way.

Prologue Part 1: The new section I wrote the other day.
Prologue Part 2: The existing prologue to Book 2

At that point, I should pick up from where Book 1 ended and go through to... to where? I really like the juxtaposition of the end scene of that arc with the end scene of the future arc.

How about this... I could pull a Tolkien and do larger chunks of time together. Follow the earlier time period Bryony arc for a while, then follow the later for a while too? Hmmm... but that would restrict my ability to do certain very important POVs until the third book.

Of course, that raises another point that I've been avoiding even thinking about... is this a trilogy? Is there enough of interest in the earlier time arc to make an entire book of just that? In that case, would the prologue of book 2 become the prologue of book 3 instead? Then book 4 would be the end game? Of course, what about the material that I've developed that comes after the end I had planned? There's so much to explore there, and a natural progression of raising the stakes, too. Would that be book five?

And then there's the possibility of rearranging everything into fewer volumes, or even a single volume. The more ideas I get, the more choices there seem to be about what the future can hold.

I suppose the thing I really need to decide is this: when I start writing again, what section am I going to write? And I think the clear answer is chronologically the simplest. I'm going to write the story in the order that it happened. If I later decide to rearrange for artistic effect, I can do so with only minimal edits. Anything that happened earlier and gets held over for a while becomes a flashback; anything that happened later and is brought up is a flashforward. What could be simpler?