When The End is not THE END

Wednesday (31 Jul) - When The End is not THE END

The novel, The Majik of Spark, was officially completed in May, 2013. It came in at 295 pages with twelve very large chapters. I recently went through the book to set more natural chapter breaks, and after that was done I had a twenty-five chapter novel. Getting that first draft to something more polished and final is still a work in progress. I do have a reader who has been very helpful, and I've already made one change to the book based on her comments.

While the editing process continues I began putting together the second book of the trilogy. I have a rough chapter summary, something which I didn't have for the first book. I have the makings of two chapters for the second book as well. That's where I ran into a challenge.

The first book was about the world of Spark. The second book is to be about Spark's sister world, Chord. I struggled over how to start the second book, particularly how to transition the storyline from one world to the next. It finally dawned on me that the problem wasn't with the second book. The problem was that I had ended book one prematurely. I had been concerned about how to end the first book all along, worried that I would continue it endlessly and never finish it. As a result I ended up closing the cover a little too soon, with a few things left hanging that had to be in place before the second book could take flight.

So, how do I know when to end it now? Well, having worked back and forth between the ending of the first and the beginning of the second, I found the specific break points I wanted. In other words, it was now clear to me where all my characters should be, and in what situation, when the story closed. When I finally had that part spelled out, I knew what I still needed to do. When I finish this time, there will be thirty chapters instead of twenty-five. Two of those chapters are already mostly written, so I hope it won't take that long to wrap it up.

I doubt that will totally close the book. The editing and critiquing is still in progress. I am now delving into the background I had already prepared for book 2, and reading through that has raised some issues that I may have to go back to book 1 to address. These things are not plot related, but more about fleshing out book 1 to meet the expectations of book 2. Spark is a faded, badly damaged shell compared to the richness of Chord. To make that very clear in book 2, there needs to be more hints and vestiges in Spark to show just how far Spark had fallen, and what had been taken from them.