Writing Update: The Problem With Volume IV.

…And I’m back! This will be short, so let’s dive right in.

Over the last few weeks, since before my last blog post, I’ve been going through some of my earlier drafts of my fantasy series, reverse outlining what has laid dormant for years. The first draft of volume IV was crafted in 2015, so that should tell you how long it was left untouched. There were many factors that led me to step away from the series, and first and foremost is how daunting it felt. I now know what George R. R. Martin feels like with Winds of Winter and a Dream of Spring. 

What do I mean by daunting? The first draft of the novel was 402,000 words and had forty-two different POVs. A normal, three-hundred-page novel is about 90,000 words. So, over quadruple the words, and then some. By some counts, the Old Testament in the Bible is 622,000 words, so I wrote two-thirds of the Old Testament. Many people will say, “Oh, well, famous writer so and so does that all the time.” Good for that guy! I’m not him. That was the first time I’d ever written that much. I had a strong case of writer’s exhaustion, and judging by how much it grew from the previous volume, I knew subsequent books were only going to get bigger and bigger. But bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. 

Also, about this time, I realized I’d been getting a lot of bad writing advice, primarily incorporating ideas that just weren’t what I wanted. My story morphed into something that was no longer mine, but rather a novel other people wanted to read. I’d shifted so much, compromised so much that the thought of going back in and cutting it all out made me weary. So, I set it aside, knowing one day I’d have to face my arch nemesis again. And here we are…

Another factor was how distracted I got by writing other stories that I really enjoyed. The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, Flawed to the Core, THOLAC, brainstorming ideas for other books, and a whole slew of other books/storylines that will go unspoken—and yes, you will see those, eventually. While I went off and wrote another ten to twelve books, the fantasy series grew stagnant and fetid, growing more rank by the year. 

Now, I’ve got to face those demons, and I started where it began: volume IV. The first thing I did was cut out all the garbage that wasn’t part of my original intent, and just like that, over 50k words vanished, bringing the word count down to 345k. But it was still long, and so I took another hard look at the novel and decided to lift someone’s entire plot line out of the novel and make it into a novella. This allows me to beef it up a little more, chase those small threads that I dropped while initially writing, and really flesh out this character and story. This reduced the word count to 319k. 

But there’s still more to cut, but I plan to do so by keeping what’s there and honing the prose into something smooth and well-polished. No more huge cuts, though I would like to get it down to under 300K. Now that I’ve gone through and reverse outlined, I can move forward with volume V and IV, to which only some has been written. When I finished book IV, I pretty much stopped writing the series. 

The reverse outline has enabled me to ruminate on my series and brought about a lot of new ideas, tweaks, and changes I want to make, so it has been far more productive than anticipated. All good things come to those who wait. I think I’ve rambled enough now…

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content and want to read my works, check out my books on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.