It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything about my NaNo 2023 project and there’s been a lot that’s happened with it since then. It’s almost doubled in word count, it still isn’t in a final first draft, and it’s probably going to become a duology (even a trilogy, if I’m being completely honest with myself). Sometimes it’s astounding how much change can occur for a project in the space of a few months (almost a year really at this point) but that’s the nature of creativity. I think it’s important to stick to plans where you have them, but following a project where it takes you can be just as important in my opinion. And whilst that sometimes leads to stories growing to a size you sincerely hadn’t anticipated, I’d like to think it often leaves them better than what you had originally planned for it.
Initially, I had it planned as a standalone, fantasy novel. It would take its twists and turns, it would definitely be a substantial word count but it would be its own, self-contained story. Its ending would be its ending, the character development would occur over the course of one book, the answers would be answered when it was over, nothing more, nothing less. It would still be complex, it would still offer mysteries and exploration but when it came to that last page, that would be the end of it.
I quickly discovered I had severely underestimated the length of the story I had planned. When it came to the end of NaNoWriMo last year and I had completed the task and seen that there was still a hefty amount of story to be written, I began to see that it would be an even larger novel than I had anticipated. My thoughts went to stories like Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon and I thought, well, perhaps it’ll be a novel of that size, a fantasy epic contained to the front and back cover of one story (though, even in my new estimations, I still didn’t anticipate it reaching that word count, or the even larger story of the prequel, A Day of Fallen Night). So I kept writing, wondering at what it might feel like to have a book of that size of my own in my hands.
I did quickly realise, however, that it would probably be better as a duology. I could see where a first novel could end and where the second could begin, I could envision the editing I would have to complete to make the two stories cohesive with individual plots that led from one to its sequel and I decided that was simply the direction I was going to have to take.
I’ve realised I make a lot of decisions like that. I don’t know what it’s like for other authors and presume it’s to do with the pantser side of the author in me that goes with the flow like this, but I often have moments where I’m writing or thinking about a story and, at some point, I’ll simply go, “ah, that’s the way it’s going to go now, I can see that.” It’s not a eureka moment (though sometimes it can be), it’s more a soft acknowledgement of where the story needs or even wants to go. Initially, TDOA was telling me it would be a singular story, a standalone novel where everything took place between the covers, but as it grew and as I explored it, I saw it needed to be bigger than that and had to make the decision that it couldn’t just be one novel, not with all I wanted and needed it to say.
I can’t say I’ve done the exact planning for it yet. In my particular way of writing, even though I knew it was going to be two novels, I still wanted to get it finished, I wanted to have a ‘complete’ first draft of the story I had envisioned, even though it had changed and I would, technically, be finishing a story and its sequel in one go. It’s the way I write though, I like to go through drafts entirely, I can’t move from one section to another, it isn’t the way it works for me. So even though I had, technically, ‘completed’ the first draft of the first half of the story, I wanted to persevere and ‘complete’ the second novel too.
This has led me to make the presumption that it may very well end up being a trilogy instead. Again, the work hasn’t been put in yet, I haven’t done the planning (or re-planning, I should say) to make the story work in two or even three parts at this point, but I can see it. There’s decisions I’ve made as the story has gone on that mean leaving it at two novels might leave too many questions unanswered, too many mysteries unexplored. I love an open ending, but when certain questions are brought up, they need answers otherwise it feels less like an open ending and more like an unfinished one.
This does, of course, lead to questions about how someone can ever truly finish a novel if there’s always the opportunity to expand, and that’s not a question that can easily be answered. In fact, I don’t know if there is a definitive answer for something like that. The famous adage that art is never finished, it’s simply abandoned has some truth, though I like to believe it’s not that it’s been abandoned, my belief is more that you give a story everything you’re able to give it and when you’re able to give it no more, that’s when you move on (and that can mean beginning to share it with others or leaving it until you feel there’s more of yourself you can give it in the future. That difference depends entirely on the writer and the story that’s being told). Stories and art in general are never a perfect or complete thing, art isn’t possible to be defined as perfect because it’s so subjective and the concept of perfection isn’t really real anyway. So if that’s the case, how do you create that balance between exploring where you need a story to go and being regimented in making sure it doesn’t just keep growing until it gets out of hand?
I don’t believe there’s any real answer for that. As an author, you’re telling a story, and that story can be the most complex and intricate thing in the world that you feel needs to be told so that some great change can be made, or it can be a story you feel needs telling that is simple in its messages and its characters, or it can be something in between the two. However complex or simple your story is depends on the story itself, what you want to say, and who you are as an author. Maybe you are firm and strict with yourself, making sure you stick to the plan, that anything that comes to you is considered but decided as not what you want to say and is thus ignored because you knew what you were setting out to write when you started it. Maybe you’re not, maybe you write the story and as the decisions come, you pull them in and mould what you want to say around the discoveries you’ve made, altering its complexity from what was first envisioned.
Is there a best way to do it? Do you go for somewhere in the middle and explore certain elements but ignore others? I don’t think it can be said that one way is better than the other, but I do firmly believe that stories evolve for a reason. If you’re writing something and an idea for a potential path comes to you, could that be your subconscious discovering an opportunity to make your story stronger, to explore other avenues that might add depth to what you’re writing? Or is it your subconscious running away with itself, trying to get you into trouble by expanding on what you’ve already planned? That’s down to you (and perhaps an editor) to decide. I like exploring those avenues but it is very true that it can hinder your progress significantly.
TDOA has taken a lot longer than I’d like to get to where it is now for a whole host of reasons, from it being an exceptionally busy couple of months for me and because the story has grown from what I had initially anticipated. I believe, very soon, I will have ‘completed’ this first draft as much as I am able to at this time. Its next steps will be making it work as a duology (though it will probably be a trilogy, I don’t know why I’m pretending otherwise).
For me, I know the changes that I’ve made have strengthened the story because there’s more room now for the character growth I’ve envisioned, more room for world exploration, more room for the story itself to become what it needs to become. I don’t doubt more changes will come, that is the nature of writing and anticipating growth is a big part of letting a story evolve. I would like to think I will be resolute and give myself only a trilogy to work with (and I am pretty confident that a trilogy gives me the room I need, I feel a certain comfort and correctness in seeing this story be told over three books), but who knows, maybe my next post for TDOA will be me informing you it’s a ten-book epic with accompanying compendiums to explore the lore in all its detail. I’d like to think that won’t be the case but we all know how, sometimes, stories and their characters have their own will and can take us down paths we couldn’t ever have imagined when we put the first word down onto the page.
Robyn x
R. A. Howard 