WIP Story development, part 1

I’ve spent the past month or so fiddling with the synopsis for the sequel to The Dark Lord’s Daughter (which I still don’t have a publication date for, but it will probably be at least a year and a half). Writing a new book is always a bit different from writing any other book one has ever written, and this one is no exception. I thought I’d go over what I’ve been doing and how it is different from what I normally do. So: Spoiler warnings for a book that isn’t out yet and maybe for the one that isn’t even written yet.

Because it’s a sequel, I already had the characters, general situation, and immediate backstory. Like the first book, this started with a situation rather than a plot. My initial summary went something like this:

“Kayla has her hands full trying to rebuild the kingdom, fend off wannabe Dark Lords and Light challengers, learn magic, keep her mother happy, and prevent her little brother from blowing things up at random.”

That’s fine for a front-cover teaser, but it is a situation, not a plot summary. And for me, plot summaries are almost always necessary, both because ignoring them is basic to my normal process and, in this case, because the editor wanted one.

The situation provides a bunch of possible problems, but it isn’t clear which is the main plot and which are subplots. Since this is supposed to be a middle-grade adventure, I started by focusing on the challengers. None of the major characters from The Dark Lord’s Daughter fit as good potential opponents, so I needed to look elsewhere – meaning, I needed to look at minor characters and/or make up some new ones.

None of the minor characters or walk-ons quite fit the bill, but there was an off-stage character who does: the Archmage of the Light. He’s an obvious, logical opponent for a new Dark Lady, and has the added plus that one of the other major characters (Archie) was raised to revere him, and will therefore be very conflicted about opposing him. One of the walk-ons from Book 1, Florian, can report to him, which lets me ease him into the plot.

At this point, I had a plot summary that was about two paragraphs long and sounded like the back blurb: Kayla has lots of things to do (rebuild the kingdom, learn magic, family drama, random wannabe challengers). Florian shows up to “visit” (he is a very bad spy). His report back to the Archmage is enough to unsettle the guy and get him to try to interfere more directly. Florian can also tell the Archmage that Archie is one of Kayla’s “minions,” which gives the Archmage the option of either threatening Archie’s family, or getting them to persuade Archie to switch sides.

Before attempting to expand this further, I felt the need to make a couple of decisions about the opening scene. First of all, when is it, in comparison to the end of Book 1? I had three choices for starting Book 2:  the day after the end of The Dark Lord’s Daughter (essentially, immediately after the last scene); a few days or a week after the end of Book 1; or a couple of months later. This decision was especially important because I need to know how much time my new, off-stage characters have to start their plots (and how much time my continuing characters have to start work on the rather long to-do list they each have at the end of Book 1).

Starting Book 2 the next day felt wrong, mainly because it would feel as if I wrote one giant book and then split it into two volumes. Also, it gives the characters no breathing room at all; they really haven’t had a lot of in-story time to process everything that happened in Book 1, or to work on their to-dos.

Starting a couple of months later would have the advantage of getting a lot of little things out of the way between books. However, Book 1 developed rapidly; the whole book takes all of a week and a half. Waiting a couple of months for the next story-worthy event felt like bringing the world to a screeching halt for no reason. Also, it would give Kayla time to learn a lot, both about magic and about how the world works. This would give her more options for action (which could be good), but it gives me less opportunity to explain those things to my readers. It also would require careful handling to avoid issues like Kayla having conveniently learned tricky/powerful spells offstage.

In the end, I decided to start Book 2 somewhere in the first week or two following the end of Book 1. This is a much more analytical approach than I normally take; a lot of “what happens when” decisions are, for me, usually intuitive or blindingly obvious (they can’t redecorate the Dark Lord’s rooms until they find them, for instance).

Once I knew how much time I had for offstage things to happen, I went back to the back-blurb summary and started expanding it. It’s a few days or a week after the end of Book 1; this is where the continuing characters are, and what they are doing. This is what the Archmage and various other off-stage characters are thinking and doing – even though I’m not going to show it, my writing plot-summary needs that information so I can time everyone’s actions and reactions correctly. Kayla shouldn’t find out that the Archmage is threatening Archie’s family until he’s at least planning to threaten them, which in turn can’t happen until the Archmage’s spy reports that Archie is working with Kayla.

By this time, my plot outline was about 1200 words, about 500 of which dealt with stuff happening off-stage at various times. I have a separate list of independent or partially independent subplots that need to be layered into the main storyline, but that don’t have to happen in any particular order relative to each other. (I said this was a much more analytical approach than I usually take.)

1200 words is plenty for my editor, but it isn’t quite enough for me to start writing. It is also where I was two weeks ago, but this post is getting long, so you get the rest next week.