I’m trying something new with the book I’m working on: present-tense narration. It’s pretty common in YA, and people were talking about that at the conference I went to last month. I thought I’d at least see how it reads that way, and I was surprised by what a difference it made. It made everything a lot more immediate and forced me to tighten up a lot. So I guess that’s how this book is going to be.

It takes some getting used to writing that way. I’m still working on changing the parts that are already written, so I don’t know what it will be like composing. I’ll need to brainstorm the parts that lie ahead because the story seems to be shifting subtly in another direction than I originally planned.

But that’s a good sign because it means the story has almost become a living entity, taking on a life of its own. I’ve also reached the point when I almost resent having to do something else other than work on it.

I will have some research ahead of me, as I need to invent a sport that’s played using unicorns — something like polo but using the unique features of unicorns. I’ve discovered all sorts of interesting events while researching this. There’s polo, of course, which had its origins as a training exercise for cavalry (which is what this sport will be, too). There’s polocrosse, which is lacrosse played on horseback. There’s horseball, which is kind of like basketball played on horseback. And there’s a whole category of events that fit under the umbrella of “tent pegging.” There’s tent pegging itself, in which riders try to spear a small target with a lance while riding at full gallop (supposedly with origins in trying to damage an enemy’s camp while they’re asleep by pulling up their tent pegs, but apparently this is disputed), and then there are variations that resemble jousting training exercises, like spearing a ring with a lance or hitting a target with a lance. I think my sport will involve rings, with both rider and unicorn having to spear rings with lance/horn, or perhaps trying to get a ring around the opponents’ unicorns’ horns.

Sometimes it astonishes me that this is my job. “Whew, it was a hard day at work. I had to make up a unicorn sport.”

I spent most of yesterday re-reading what I’d written on the abandoned book, as well as my notes on the project. I found some notes about what I wanted to do in revision that I must have made before I put this project aside, but the weird thing is, I don’t remember making these notes. They’re in my handwriting, so I must have, and they’re even legible, so it’s not as though I was writing in my sleep, or anything like that.

The nice thing is, they’re good ideas. They somewhat alter the plot of the book, but that’s what I need to do right now. When I eliminate all the stuff that has to go, I’ll need more action and conflict to throw in to replace it.

Meanwhile, there are key character traits I seem to have forgotten about. They’re supposed to be a big issue for the heroine, but they fall away after the first chapter.

Sometimes writing is like juggling. You have a lot of balls to keep in the air — character traits, aspects of the world, interpersonal conflicts, big-picture conflicts, and all of that is for multiple characters. Remembering to use all these things can be difficult because when you focus on one thing, you forget that other thing until you get halfway through the book and realize that your heroine’s key character trait hasn’t made an appearance in the last few chapters because she’s been busy dealing with other things.

And then sometimes you surprise yourself and find things that you didn’t plan but that come together. In this book, I seem to have had an unconscious theme of proving yourself. The heroine’s issue is that she wants to prove that she can do something. One of the secondary characters is worried about proving himself worthy. And the villain is trying to show the world what he can do. His intentions aren’t actually evil. He’s just enough of a narcissist that it doesn’t occur to him that the things he’s doing so he’ll look like a great hero will actually harm a lot of innocent people. Now that I’m aware this is there, I can work with it on purpose.

I took the week off from blogging last week because there was the holiday and then I went to visit my parents. Now I’m back to a “normal” work schedule, trying to get back to a regular routine after deadlines and travel.

It’s been more than a month since I even looked at the book I was working on before I had to switch gears and work on revisions. That made it pretty obvious the parts I needed to fix. I already had a feeling what the problem would be when I listened to my playlist/soundtrack for this book as I drove back from my parents’ house and realized that the first half of it was songs relating to the opening of the book. It’s nearly a two-hour drive, and I’d barely reached anything representing the main action by the time I got home.

Sure enough, when I was re-reading it this morning I saw that the story didn’t really kick in until about chapter five or six (aside from the inciting incident at the end of chapter one — there was way too much transition from there to the main action). At first, the scenes that seemed unnecessary didn’t look that long, just a few paragraphs, and those also worked for worldbuilding. Then I did a word count and realized that we were talking about a couple of pages each time (for my first draft, I don’t have it set up to show me pages). And the worldbuilding was for the part of the world the heroine’s leaving, so it was all unnecessary for the reader understanding the story.

So, the first thing to do on this round is cut all that stuff. Then I need to figure out what really needs to be happening to move the story forward. I love the part of the world the heroine’s from and I wouldn’t mind living there, but that’s not what the story’s about. It’s about her leaving that comfort zone and going to a place that’s more challenging to her. I can always write short pieces set in her home area later, but that’s not what this book is about.

One of the sessions I went to at last weekend’s conference was on structuring a series. My main takeaway from that is that it’s important to find a good balance between a series being connected enough that people will want to read all the books and there being enough “on ramps” to allow new readers to jump into the series.

There are a lot of different ways to structure a series.

There’s the “one big book broken up into chunks” approach, like The Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire, in which there’s an epic story published a bit at a time, and each volume doesn’t really have its own narrative arc. In this case, you’d better hope readers discover that first book because there’s no coming in to it late.

There’s probably the most common format, the “episodic” format, in which there may be some big-picture plot arcs and there are character arcs that stretch over the whole series, but each volume is still its own story with its own narrative arc and beginning, middle, and end. That’s what I’ve been doing with my series. There are shadings within that, with one extreme being a bit closer to the one big book style, like I’m doing with Rebels, where each book has its own narrative arc, but those arcs are part of a big picture arc and lead directly from one to the next. There’s no real jumping in to that series. You pretty much have to read the first book. In the middle would be the romantic mystery series, in which each book is its own distinct case, but the character stories arc through the whole series, usually with a romantic relationship gradually developing between two of the characters. You could pick up any book to read first, but you’ll probably get more out of the character stories if you read them in order. The extreme of “episodic” would probably be the mystery series without real character arcs, where each book is entirely separate and the world more or less resets between books, like the Nancy Drew series. Nothing changes in that world, and you can read the books in any order without it making any difference in the narrative.

Then there’s the “spinoff” format, in which each book in the series is about a different character. The best friend of the main character in book one becomes the main character in book 2, etc. You see a lot of this in romance, where it can be difficult to follow the same characters into more books since each book needs a romantic happy ending. So you’ll get a series about a group of friends, with book one establishing the group and the supporting characters from one book becoming the main characters in later books, with the previous main characters becoming supporting characters so you can see how their lives are going. Each main plot is generally distinct, so you can jump in anywhere, but it will probably make more sense and be more meaningful if you read them in order.

And there’s the “world” format, in which the series is mostly about a particular place, with each book being about a different aspect of that place or different people in that place, with some crossover (characters from one story showing up in another story). The big example would be Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. There are sub-series within the big series that work best if read in order, but you can generally pick a thread and dive in almost anywhere. The more books of the series you’re read, the richer the world feels, and it rewards re-reading after you’ve read more so that you recognize all the people who show up and understand how their stories fit into the big picture.

I’ve been thinking of different kinds of series I might try writing as a way to build an audience. I’ve thought about doing that mystery format, maybe a “strange small town” situation with a case in each book and the amateur sleuth and the pro detective at first clashing and then gradually falling for each other over the course of the series, though I think I would do it more as contemporary fantasy than as mystery, with a variety of cases rather than just murders (does it have to be murder to be a mystery?). I have a hard time suspending disbelief when a small town has a ridiculously high per capita murder rate, and there are a lot of other kinds of cases to solve.

I’ve also thought about trying a “world” series, where I build a fantasy realm and tell a variety of overlapping stories in that realm. That would take some planning to figure out how it all connects, and I’d have to find a way to make it a truly interesting place. I think this is what I might do with that idea of the low-stress escapist fantasy concept and make it be a world people want to visit and enjoy, with the characters having adventures but not necessarily mortal peril.

But first I have to finish revising the book I’m working on, then finish writing a book, then write another book.