Gettin’ In The Mode
As I posted last week, I have begun working seriously on Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three. But as with all big projects often there can be a period of “getting in the mode” when you have to work yourself into the project—well, I do anyway!
If the question is: “So how do you do this?”; the answer is: “It’s different for each book.’
With both Thornspell and The Heir of Night I had an initial idea spark and then wrote from that point, the plot and characters building themselves in a process of evolving story. In the case of The Gathering of the Lost, I had had the opening scene of the story in my head for a long time. It then became a matter of integrating that opening scene with the story threads I was bringing through from Heir.
With Blood, I’m finding that I’m doing a lot of thinking about the plot threads from both Heir and Gathering, and where this story needs to go, and where it could go—more of a “hey, let’s sit back a bit and take a good look at the terrain”, rather than “dive in and swim for it” approach.
The diving in and swimming is still going to happen, and once it does then I am pretty sure that the plot and characters will start building and evolving, just as they have in all my previous books. But right now I’m aiming for a good understanding of my story arc, especially looking ahead to WALL 4, before I take that final, irrevocable dive into the deeper writing waters.
A big part of getting in the mode, then, is thinking—about plot threads, but also a great deal about each of the main characters and what is happening with all their stories, as well as what’s going to happen to them, moving forward … As I wrote last year, here, that can change sometimes along the way, but in order to understand and manage the change, first of all you have have to have a clear idea of what you are changing from.
So yup, simply thinking—asking questions and also thinking through answers—is a really important part of “gettin’ in the mode” with a new book.
I wish you good luck with the project! 🙂
Thank you! I shall hope for the metaphorical pen ‘catching fire’ as well as ‘luck.’ 😉